Carbohydrates Posted October 2, 2021 Posted October 2, 2021 (edited) 13 Nov 2021 Update: I built a Gibson Les Paul Junior to go with the Telecaster! Full post for this one a little farther down. Original post follows: 21329: Fender Stratocaster was released yesterday and, you know, it's cool and all, but Strats just aren't my thing. Honestly, I'm much more of a Telecaster kind of guy. Of course, my first thought was to attempt this as a B-model or alternate build, but there's just nothing that could possibly represent the "ashtray" bridge and control plate that comes on the stock guitar. So, freed of the shackles of parts limitations, I had some fun with it! Fitting the control plate and jack meant I couldn't use the same nestled curved slope and arch combo that I could on the other side. I'm pretty sure this is just about the tightest, least gappy fit I could achieve here for a relatively seamless body. The selector is a box wrench between 4 sideways rail plates. I had to compress the string assembly quite a bit to fit it here. On the Strat, the pickguard covers the assembly up top and a back plate covers it from behind, leaving 5 plates' worth of vertical height to fit the string/guide assembly into. The Tele has a smaller pickguard and no back plate, so I only had 3 plates' worth of height to fit the same basic thing. This required the most iteration and revision, but we got there! The headstock, of course, is far narrower and more curvy than the 70's profile Strat headstock LEGO modeled the official set on. A fun comparison to my own Telecaster! Hope you enjoy! Edited November 13, 2021 by Carbohydrates Added the Gibson LP Junior Quote
scottypavarotti Posted October 4, 2021 Posted October 4, 2021 Brilliant. This was the first thing that I thought of when I saw the Strat. I'm also very strongly a Tele guy. This is making me re-think whether to not pick up that Strat. Really nice job! Quote
Henning M. Posted October 5, 2021 Posted October 5, 2021 Oh I have get building. I am more into the Les Paul. (mine is an older Epiphone) Maybe someday we can join up for some talk and jamming All the best Quote
Carbohydrates Posted October 7, 2021 Author Posted October 7, 2021 (edited) On 10/4/2021 at 10:26 AM, scottypavarotti said: Brilliant. This was the first thing that I thought of when I saw the Strat. I'm also very strongly a Tele guy. This is making me re-think whether to not pick up that Strat. Really nice job! Right? Building a Tele was absolutely priority #1! On 10/4/2021 at 2:04 PM, _TLG_ said: Cool transformation! Thanks so much! Very kind coming from you. I love your work. On 10/5/2021 at 1:55 AM, Henning M. said: Oh I have get building. I am more into the Les Paul. (mine is an older Epiphone) Maybe someday we can join up for some talk and jamming All the best Hey, my #1 is a Les Paul! I think the carved top, edge binding, and differing colors on the top and back are gonna make that not quite feasible for now, though. Luckily, a Les Paul Junior is entirely possible... (a not-so-subtle hint of what my next guitar model will be). 12 hours ago, caiman0637 said: Very nice model! Love it! Thanks, that means a lot! Edited October 7, 2021 by Carbohydrates Quote
Carbohydrates Posted November 13, 2021 Author Posted November 13, 2021 I made another guitar to go with my Telecaster build! I wanted another guitar that features a rosewood fretboard with dot inlays and no binding and a slab-style body, so the Gibson Les Paul Junior was an easy choice. My first prototype was red, but I decided to go with bright light yellow in the end to represent the classic "TV Yellow" color, essentially a limed mahogany finish, that is the most iconic look for this guitar. This added some complication, as there are far fewer brackets and SNOT elements in this color than there are in red. The next issue was the 3 x 3 headstock. I'll try to explain the problem as simply as I can for the non-guitar-playing crowd: The Fender Strat and Tele feature a headstock with a straight string pull, meaning the strings are already aligned correctly over the nut by the placement of the tuning machines. On the official Stratocaster set, the slotted nut (which is used to align the strings) is represented by a print on a 2 x 6 tile, so it is not a physical object. This is totally fine and not a problem, because of the headstock's straight string pull arrangement. The strings are aligned just fine even without the use of a nut. On a Gibson head, you do not have a straight string pull because the tuners do not align with the nut slots. A slotted nut is actually NEEDED to align the strings correctly over the fretboard. I used a pair of 1 x 1 tile clips to sort of fashion my own string guides, which do an imperfect but pretty good job of lining everything up correctly. Here are some more pictures, including one with my real LP Junior. You can see that bright light yellow is an extremely inconsistent color, as several shades of it are visible all over the guitar, giving it a somewhat mottled appearance. There's nothing I can do about that! I don't mind it in this context because the guitar finish it's replicating is a semi-transparent one, so color and texture variation happens in reality, too. Quote
Araport Posted November 23, 2021 Posted November 23, 2021 Wow I love this. I’m def more of a tele guy than Strat. Do you have any instructions? Quote
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