Post by Jan on Apr 10, 2021 14:52:50 GMT
Hello dear Resofriends,
I wanted to post a few details of my recent project, it came out a little bit longer than i thought, so please excuse my bad English.
In the last months I wanted to build my first own Tele Reso and after I've unsuccessfully searched the whole internet to get a cheap coverplate and cone, Pete from this forum send me a continental cone, a biscuit, a saddle and a coverplate to germany. Thank you very much, Pete!
I promised to write about my building process, so here we go!
My plan was to make a sturdy reso that was light, good acousticly, electrical and of course cheap! I'm loving to build my own musical stuff. I've always modded my guitars, my amps, built many of my own stompboxes, recorded, mixed and mastered the ep of my band and there's nothing I regret. Maybe some people will ask, why I'm not buying this whole stuff and save my time, but I'm really enjoying the time I'm investing in these projects, love to learn new things and I'm really enjoying saving money.
There were two questions in building a solid body reso: should I leave the back of the reso open or closed and what will be the difference in sound? I've watched many videos, read many things about it and asked a few people that had experience in it, but in the end I had to try it my own way. In theory the closed back would sound too boxy and the open back would send the lower frequencies onto your belly. So I really wanted to separate the chamber and sound under the cone and send it to the front like a normal Reso guitar would do through the f holes.
A tele is not very thick, so the space between the sound well and the bottom of the guitar is crucial. I wanted to put the cone so high I could and cut a hole under the rim to create a sound port in the upper horn of the tele. After calculations the cone rim had to be 22mm deep and the inner hole 35mm. So with 5mm wood left in the 4 cm thick body it should be enough despite the soft wood, I hoped.
I had an old paulownia Tele body I had bought cheap years ago and it just was lying around after I bought me another body that hadn't the used look made by the previous owner.
It was too light for my regular Tele and not so good looking and sounding. But for this experiment it seemed good, because you can really easy rout this type of soft wood, I thought.
Next step was the design.
I ´ve tried a few soundhole designs and I thought the three stripes looked the best. The pickguard is inspired by the Tele Custom.
I bought a cheap trapeze tailpiece, made it shorter and cut new threads. I had to put smaller nuts on it, cause the old thread was bigger in diameter than the rods.
Next thing was the neck. A cheap padle neck would do it, cause I'm doing a fret job on my own anyway.
I cut the headstock, polished and oil waxed the neck with added pigments. I love the feel of pure wood necks and this turned out really nice. Bone nut on it and it was ready to go.
Then I wanted to locate the correct bridge position. I knew out of my previous LesPaul project that the bridge position is best made by provisionally putting a bridge on and getting the octave right at the 12th fret. It's allways a little longer than the length of the nut to the 12th fret. I don't know why.
So I put another biscuit under the biscuit bridge. I controlled the bridge height with the cone cover on and it was perfect. Than I put the high and low e string with my desired strings gauge and tuning on. I tried a few shim heights and ended shimming the neck provisionally with two pieces of credit cards to get the right action. Finally I marked the perfect bridge position. The center I measured by putting a ruler on the neck sides of the high and low e string side and extending the line to the bridge markings. Cut it in half and you have the center of the circle where the cone rim will be.
I built me two circle templates for the inner lower cone hole and the outer cone rim. And two templates for the upper horn sound port and the control cavity in the back.
I predrilled the routings with a drillbit in the perfect length. The body is 4 cm thick and I wanted to go as deep as possible with 3,5 cm. With the predrilled holes in perfect length in various spots I always had a reference. With a forstner I routeted most of the wood. After that it looked like a mess but I didn't had a drill bench to make it more precise. The soft wood ended up pretty stripped.
But the router made a nice job with a cheap silver line flush cutter. 
I wanted to make the upper horn routing bigger, so I made it freehand. It doesn't look professional. But who cares, when it will be covered under a pickguard.
I had to fix some spots with wood before routing the rim, but afterwards it was dead flush. A quick test with the cone, to check that my thousands of measurings were good, came out good and I was revealed.
Next step was to make a hole from the chamber under the cone to the upper horn routing. A friend, who borrowed me his router, had the great idea to use an angle grinder and with my wife's Micro Dremel it was really easy. With a coping saw and small files I made the hole bigger.
After all this treatment the body was paperweight with 679g. Might be the lightest Tele body in the world.
Now the big time came to strung up the guitar. The result was great. I didn't made any bridge work yet and it had a perfect action with the provisional bridge and my two pieces of credit cards in the neck pocket. Then I strung the strings and I forgot how loud a resonator can be. It was as loud as my Super Jumbo Furch acoustic guitar and had a really nice bottom end. I checked the sound on the upper horn soudn port and held my ear in it while strunging. The sound was much fuller and deeper than over the cone. It's really a significant difference. Much more bottom end and the light paulownia body resonates really great! I'm so happy that the effort was worth it.
With a well cut bridge, the cover and the pickguard maybe the sound will get better, but I'm already satisfied.
I hope I will find the time to upload some soundfiles or videos soon.
Next things to do:
- put the coverplate on
- cut and install a pickguard
- properly cut the bridge (have ordered some european boxwood, that is much harder than the maple birdge i have now)
- fret leveling
- installing a spare Fender Nocaster neck pickup
- test a small microphone element with a high z transformer under the cover (inspired by Bradley here on the forum)
- toggle switch and vol and tone controls
- put some weights in the rear body part to counteract the neck heaviness
- maybe sanding off the ugly paint...
Greetings,
Jan
I wanted to post a few details of my recent project, it came out a little bit longer than i thought, so please excuse my bad English.
In the last months I wanted to build my first own Tele Reso and after I've unsuccessfully searched the whole internet to get a cheap coverplate and cone, Pete from this forum send me a continental cone, a biscuit, a saddle and a coverplate to germany. Thank you very much, Pete!
I promised to write about my building process, so here we go!
My plan was to make a sturdy reso that was light, good acousticly, electrical and of course cheap! I'm loving to build my own musical stuff. I've always modded my guitars, my amps, built many of my own stompboxes, recorded, mixed and mastered the ep of my band and there's nothing I regret. Maybe some people will ask, why I'm not buying this whole stuff and save my time, but I'm really enjoying the time I'm investing in these projects, love to learn new things and I'm really enjoying saving money.
There were two questions in building a solid body reso: should I leave the back of the reso open or closed and what will be the difference in sound? I've watched many videos, read many things about it and asked a few people that had experience in it, but in the end I had to try it my own way. In theory the closed back would sound too boxy and the open back would send the lower frequencies onto your belly. So I really wanted to separate the chamber and sound under the cone and send it to the front like a normal Reso guitar would do through the f holes.
A tele is not very thick, so the space between the sound well and the bottom of the guitar is crucial. I wanted to put the cone so high I could and cut a hole under the rim to create a sound port in the upper horn of the tele. After calculations the cone rim had to be 22mm deep and the inner hole 35mm. So with 5mm wood left in the 4 cm thick body it should be enough despite the soft wood, I hoped.
I had an old paulownia Tele body I had bought cheap years ago and it just was lying around after I bought me another body that hadn't the used look made by the previous owner.
It was too light for my regular Tele and not so good looking and sounding. But for this experiment it seemed good, because you can really easy rout this type of soft wood, I thought.
Next step was the design.
I ´ve tried a few soundhole designs and I thought the three stripes looked the best. The pickguard is inspired by the Tele Custom.
I bought a cheap trapeze tailpiece, made it shorter and cut new threads. I had to put smaller nuts on it, cause the old thread was bigger in diameter than the rods.
Next thing was the neck. A cheap padle neck would do it, cause I'm doing a fret job on my own anyway.
I cut the headstock, polished and oil waxed the neck with added pigments. I love the feel of pure wood necks and this turned out really nice. Bone nut on it and it was ready to go.
Then I wanted to locate the correct bridge position. I knew out of my previous LesPaul project that the bridge position is best made by provisionally putting a bridge on and getting the octave right at the 12th fret. It's allways a little longer than the length of the nut to the 12th fret. I don't know why.
So I put another biscuit under the biscuit bridge. I controlled the bridge height with the cone cover on and it was perfect. Than I put the high and low e string with my desired strings gauge and tuning on. I tried a few shim heights and ended shimming the neck provisionally with two pieces of credit cards to get the right action. Finally I marked the perfect bridge position. The center I measured by putting a ruler on the neck sides of the high and low e string side and extending the line to the bridge markings. Cut it in half and you have the center of the circle where the cone rim will be.
I built me two circle templates for the inner lower cone hole and the outer cone rim. And two templates for the upper horn sound port and the control cavity in the back.
I predrilled the routings with a drillbit in the perfect length. The body is 4 cm thick and I wanted to go as deep as possible with 3,5 cm. With the predrilled holes in perfect length in various spots I always had a reference. With a forstner I routeted most of the wood. After that it looked like a mess but I didn't had a drill bench to make it more precise. The soft wood ended up pretty stripped.
But the router made a nice job with a cheap silver line flush cutter. 
I wanted to make the upper horn routing bigger, so I made it freehand. It doesn't look professional. But who cares, when it will be covered under a pickguard.
I had to fix some spots with wood before routing the rim, but afterwards it was dead flush. A quick test with the cone, to check that my thousands of measurings were good, came out good and I was revealed.
Next step was to make a hole from the chamber under the cone to the upper horn routing. A friend, who borrowed me his router, had the great idea to use an angle grinder and with my wife's Micro Dremel it was really easy. With a coping saw and small files I made the hole bigger.
After all this treatment the body was paperweight with 679g. Might be the lightest Tele body in the world.
Now the big time came to strung up the guitar. The result was great. I didn't made any bridge work yet and it had a perfect action with the provisional bridge and my two pieces of credit cards in the neck pocket. Then I strung the strings and I forgot how loud a resonator can be. It was as loud as my Super Jumbo Furch acoustic guitar and had a really nice bottom end. I checked the sound on the upper horn soudn port and held my ear in it while strunging. The sound was much fuller and deeper than over the cone. It's really a significant difference. Much more bottom end and the light paulownia body resonates really great! I'm so happy that the effort was worth it.
With a well cut bridge, the cover and the pickguard maybe the sound will get better, but I'm already satisfied.I hope I will find the time to upload some soundfiles or videos soon.
Next things to do:
- put the coverplate on
- cut and install a pickguard
- properly cut the bridge (have ordered some european boxwood, that is much harder than the maple birdge i have now)
- fret leveling
- installing a spare Fender Nocaster neck pickup
- test a small microphone element with a high z transformer under the cover (inspired by Bradley here on the forum)
- toggle switch and vol and tone controls
- put some weights in the rear body part to counteract the neck heaviness
- maybe sanding off the ugly paint...
Greetings,
Jan
