hi BBrocks,
sometimes things that are wrong aren't obvious, or even visible.
by no real tone, i'll assume you mean there's no treble to speak of.
one thing that will cause that, is if the pickup(s) are loaded heavily with a low resistance.
if that low resistance comes after the volume control, that would also explain why the volume drops abruptly, when the volume control is reduced from max.
Melvyn is right about the meter. they're dirt cheap ($5~10) and are the second best troubleshooting tool.
you won't even need to open the guitar up, to begin.
put your meter on resistance. 20,000 ohms scale will be just fine. plug one end of your guitar cable into your Tele. turn the volume control to max. select just one pickup.
connect the probes of your meter, one to the tip, and the other to the barrel of the loose end of your guitar cable. (doesn't matter which one is red and which one black)
normally, you would get a reading of about 6,000 ohms give or take a thousand or so. but i'm guessing your reading will be much less. maybe hundreds of ohms or even tens of ohms.
if this is true, we need to determine where the problem is.
disconnect the cable from the guitar and measure between the tip and barrel again. it should read infinite. (depending on the meter, this might be indicated by a 1 in the left-most digit, with the other digits blank. or maybe the display will read OL. anyway, it's the same as when you don't have the probes touching anything.)
if your cable shows less than infinite resistance between the tip and barrel, get another cable. if it was O.K., lets move on.
you may have the connection from the wiper of the volume control to the output jack, partially grounded. if you have carbon paint shielding the control cavity or the jack cavity, the connections might be touching the paint.
or the wires (or shielded cable?) connecting the jack to the volume control, may have the insulation melted from too much heat, when soldering.
let us know what you find.
Here's what I have done this evening: I got the multimeter, a $20 purchase from Radio Shack, it's digital, easy to read the display. Had the switch set on the bridge pickup. Took a .25 inch guitar jack and used the probes of the meter on the ground and live pin of the jack. When the vol. control was closed got a 0.00 reading on the 20ohm part of the meter. I gradually turned the volume up and got about a third of the way on it's sweep and had a 19.51 reading. As I went on the reading went to 0.L until I got the the last third of the sweep and then it read 18.1 and continued to decrease to 7.13 at the top end where it stabilized. I tried the tone control but the reading did not change.
I also want to add both pots are audio pots and I used cloth shielded wiring.
BTW thanks to all for your help and patience.