Telecaster (TV Jones)

The decision to build a Telecaster with Filtertron pickups came as an inexpensive way to build a bright-sounding guitar in the theme of gold+pearl+sunburst looks. The challenges were apparent from the beginning as the body is a Tele Deluxe style, with the proper routing for a standard Tele bridge and single-coil and a larger humbucker in the bridge position, but this needed modification for the humbucker tron PU’s.

The other difficulty was introduced by the longer 22-fret neck which caused the scale length to be too long on the body side. This was addressed by mounting the bridge closer to the bridge PU cavity.

With some friezing and alteration I mounted the pickups to the body without frames. The hard tail bridge I picked on looks needed to be mounted very close to the bridge PU. Also the neck PU mount was somewhat tricky. It all fit together but the pickguard is obviously not a perfect match on either bridge PU or the control plate.

Further the neck had some uneven frets which needed handling and all the frets needed recrowning and polishing. In the end the build is quite reasonable and the guitar is enjoyable to play. Some further fretwork can be done later to be able to lower the action which is about medium-high.