Tele/esquire build in planning, it's going to be colorful

[Flurko]

I've had quite a few guitars over the last several years, but I've never owned a tele.
I came across this on ebay recently, and I really dig the color. hoping it looks as good in person, I wonder how the color flipping works with the different lights etc.





I also have this strat copy I never play, mostly because I'm frustrated with the trem that doesn't really work as expected, the pickups are not great and I also don't love the color.



(Pic before I did any work on this guitar, but the neck hasn't changed)

The neck is quite good, chunkier than what I like on Fender styles but there's nothing wrong with it. It has Kluson knockoffs that are not great but work ok, especially for a hardtail.

You guessed it, I'm planning to put this neck on that body.

I think except for the body I will need to buy only a pickguard and a control plate, are there caveats I need to worry about ? I'm notably planning to use the jack plate from the strat, it has a basic curved sidejack plate, I could buy something tele-specific but these kind of sockets seem to be unpleasant to use, so why bother. I also probably have what I need for the pots and switch somewhere.

I have had a GFS tele bridge pickups in my parts bin for quite a few years, I wanted to use it in my jazzmaster but it was way too quiet compared to my neck pickup. This might actually good on this as I'd like to try if a stealth neck pickup works, the internet's opinion seems mixed on this but it doesn't hurt to try.

I'm going to wait for the body to arrive before ordering a pickguard, the better choice would be something parchment/cream to match the binding.

I'm very aware that white plastics and a bound body pair better with a rosewood board, but I'm working with what I have here. We'll see!

[Chippertheripper]

I don’t think the roundness of the strat neck heel fits a tele body.
You might have to make some sawdust.
As far as the pg and plate, you may run into some us vs import misalignments if you mix and match, so whichever you choose, try and be consistent.

Otherwise, have fun. It’s a blank canvas with which you get to mess around to your hearts delight.

[Flurko]

I don’t think the roundness of the strat neck heel fits a tele body.
You might have to make some sawdust.
As far as the pg and plate, you may run into some us vs import misalignments if you mix and match, so whichever you choose, try and be consistent.

Otherwise, have fun. It’s a blank canvas with which you get to mess around to your hearts delight.

Given the price point I'm working at, I'm guessing everything will be import sized. I thought strat necks worked on tele bodies, but they might be gaps on the corners ? This isn't something I'm too worried about, as long as the screws are tightened and the joint doesn't move under tension I don't really believe air gaps will cause any tone to escape.

[bodhi]

Strat necks and tele necks have the same length in the neck pocket, it's just the corners that are more rounded on the strats. So no need to actually plug that from a functional perspective, and it's probably easier to just order or make a new pickguard with a strat cutout for the tele.

I was also looking at some bodies with that kind of finish earlier in the year, would be cool to have proper pictures taken

I've never gotten along with the 6-screw strat trems, but two-post ones are ok if you get good variants and take care of the setup. Different feel to the typical offset, of course.

[Chippertheripper]

All my life I’ve lived with the lie that a tele neck fits on a strat, but a strat neck doesn’t fit on a tele?? All lies?!?!

[bodhi]

It's the other way around. Telecasters have the more square shape in the neck pocket, so telecaster necks don't fit the other body shapes, whereas all the other necks will fit on a telecaster. Of course you should consider scale length, and then there's some variation in neck pocket width between manufacturers etc, but that's the general idea. And then there's the exception of the Coronado neck, that has 22 frets on a 25.5" scale length without overhang (ie. any other 25.5" Fender neck with 22 frets has a bit of the fretboard extended but the neck itself is the same size as the 21-fret versions).

[marqueemoon]

Please take some pictures and measurements of the body.

I’m super curious about weight, neck pocket, etc…

[AcrylicSuperman]

Assuming the neck fits in the pocket, a strat neck should intonate fine on a tele body. It's the opposite combo that doesn't work well.

I don't know what you have in mind for a pickguard. This option would be pretty cool, but expensive. They can cut you a tele pickguard with a strat heel curve. But they also offer an iredescent pickguard. It is transparent. Having shimmering colors on the body is cool. Having shimmering colors on the pickguard is cool. Having shimmering colors on your pickguard that are also influenced by the shimmering colors of the body would be killer!

https://dragonfireguitars.com/shop-now/ ... -pickguard

[Flurko]

Assuming the neck fits in the pocket, a strat neck should intonate fine on a tele body. It's the opposite combo that doesn't work well.

I don't know what you have in mind for a pickguard. This option would be pretty cool, but expensive. They can cut you a tele pickguard with a strat heel curve. But they also offer an iredescent pickguard. It is transparent. Having shimmering colors on the body is cool. Having shimmering colors on the pickguard is cool. Having shimmering colors on your pickguard that are also influenced by the shimmering colors of the body would be killer!

https://dragonfireguitars.com/shop-now/ ... -pickguard

That looks great ! I think I'm gonna get a cheap ebay pickguard of some sort once the body is here and I can assert the color of the binding and find something that sort of matches.
I've ordered the body today, and I'm gonna get a bridge from someone locally tomorrow.

[Flurko]

This already counts as a telecaster:



I have brass saddles somewhere, I've seen people mixing and matching materials*, I'm not sure I'm the kind of player who hears this kind of change but it looks cool.

*Like Andy Pitcher's tele, which has nothing in common with my build except the basic telecasterness, but is a huge vibe inspiration.

[AcrylicSuperman]

I can hear a bit of a difference between the brass and steel saddles personally, but it's not such a huge sonic shift that I absolutely need one or the other. But you can tame or enhance frequencies a little with a tele saddle. I'm a sucker for steel saddles though. I know everyone usually likes brass for that classic look, but, some broadcasters had steel saddles too. My preference for steel probably comes from my first tele experience, a '73 tele, which has grooved steel saddles.

[Flurko]

The body has arrived! I couldn't open the parcel until pretty late so no good photos for today, but the fit and finish seems really good, they included ferrules in a little baggy which was a nice surprise as they weren't mentionned in the listing.
I could shoot a very short video just to give an idea of the color :

https://youtube.com/shorts/Sl_3hQNws_I

Some photos with the bad light if you don't want to watch the video :






Now I can't decide what I'll do re- the pickguard, but first I'll mount the neck, bridge and pickup straight to jack to see what it feels like before buying anything else.

[marqueemoon]

Sweet! How’s the weight?

[alexpigment]

Now I can't decide what I'll do re- the pickguard, but first I'll mount the neck, bridge and pickup straight to jack to see what it feels like before buying anything else.

Although the finish color doesn't directly point to any obvious pickguard colors, I always feel that a guitar with any amount of green in the paint benefits from a mint green pickguard. You could try other colors, but I would start there.

[bodhi]

Cool, thanks for the pics!

I think most non-tort pickguard colors could work with that, if you're going some shade of white then the question is probably mostly if you want to try to match the binding or not. Not sure if that's a thing, but the one tele with binding I have doesn't match, and it occasionally comes to mind that it could. But installing other parts and then deciding is a good take, and you could also go completely without, since the top doesn't have that route for wiring between the pickup routes.