TomA

my gf lives just the other side of Bath, so Bristol isn't far away.... (and could be cheaper than buying/hiring a router to do it... )

I'm at University of Nottingham, studying Economics, inbetween doing lots of music stuff - with bands, but mainly promoting independant gigs. And working part time in one of the finest music venues in the country

Thanks so much for the help. Unfortunately just as i get everything clear in my head as to the best way to approach it, i come back to uni, so it'll have to wait to Easter until i get to sort it. Cheers again....

Do the bridge saddles have to move 3/8"? I make it 3/16" If your new scale is 3/8 shorter, that means your 12th fret to bridge distance has been shortened by a proportional 3/16", that's not so much. If you have intonated using a meter, the intonation is probably flat above the 12th anyway and needs to be tempered, which would bring the saddles forward slightly. You might find you can just get away with it. If it doesn't have through-body stringing, there may be enough room in the pickup cav. to shift the bridge a couple of mm forward as well. I wish you Stateside guys would go metric it's much easier! Very true. I think what i was trying to get at was 3/16" was the minimum needed to get it into shape, but that would leave the saddles at the very end of their screws, which presumably could make tuning and intonating everything problematic later on..... As i haven't attatched the neck yet, i have some freedom to play with (though as i said, moving the bridge isn't really an option). Structurally, if i take the 3/8" off the neck pocket, thus removing anything between the neck pocket and the neck humbucker cavity, is everything to to be happy? (apart from ending up with the end of the fingerboard nudging the pick-up?) And being from the UK, making everything metric would be so much easier..... [though i think i'd be unhappy about going into a pub and asking for 568 ml of bitter.....]

This is kind of along the right lines, so here goes: I'm rebuilding an old Tele Thinline body i picked up, and chose to use a 24.75" scale length neck from Warmoth. Now having put laid everything out, the heel isn't as far up the neck as i expected, to allow the correct scale length. Currently, the scale length stands at 25-1/8". The bridge saddles can't move the required 3/8" to negate this effect. I assume that were i to piece it together now, intonation would be, well, shocking. Have i overlooked something obvious/important, or is my only option to take 3/8" off the neck pocket, thus moving the neck further into the body?

Sorry for starting a new post, i have searched for similar topics, but to no avail. I bought a GFS single coil bridge pick up for a Tele for my first project. However, there are 2 size issues. 1) The screw holes to mount the pickup are further apart on the pickup than on the Tele brdige plate i have. The only way i can think of getting around this, is to take the metal base plate off, and drill 2 new holes in the plastic, and glue nuts to the other side, to enable height adjustment. What is the role of the metal base plate, is it vital, and will i damage the pickup by removing it? 2) The top plastic plate is too large to fit through the gap on the bridge plate, which seems odd.... Again, would i cause damage by filing this down in an attempt to get it to fit?

Just for anyone in the UK (who's struggled to make sense of the majority of brand names mentioned on this site so far), pop along to Halfords, where they have nitro dupli-colour (as well as a large range of cheaper acrylic cans). At a tenner a can, its not cheap, but they'll mix up any colour you could ever want (i plumped for a very nice metallic Lotus' Laser Blue). And the chap that served me also finished guitars, which was a pleasant surprise. He did advise that i wouldn't need a primer however, which seems contrary to just about everything i've read here.....

I have an old style Tele bridge, which would allow the string to be mounted on it, without the need for through body stringing. I'd originally planned to have through body stringing. Without a drill press, only an electric hand drill, i'm slightly worried about either not aligning the holes correctly, or damaging whats otherwise a nice piece of wood. So, is it worth the risk? And whats the 'best' way to go about it? Is there an optimal positioning of the holes in relation to the bridge, a 'best' angle?

Yeah, that was going to be my next plan of action, hopefully over the weekend sometime. Do they have compatible primer/solid colour/clears, at reasonable prices?

I'm in the UK, so have struggled to find the majority of the products that have been mentioned. Having spent a good hour or so in B&Q trying to work out what were in the Plasti-Kote spray cans, and having asked, i took a chance and bought a can of Plasti-Kote Primer Super, Gloss Super and Polyurethane Varnish. Having scoured their website for further details, i realise that the varnish can't be used on painted surfaces. Has anyone used these products, with any success? And can anyone in the UK recommend anywhere to purchase any alternatives?

Thank you I'll give it a go and see what happens....

the picture of the bridge has re-aligned it self, but if you imagine the upper row of '0's being the holes for the screws, evenly spaced, and the lower row of 'o's being the holes for the strings it should be clear....

I have an old Tele bridge, of a sort that i've failed to find anywhere on the internet to show you a picture of. Its a slightly larger, curvier version than the 'normal'. At the end of the bridge, where the screws for the saddles are connected, it looks like the following: (looking end on) /------------------------\ 0 0 0 o o o o o o ___________________ base of bridge/guitar body I purchased some saddles from StewMac, the Wilkinson compensated saddles: http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bridges,_tailp...es.html#details The problem i have is that with the bridge i currently have, the saddles will be ridiculously high, leading to what would be a stupid string height. The adjustable 'feet' on the saddles could be adjusted, so that the saddle hovers above the bridge. With stringing, the tension in the strings would presumably push the saddle down, onto the bridge, lowering the action to some extent. But wouldn't the odd angle of the screw to allow this then result in a poor connection to the bridge, and hence the body, resulting in poor tone etc, as well as tuning instability as the saddle moved. If i buy another bridge, i'll have to fill the already drilled screw holes in the body, as a new bridge would be a different shape. Whats the best course of action? Attempting to 'sink' the bridge into the body? Drilling new screw holes into the bridge (which may then be too low....)? Any suggestions/advice/help would be most gratefully received.

I'm looking to do a similar thing, with a single coil in the bridge position, and a humbucker in the neck, which i'd like to be coil tappable. I'm also considering using a Black Ice overdrive unit, which would run off the tone control, making it effectively an overdrive control. Ideally, then i'd have a volume, a tone, and an overdrive control. Is this feasible/possible at all? I'm new to this, and have little, if any, knowledge of electronics. Is there likely to be a large volume difference between the 2 pickups when both are selected, and is it possible to get around this? Also, a coil tap splits the humbucker into a single coil, yes? How is this usually controlled? A switch, or a push/pull pot? Is there a site with clear wiring diargrams for this sort of thing? (Both with the extra overdrive control/black ice unit, and just the humb/single coil wiring, as i'm looking to add the black ice with new pickups later on when money allows....) I'd also appreciate it if someone could explain the principal of grounding to me.... the need for it, and how its actually done.... Many thanks