After doing the 1959ed Thursday Burst conversion of my Tokai Love Rock LS-80, I got inspired to start a similar project on my other electric guitar. A '04 MIK Fender Lite Ash Tele, that is going to be converted to look and feel more like 1951 Fender Nocaster. The Nocaster is basically a tele that is missing the model name on the headstock as it only reads Fender instead. Nocasters were produced only in a few hundred examples under the "in between" time when, what we know as a Telecaster, changed name from Broadcaster to Telecaster. (Click on the pictures for large-size) The Lite Ash Tele that I start from is a relatively cheap but quality Fender Telecaster that stock comes equipped with Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro pickups, Vintage 3-saddle bridge, Modern style tuners, a natural lightly butterscotch tinted ash body finished with a thick poly finish (not so good), a satin finished birdseye maple neck. I find it a good base to start this project from. I like the pickups and will probably not change them, if I change my mind and decide to do a swap it will probably be to a set of Fender Custom Shop Nocasters, Seymour Duncan Broadcasters or Seymour Duncan Antiquity's. Last spring I started doing the first mods to the guitar, by replacing the wiring with a quality CTS/Switchcraft/Orange Drop wiring from Fake58.co.uk. In august I got hold of a real 50's "Paper in Wax" Mylar cap, the type that were used in the early Telecasters. Sounds killer! 
All original Lite Ash, execpt wiring The next step torwards a '51 Nocaster is changing the body finish. I'll take the guitar into pieces so that I have the body without any parts on. A real 51 Nocaster has a beautiful thin nitro finish that has got to age gracefully all since 1951, compared to a Lite Ash telecaster that has a 1+ mm thick shiny bulletproof poly coating over it you'll figure that it's about one of the biggest differences of these two guitars. I do of course have the alternative to strip the whole body order some butterscotch blondy nitro and refinish it completely, but that would quite expensive. So for now I have decided to only do a "Thin Skin" to the poly finish. In other words I will sand the poly thinner until its next to nothing left in thickness. I start off wet-sanding with 320 grit sandpaper and gradually move up, 400, 800, 1000, 1200 to finish of with some polishing compunds to take back a little of the shine. Though not as much as it originally had, as old nitro finished guitars don't have that mirror like gloss, which I personally also find cheap looking. 
Lite Ash headstock The first mod is done to the headstock, the string tree for the D & G string tree is removed and the hole is plugged. A set of vintage style single-line Klusons and a correct round stringtree on the way. Dome Knobs and Strap locks aged by sanding with 1200 grit and then "fuming" with vinegar. I've also started "Thin Skinning" the back of the body today, but it's tough. The poly finish is so hard and durable, I've only worked with 320 and 400 so far and will continue with those grits tomorrow as well. But it looks very promising, even though the back is matte so far I can tell that this will have positive results look-wise... and hopefully tone-wise as well. The Thin skinning continued today with 320 and 400 grit paper, darn poly... it is really bulletproof! Went to the hardware store to pick up a bottle of 20% muratic acid solution (strongest they had). I put the string ferules, jack cup, strap buttons with screws on a piece of wood inside a plastic container. I poured up some of the solution around the wood piece so that the parts would be on a "island" surrounded by acid solution. I closed the container and waited for the aging process. As I waited I continued the Thin-Skinning and finally got the poly as thin as I wanted. Then moved up in grits to 800 and 1000, wet sanding of course. After 1000 grit I used auto paint polishing compound to buff back some shine. Body is now semi-gloss with a very even finish. After that I worked the armwear area, a little area above the pickguard and a small spot above the volume knob and controlplate some more, starting with 200 grit to dig a little deeper, moved up to 400 and some laquer thinner which seemed to eat the sanded finish just a little and make it whiter and finally a light light sanding with 1000 and some slight polishing compound. I don't want to make the areas too shiney and new looking again after wearing them down! 
Body Thin-Skinned and slightly reliced Then I made some random dings on the edges, armwear area, belt area etc. I made the biggest dings with a chisel then took my keyring. Put the keyring on my finger and hitted the body the keys made some nice random markings. After that I dragged it, especially the edges, lightly against the concrete floor in the garage to make some scratches as it had been laid down on rough surfaces before. The edge in the armwear area wasn't worn enough, so I took a carpet knife and scraped more finish of the edge, which left a rough looking edge... and I'm done! 
Aged jack cup Back to the parts aging process. I checked them every now and then during the body relicing I described above and had the parts in the container for about 4 hours total. The jack cup had a light rust coat on when I took it out, but with some 1000 grit I sanded most of it away and got very pleased with how it turned out. But overall the parts didn't age as fast as I thought they would, 20% isn't that strong it seems. But on the other hand the process in much more controlled when it's slower. The risks of overdoing aren't as big. A package arrived today, new parts for the project. Vintage style aged single-line Klusons tuners, 5-hole blackguard made of bakelite, a round string tree etc. Today I put control plate along with the switch screws to go into the container. I dinged and scratched the control plate with a screwdriver before putting it in. Screws about 4 hours and the control plate almost 6 hours, when I took the control plate out it looked really, ahem... ugly! Had this blueish cloudy tint while it looked new in other areas. First thought was, damn I messed it up. But after deciding to sand the whole thing with 1200 grit sandpaper it turned out alot better than I could have imagined! The blue cloudiness dissapeared and it got that slightly used look that I wanted. A perfect aging recipe for the plate! 
Aged control plate Scratched the Bakelite guard up a little with some sandpaper and of course, a pick. The screwholes from the old guard and the plate didn't match the new guard. So I had to do some plugging and redrilling work today, used glue and coctail sticks and then predrilled new holes. I also had to mod the guard a bit to fit snug with the control plate. I'm going to get slotted screws for the pickguard and the control plate. 
Aged bakelite guard | Parts layed out I studied some pics of 1952 Telecasters and found one that had these, imo really nice and unique crackings underneath the control plate and in the armwear area. I decided that I wanted that on my Blackguard as well. Took alot of guts to put the carpet knife down into the finish, but after doing the first scratch it wasn't that hard anymore ;) 
Control plate area | Forearm area When cutting into the poly finish it kind of pushes the laquer from the cut up to the sides. So when running your finger over them you can really feel the cut, I took the broad side of the knife blade and scraped them down so the cuts flush with the finish. Then I took brown shoe polish on a rag and wiped over the crackings, they went from barely visible to a nice aged brown look. 
Backside | Aged neckplate I know that especially the laquer cracking part of relicing isn't for everybody. But I liked the end result and to me it looks even better in real life than on these pics. Some more things has happen to the project now. The painting hang-hole has been plugged, just for more correct looks ;) I ordered a Callaham slotted screw kit from Tommy's Music Shop in Germany, as soon as I got them a exposed them to muriatic acid. Very good quality stainless steel screws take a long long time to age, even with muratic acid. Had them in the container for two days but now they are nicely dulled. 
Aged Body with parts | Aged back (crappy picture) I also decided to keep the original bridge plate and saddles for now, so I aged those as well. It only took a couple of hours in the acid container and it aged quite radically, almost too much. But I'm still happy with how it looks, it will be changed to a Fender "Pat. Pend" stamped bridge in the future though. The Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro bridge pickup had a small Seymour Duncan logo on it that I removed as well, it looked really cool but it didn't look right on this guitar anymore after all the aging. 
Aged bridge | Plugged neckpocket I've ordered a Allparts TMO-FAT neck that I recieved today, together with two cans of clear nitro a bone nut and some other stuff. I'll keep you updated on laquering the neck, the pickguard and other progresses. More text, descriptions and picture to come as soon as I begin working with the new parts. The neck looks very nice, a quality piece for sure. It's a fat baseball neck, just like the old Nocasters had. Very different from the original Lite Ash neck. As it's hard to get hold of tinted nitro lacquer around here I decided to do this the old long way by using waterbased dye to get the Fender amber color to the neck. There's one problem with that though, that has been brought up several times (at least at the tdpri forum). Allparts unfinished necks are just raw wood, but on the fretboard they have used some kind of sealer (feels like a plastic coat when running your finger over it) so dye won't color the fretboard, only the rest of the neck. The only way to dye the color to the fretboard is by removing the sealer first, by scraping it off by hand. Which is very time consuming... but doable. 
I used an exactoblade to scrape it off | Baseball neck profile As the trussrod on the Allparts neck is at the heel of it, the body needs a canal from the neck pickup cavity to the neckpocket. So you can adjust the trussrod without having to take the neck off the body. It was that hard to do the routing. I simply took a drill and drilled most of the wood away, the made the walls straight with a chisel. 
Trussrod canal routed | Neck pickup springs I also added to springs for holding the neck pickup, as that's the way the old Nocasters had the neck pickup mounted. I couldn't find any tele neck springs though as "tubing" is commonly used instead these days. So I used two humbucker springs and cut them to the correct length. I've laquered the bakelite guard with nitro as well. But didn't have the chance to take any pics of that yet. Next update will include pics of that along with thoughts, methods and some shots of the neck dying process... Now time for a update again... a real photofest this time! Neck is dyed a nice amber yellow now, it was done with waterbased dye that was named something like "light oak", I didn't trust the product name but the test parts they had in the store to get the right shade. Before I applied the dye onto the neck I damped the neck with water, that way the woodgrain raises a bit and make the end result nicer and deeper. The end result is a little spotty, but in this case I just think it looks nice and gives and old look to the wood. The situation would have been diffrent if I tried to make a brand new looking guitar. The dirt that has got into the grain was at first almost an accident but it turned out really nice :) I forgot to dress the frets before dying the neck. When I took a sanding block and sanded the fret edges even with the wood, all this metal dust from the frets flew around and got into the wood and there it sits. But I'm grateful that I did that mistake beacause it looks real nice, imo. The blackguard is now nitroed and reliced as well, that part was much harder than I thought. I had to sand it down and reshoot several times before I got it to look nice. I soldered everything together in the cavity today and wired it up with the famous 50's wiring that is famous on Les Pauls, read my Thursday Burst page if you want to know more about what it does, or do a search over at google. Haven't tried it on singlecoils before so I figured I'll try and see how it sounds and feels. Feels really nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel now. This has been a long project and I haven't played a note on this guitar since last autumn... is a half year since that so I'm real excited to get it finished amd so far I'm pleased with how it has turned out. Next steps in the process will be to shoot the neck with nitro, then let it cure, assemble the last parts then a setup, and done. Now off to the pictures, enjoy! 
Okay, this thing turned out really great and it's all back together now! I had to work with the string height a bit, it needed a shim in the neck pocket to get the right alignment, some minor fret leveling was also needed in places and I'm not sure if I got it right yet... a good tech would probably get it better. The nitro on the neck is really thin, and while it isn't a pro job... it gives a really old feel to the neck, some variations in color and such. I'll try to get some soundclips up as soon as I get around recording something. I really like the tone of it, it's more resonant and without a doubt fuller sounding with the baseball neck. And it's amazing how more comfortable the fatback necks are compared to the modern C-shape... but it's of course a personal preference thing. Enjoy the pics and check back as soundsclips are coming soon! And as always, feel free to mail me if you have any questions or something. 
I decided that the poly finish just wasn't good enough. I wanted to do it right when I had worked this hard with the project. So after trying 4 different paintstrippers of which none really worked I finally took the heatgun out and started heating the finish. Not the best way I admit but since I couldn't get hold of aircraft stripper (the only paint stripper that seems to work on poly finishes I've read) here in Finland I had to come up with an alternative way. I just had to be careful not to burn the wood while using the heatgun. When heating the finish it got yellow, started making popping sounds and basically exploded of the wood... it looked rather odd! At the same time as heating the finish I used a sharp blade to speed up the process. When the finish was removed I continued by sanding the last laquer remains off with rough sandpaper, with the polycoat removed I worked my way up through the different sandpapers all to wetsanding with 360 and 600. After that followed the refinish job. I couldn't get hold of a nice tinted nitro here either, so I started with staining the wood to a yellowish color. I decided not to use any grain filler as I wanted it to look like the nitro finish to look old, like it had sunk into the grains. So I continued with spraying 4-5 layers of clear nitro directly on the stained wood. 4-5 coats without much prepwork resulted in an extremly thin nitro finish, just like I wanted it! After letting it cure for about a week I started hacking some scratches and dents in it to get that old worn-in feel. Then followed piecing everything together again, firing up the Pro Junior to see if there were any tonal changes? Actually you didn't even have to fire the amp up to notice it, the change from thick poly to thin nitro is obivous. Notes ring out much longer and the whole guitar vibrates, you really feel the difference. Even though it took several days to get it done, it was without any doubt worth the hassle. The whole refinish job was done during the summer 2007 so now the guitar is almost a year old and have been played heavily since. After one year of wear and tear the '51 Caster now both feels and sounds, as well as plays like a vintage guitar! So with those words this story and project has come to an end, and that we'll celebrate with some final high resolution pics of the guitar which started out as a Lite Ash Tele and now is a Telecaster inspired by the 50's era Broadcaster, Nocaster and Telecasters. Here are the pics: 
Well I really thought I had this project finished and I though about selling guitar, even had it up for sale but then I changed my mind. I picked it up one day and just came to the conclusion that this is the perfect Telecaster... it's resonant and feather light with a perfect neck. I just can't sell it... no way what was I thinking! So instead of selling it I got inspiration to continue improving the guitar and bringing the specs even closer to 50's Blackguard specs. Closer to Blackguard specs it was, but still I started out with a mod in the opposite direction. As I decided to keep the guitar I wanted to find out what I felt was the most negative thing about it and start by improving that. After some testing, thinking and playing I knew that the thing I like least with it is the hum that a single coil guitar generates (especially using poor powerlines). So I started searching for a solution to this, which eventually led me to a page on the net called GuitarNuts.com - Shieling a Tele(tm). This is a site that goes into detail about the benefits shielding a single coil guitar can have and after reading it all through twice I decided to give it a shot. So off to eBay I go and order a couple of rolls of coppertape. 
When the coppertape arrives in the mail the work can start. First off the bakelite pickguard, I cut out a sheet of kitchen aluminium paper and glue it to the back of the pickguard and cut it so that it clears the edged of the guard and neck pickup hole by a few millimeters. Then I start taping all the cavities with the copper tape, trying to keep the pieces used to a minimum and checking with a beeping mulitmeter all the time that the pieces have connection to each other, to get a complete grounded field around all electronics. I even go to the extreme of rolling tape around a pencil and tucking it into the tunnels that cables run through. That way I was able to make all the cavity shieldings connected to each other, perfect! 
The result then... totally floored me! It's a great improvement, I'd say that about 60% reduction of hum. A very simple mod with PERFECT results! Recommended even though it's a step away from true vintage specs. The second thing that I changed was the knobs. The dome knobs from Allparts were okay but they didn't really have the correct top profile so I ordered a set of original Fender vintage dome knobs and lightly reliced them. A little step closer to 50's specs. 
Allparts dome knobs | Fender vintage dome knobs 
One of the most essential visual details have so far been missing on the '51 Caster, the three brass saddle Fender Pat. Pend bridge. There are many telecaster players that say that this bridge isn't worth upgradring to as it doesn't do much for tone. Many in fact prefer Glendale and Callaham bridges these days, because they are superior in quality and therefore also tone, especially when using compensated saddles. I don't neglect this but if one is building a 50's replica tele it should have a 50's bridge without the compensated saddle even though vintage three saddle teles don't intonate perfectly. That's the way they were built back in the day... raw and not perfect. At the same time, if I didn't try to replicate a Nocaster I might have gone with a Glendale brdige but this replica just have to have that "Fender Pat. Pend" stamped into the bridge. I think it's a very important detail to complete the look. 
Another detail that was need to complete the look was the Broadcaster/Nocaster milled jack cup. I found a seller on ebay.co.uk who sold these for ~12 euros and ordered one. Apart from it being more correct looking it's also alot more sturdy than the quite tacky designed standard jack cup and plate thing that locks the jack cup into place. Improvement? For sure! Trying to source out a Fender Pat. Pend bridge up here in northern Europe wasn't easy, or it wasn't that hard finding it but the shops charge an arm and a leg for a bridge with saddles. I ask why, when they cost $40 at shops in the US!? That said it was quite obvious that it was going to be cheaper to buy on ebay from the US. After looking around for a while I found a shop, Madisons Music Store, that sell reliced guitar parts. They do really nice relic work and as the bridge is about the hardest of all parts on a tele to relic I decided to pay a little more for a reliced bridge, and as Madisons Music Store's bridges are really nicely done I decided to go with theirs. I emailed Ben Lindsey, the guy behind Madisons Music Store, and asked some details, payed by PayPal and a week later the bridge was in my hand. Lindsey apart from doing fabulous relicing, was a really friendly guy who answer my mails quickly, I can't do anything but recommend him to everyone looking for some relic parts. 
After approx one years use the guitar has started to naturally wear as well. Tonally I noticed some improvements when changing to the Pat. Pend bridge. I assume this is mostly because of the saddles. The brass saddles on the Lite Ash bridge were smaller in diameter and also notched and as the Pat. Pend saddles are fatter and without notches that changed the tone. The tone and sustain is firmer and more solid now, if that makes sense ;) It's also slightly fatter and the b and high e string simply sounds better now. All in all a killer upgrade for looks that also improved tone slightly, nice! Some small things still to be changed, philip head saddles screw for example... apart from smaller details I've been researching the boutique blackguard pickup alternatives and still haven't decided which would be the perfect pickups. So site will be updated again, sooner or later. I hope you enjoy reading! 
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