What a fantastic looking guitar.  Got to love a Tele’, but a Tele with a Bigsby, even better!

That black and white finish look just great.

There’s some problems with the bridge though.  It’s sitting rather low, I’m not sure if it’s able to rock backwards and forwards properly?  The trouble is, if I raise it up, the strings are going to foul on the back edge?  I’ll have a closer look once I’ve done the nut.

I don’t think you can beat Bone for the nut.  It’s nice and dense so the sound transmits through it well giving it better sustain.  The strings slide easily through the slots so there are fewer tuning issues.

While the strings were off I gave the fretboard a bit of a clean.  It wasn’t particularly bad, but it’s a shame not to while I’ve got easy access.

The new nut was a little too long so a little work to shorten it before fitting.

A little superglue to hold it in place.

The blank doesn’t have any slots cut it in so measure the position of the outside “E” strings.

And the other 4 strings using the string spacing rule.

The nut’s very tall, but I’ll sort that out once the slots are cut to the right depth.

With the neck set and action at the bridge sorted it’s back to the 1st fret.  Way too high, I deliberately left it that way earlier though.  If I’d got it wrong and gone too low I’d have to start again.

So cut each slot with the appropriate gauge of file.

With the slots done just look a the height of that nut, like dragons teeth!

That’s looking better….

Yeh, that’s good.

The fine adjustments on the bridge worked out just about OK in the end, including the intonation.  Time will tell, once everything settles down.

One last check, the pickup heights and it’s done.

And there it is….

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