I got a call from my best friends son last night about 8pm. His Dad had been having pretty much non-stop diarrhea since Thursday. So I went over and convinced him to go to the ER as he was quite dehydrated. They pumped him full of IV fluids and did some blood tests. Nothing obvious in the blood and he could not produce a sample while he was there so they sent him home with orders to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. I did not get back home until 1:30am.
Since I had a 8am appt at Discount Tire to get a road hazard damaged new tire replaced, I took a coupon from the mail and went by Burger King on the way to the tire shop. Only took about 30 minutes to get out of there with the new tire, so I went home and did some wash. Decided at 10:30 to take a nap to make up for the night before. Woke up a couple hours later, had a Boost for lunch and sat down to work on my favorite guitar.
I posted not long ago about redoing the frets on this one, again. Those worked out well but I still had some issues with the factory steel saddles on the bridge causing sitar like sounds, especially on the high E. The problem was that those saddles were only about 20mm wide, and even at that width they were pushing the strings apart a bit wider than the 51mm string spacing on the bridge. All the Tele versions I could find online were a couple millimeters wider than that. I did find some that were 21mm and was trying to think of the best way to trim them down. Had a 'slap your forehead' moment mid-afternoon and pulled out my cordless drill and 3 different grits of sandpaper. The saddles have intonation cuts but the center is still cylindrical so I was able to put them into the drill and torque them down. Started with 60 grit and went to 150 and 400 to finish. I think it took me 10 to 15 minutes to take a millimeter off each end of the 3 saddles. By the time I got through with the 400 grit it was pretty smooth.
Pulled the factory bits and installed the brass ones, setup the string radius and intonation. I do believe that this guitar is finally finished. It will head the rotation of guitars I am using for lessons and practice.
Here are pics of the saddle ends after 60 and 150 grit as well as the setup and finished guitar.
Since I had a 8am appt at Discount Tire to get a road hazard damaged new tire replaced, I took a coupon from the mail and went by Burger King on the way to the tire shop. Only took about 30 minutes to get out of there with the new tire, so I went home and did some wash. Decided at 10:30 to take a nap to make up for the night before. Woke up a couple hours later, had a Boost for lunch and sat down to work on my favorite guitar.
I posted not long ago about redoing the frets on this one, again. Those worked out well but I still had some issues with the factory steel saddles on the bridge causing sitar like sounds, especially on the high E. The problem was that those saddles were only about 20mm wide, and even at that width they were pushing the strings apart a bit wider than the 51mm string spacing on the bridge. All the Tele versions I could find online were a couple millimeters wider than that. I did find some that were 21mm and was trying to think of the best way to trim them down. Had a 'slap your forehead' moment mid-afternoon and pulled out my cordless drill and 3 different grits of sandpaper. The saddles have intonation cuts but the center is still cylindrical so I was able to put them into the drill and torque them down. Started with 60 grit and went to 150 and 400 to finish. I think it took me 10 to 15 minutes to take a millimeter off each end of the 3 saddles. By the time I got through with the 400 grit it was pretty smooth.
Pulled the factory bits and installed the brass ones, setup the string radius and intonation. I do believe that this guitar is finally finished. It will head the rotation of guitars I am using for lessons and practice.
Here are pics of the saddle ends after 60 and 150 grit as well as the setup and finished guitar.
