The neck that came with the kit did not have side marker dots. Time to fix this (actually I should have done this before). I eyeballed the locations and drilled some holes, glued in some side dot material, then trimmed them off and sanded smooth. A little oil made everything nicey nice.

Time to replace the crappy plastic nut with something better. I picked up a new TUSQ nut, removed the crappy chinesium nut (it came out in pieces lol), cleaned up the nut slot in the fretboard, sanded the nut down to get the nut slots about right, and added a couple drops of super glue to hold it in place. Easy least.

Next I’ll refine the nut slots with my files and redo the intonation and action.

The Teenycaster neck needed some attention. The frets sucked (they are dull, the ends are sharp, and some are high and buzz) and the tuners suck (they are wobbly and the ratio is too low). I bought an inexpensive set of Wilkinson tuners that are really nice. They are much better quality than the tuners that come on most inexpensive guitars and they don’t cost an arm and a leg.

First it is time to fix the frets…

Now it’s time to address the tuners.

I hate Telecaster bridges.

• They have the stupid lips to attach a cover that nobody uses.
• They only have 3 saddles so you can’t get the intonation right (especially on a short scale like this)

Time to upgrade.

I bought a new replacement bridge with six saddles so it can be properly intonated. The new bridge is a “string through” bridge which should make it sound better too. Also, the new one is thicker metal so it should resonate some more.

Time to install it. The first step is marking the location where the strings will go through the body. Then I need to drill the holes through the body as straight as I can without a drill press (spoiler, they are crooked). Then some counterbores on the back side and then installed the ferrules to hold the ends of the strings. Next up is installing the bridge and voila!

I’ve been working on the Teenycaster again after a hiatus, and doing some upgrades as well. It’s a lot more fun that I initially thought. For giggles, here is a photo comparing the Teenycaster to my normal size PRS.

The Teenycaster has a ~16″ scale length compared to the 24″ scale length of the full size PRS. After my upgrades I hope to get it tuned to E standard tuning.

Today, I assembled the Teenycaster. It went together good and looks cool as hell.im having a problem with intonation unfortunately so I can’t play it right now.

I painted the body today. I wanted to make it blue using a dye, but it didn’t work out good with the mahogany body. So back to my fallback plan: cherry red lacquer left over from the Less Paul.

I also applied some tung oil finish, which I really really like. It’s easier to apply than wipe on polyurethane, and it looks better.

It’s time to put the logo on the Teenycaster headstock. I put a couple coats of tung oil on the neck and let it sit overnight.

I downloaded a font named Strato that mimics the Fender script logo and fired up Photoshop. I used the Calibri font for the TEENYCASTER part. This is what I came up with.

Print that out a billion times on waterslide paper and I’m good to go.

The end result looks great!

Today I sanded off the grain filler and applied a few cards of vinyl sealer. This is what the parts look like now.

I filled the grain on the Teenycaster neck and body today. I used the stewmac mahogany colored grain filler. I’m going to leave the neck natural color and dye the body blue. I’m going to finish the neck and body with Tung Oil.

The green filler is a powder that you mix with water and slather all over the wood.

It dries pretty quickly, and then you sand it down to remove most of it. All that’s left is little pockets inside of the grain.