Telecaster Two - 36 - Fitting The Machine Heads

Today is the hottest day of the year so far in Birmingham, England so I'm not going to get into anything too energetic.  I ordered some vintage style tuners which arrived a couple of days ago so I laid out their positions on the back of the head, drilled the six 8mm holes and inserted the machine heads in line.

I tapped in the ferrules into the front of the head then drilled pilot holes on the back of the head for mounting screws.  Each machine head shares a mounting screw with its neighbour so my measuring had to be very accurate.

I had practised the layout on a piece of scrap wood first and it was worth the effort for confidence if nothing else.

Well they look fantastic and the whole neck is looking fantastic.  I still would like to make the head unique in some way.  I don't really want to inlay the head because I haven't had the practice and I don't really want to use waterslide or vinyl decals so Luke and I pondered on creating something like a truss rod cover unique to this guitar and any future ones we create.

Difficult to see in the above picture but this is what we came up with, a smaller version of DLP swish! I will mount this just above the truss rod access hole on the head so it will still leave adjustment access.  I have asked Luke to paint the swish the same colour as the pickguard, so we will have some continuity between the neck and the body.