Grizzly H8068 - Telecaster Kit

Brent Dowell

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So, I've got this friend of mine that get's me into trouble from time to time, music wise. The latest thing he got me into was this mega thread from another forum on 'Sparkly Telecasters'. If you've got a spare week to peruse the thread, you can find it here.

Anyway I've only over owned 1 electric guitar. I have a bunch of stringed instruments, but I never hated my guitar enough to feel like I needed to shell out big bucks on another one. It's not a great guitar (Gibson S1), but I'm not a great guitar player.

But having a sparkled telecaster really appealed to my sense of fun, and the idea of having a guitar I could play with and swap out pickups, etc, just sound fun. So I got a Grizzly H8068 kit to play with. I've built a few grizzly ukuleles, and a mandolin, so I wasn't expecting anything great, but I figured it would be halfway decent.

Heres what you get.
bubbacaster_kit.jpg

And here's what I ended up with
bubbacaster_done.jpg

It's got a blue/green/holographic/colorshifting flakes. I didn't do a great job of applying the flake, but Eh, It's good enough. It changes color from blue to green depending on what angle you look at it.

The flakes were applied from a little seasoning shaker on top of a thick coat of lacquer. It then took MANY MANY coats of lacquer to get it to the point where the flakes were covered and I was able to sand it out and buff it up to a nice glossy sheen...

Just wrapped it up today. Got the preliminary setup done, so I'll let it sit for a while to settle in, and then I'll probably give it a good working over. I.e. fret job, truss rod adjustments, Maybe some new pickups, etc...

Played it a little bit and it'll take a little getting used to the fender neck scale versus the gibson, but it seems to have a nice growl...
 
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That IS SPARKLY, ain't it? :)

I'll betcha' it'll be a blast to play, once it's all tweaked. How was the fit? I mean... like the fit of the neck to the body, the fit of the inletting for the pickups, like that?

My SGDOL (step-granddaughter-out-of-law, a little tough to explain that one) just finished up a WICKED axe in school. Freestyle body (the guitar). Plays some sweet, although the neck's a little wide for my ol' hands.
 
Well, for 130 bucks, it wasn't too bad.

The biggest issue is that I needed to shim the neck 'up' a bit so that the strings would clear the higher frets. Trying to figure out if I want to do a more permanent fix by removing some wood either on the neck or on the body, or just punt and leave it :huh: I'm guessing I'll just leave it.... :thumb:

The only other issue is that the bridge pocket seems like it was just a little too wide for the bridge, like many 1/32". I can just barely see a little cave under the bridge on one side.

Oh, and I broke the nut while futzing around with it. Seemed a little to light and plasticky for my taste. Fortunately I had some extra nut material left over from a travel classical acoustic guitar build.

Got the intonation pretty close tonight and spent some time playing it. I'm liking it. It actually sounds pretty decent. It's got more lowend than my Gibson, which I kind of like. I'm guessing the pickups are pretty cheap, but to my ears they sound good to me so far.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with it. It was pretty easy to put together and it sounds good! :thumb:
 
My SGDOL (step-granddaughter-out-of-law, a little tough to explain that one) just finished up a WICKED axe in school. Freestyle body (the guitar). Plays some sweet, although the neck's a little wide for my ol' hands.

Got any pics? I had originally thought about putting the whole thing together from scratch. I've got a big chunk of maple I could have used for the body and neck, and have a piece of rosewood I could have made the fretboard from, but just though, heck, let's practice on a little kit first, see what makes an electric guitar tick, and then see if I want to make another one.

I do kind of have a hankering for one with a whammy bar...
 
Sha-zam! That looks like a Tele should, all sparkly and stuff. :thumb: Great job. :clap:

I've eyed the Grizzly kits, looking at the higher-end double humbucker models with the figured maple. I just can't justify the $450 or so it would cost, considering I've already got other guitars sitting around unplayed. I also think it would be a fun challenge to make one from scratch, but if I did that, I'd want to make it with a neck through the body like my BC Rich.

Long ago and faw away, I made a Strat-style body (with a non-locking whammy bar) out of ash and bolted on a neck from an Ovation Deacon. It played OK, but I had better guitars, so eventually I put the neck back on the Deacon and sold it. I still have the Strat body, stripped of parts that went into other past guitars.
 
Got any pics? I had originally thought about putting the whole thing together from scratch. I've got a big chunk of maple I could have used for the body and neck, and have a piece of rosewood I could have made the fretboard from, but just though, heck, let's practice on a little kit first, see what makes an electric guitar tick, and then see if I want to make another one.

I do kind of have a hankering for one with a whammy bar...
I do have pics, in fact... lessee if I can figure out how to get 'em included here.

4ab4d0da16985399.jpg


4ab4d0e50b4471bf.jpg


The body is purpleheart over cherry. Neck is maple with rosewood fretboard. She went all the way to the wall with it - set all her frets by hand & everything.
 
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