I never heard of basswood being hard to find. It’s not like Hawaiian flamed Koa or something. I can go down to my lumber supplier here in town and he’s got cords of it…
According to my friend, all the basswood at lumberyards is kiln-dried. (Maybe that’s just around here.) He needed it air-dried.
I don’t know if that makes a difference for guitars or not.
I haven’t played in a few years. Kind of forgot about it, actually. What with Les Paul’s death, I’m reminded of how much I loved playing my LP in years past. It’s a 1978, all-original LP Custom, and I’m gonna drag it out tonight.
I know NOTHING about preparing woods for use in building things, but to my knowledge, getting wood properly dried for use in a guitar is a big deal. I believe that old growth, air-dried tonewoods are harder to come by and more expensive. Whether that type of wood by definition = superior tone is one of the great online guitar geek debates. But I am open to believing that good, long, stable air drying can increase the likelihood that a certain piece of wood will translate to a good-sounding guitar (all other tone-influencing factors handled well, too, of course).
Basswood gets a lot of play as a guitar wood. Parker Flys and a few other guitars made it popular, and ex-Fender Custom Shop Master Builder, now highly-respected Guitar Builder on his own John Suhr states that a basswood body with a maple cap (kinda like a Les Paul Standard’s construction but with basswood, not mahogany underneath the maple) is one of his favorite bodies to build around…
Hmmm - okay; we’ll compare notes once I have lived with my hopefully-soon-to-be-finished Tele Special for a while…there’s a guy on the Gear Page who made his own FB in, like, sea-foam green with 3 P-90’s - it made me realize it was do-able in some form or fashion at least…
I noticed the separate neck but didn’t register if it had a dove-tail joint or was a bolt-on. Yeah, that will be different tonally - bolt-on joints = brighter tone to my ears vs. a set-neck, which emphasizes mids and warmth…
Small Clanger - your project sounds like it was ambitious as hell; I’d love to see the pictures… and your list looks interesting. If I had time today, I would ask a bunch of questions, but I have to go get ready for vacation…yay!
Wait, what? That beefsteak-colored Tele is going to actually get completed? Soon!?? Awesome. Did I miss an update thread?
Don’t think I did a specific thread as much as drop mentions along in other threads.
I picked it up yesterday - light as a feather and gorgeously beefsteaky. Un-set-up it still felt wonderful.
Loading the h/w and electronics and dropping it off to my tech - hopefully ready when I’m back. I’ll log a full report.
S
Yes, please do! I’ve been following your guitar saga with interest, and I’m anxious to know how it turned out. The tone of course, but also the aesthetics, esp. the whole color scheme you envisioned (raw meat color body like D. Truck’s SG, black headstock, all that stuff) in a Tele package. Sound samples of the guitar if possible (please please please!). Congrats on being close to the finish line on this project!!
Nice and low, actually-- but now that I look at them, the frets seem a little tall. I use heavy gauge strings, so when I fret a note there, the string doesn’t touch the fingerboard unless I press unrealistically hard. It’s like the world’s flattest lap steel. 
I’m wondering if this cheap guitar was designed for lighter strings, and is expecting more sharping from “fretting stretch” than it gets from my relatively light touch? Or is it unlikely that the folks at J3 were thinking that hard?
Or could it be that the nut and the frets are BOTH too tall?
No, as long as they’re at the right relative heights. To find out if it’s just that the nut is misplaced, put a capo on at the first fret and try some open chords there. I have a cheap and nasty guitar with just this problem* but it plays in tune with a capo on.
- I don’t remember how I ended up with such a crap guitar, I’m now thinking I really ought to fix the tuning issue (if all it takes is tweaking the nut position) because I went to the trouble of converting it to a 12 string and now I don’t play it because it’s out of tune.
You can convert a guitar from a 6 to 12 string? I’d think most guitars wouldn’t have enough space on the headstock for 12 tuners.
It’s a POS jap copy not anything precious. I cut the old headstock off leaving a sort of pointy stump, made a new head in two halfs with carefully matched shapes, bit of glue, drill some holes, done.
At the other end - it has a Les Paul style tailpiece, I cut slots for the extra strings, it looks pretty bad but works.