Scratchplates

Playing catch up on a number of unfinished builds and starting a new one or two seems to be the order of the day at the moment.

The Black on Black Tele was the first one that came up for treatment. This guitar has been through a number of changes. On first build it had a Gibson P90 Pickup in the neck position which later got changed out to a P100 with the coil drop mod to give it that extra lift out of the darkness. Then one of those opportune ebay sightings came up with a 1965 DeArmond Rowe pickup - broken but going for a good price. As soon as it landed off it went to Wild Guitars in Highgate so the pickup man could wend his magic and very magical the result was too. This then left me with a problem of having to find a non standard pickguard to accommodate it. My first attempt at routing out a standard one was adequate but not perfect so I ordered a custom bakerlite one from Jacks Instrument Services up in Manchester. It took a couple of tries to get the thing perfect, but perfect it certainly is.

While in custom scratchplate mode, I also got Jack to build a custom Brass Cabronita style plate for the Thinline, with an additional Dogear cut, so I could finally get that guitar finished (apart from the wiring!) as the previous order from one of the high end Custom makers in the US just failed to materialise after months of waiting. Again Jack made a stunning job of it and it blends nicely with with Michael from Armadillo's fine Brass Hardware.

Last up was a Bakerlite P90 scratchplate for the new Black Bound Tele that has just started its build. Again from Jack - he very kindly recycled one of the early Black on Black attempts where we hadn't calculated for the body offset in the design, to take a P90 and the obvious home for it was the new Bound Tele - currently all Black hardware but I do have a Brass set on the way from Texas - lets see what direction that one goes in.