New neck for my Mexican Telecaster coming soon.

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

You can always get a lower action than the factory settings, especially the nut slots. You may not want to ho too low if you play slide guitar, bit if not, getting those nut slots really low does help the playability and keeps the first few frets more in tune as you don’t have to press down so hard to fret the strings, so the tension increase is minimal.

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I usually go by Fender factory specs when doing setups on my Fender guitars, the first-fret action is 0.020 inch, and I normally set the 17th fret action for all the strings to 4/64ths, or 2/32s, or 1/16th inch, that's a low enough action for me, neck relief at the 8th fret is usually 0.010 to give a slight forward bow to the neck, and then I use a 9.5 inch radius gauge to set all the strings right.

Using imperial units of measurement is a habit I got into while working in my dad's workshop as an apprentice fitter and machinist.

I don't like using fractions of an inch (apart from 1/2" and 1/4") as I can't mentally picture the size. I find it much easier to mentally picture say 2mm or 3.3mm. I can of course measure fractions of an inch, but when using digital calipers, it's hard work converting back say 0.634"to an appropriate fraction value.

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

I don't like using fractions of an inch (apart from 1/2" and 1/4") as I can't mentally picture the size. I find it much easier to mentally picture say 2mm or 3.3mm. I can of course measure fractions of an inch, but when using digital calipers, it's hard work converting back say 0.634"to an appropriate fraction value.

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I just remembered that I've got a spare Butterscotch Telecaster body I bought online from Allen Eden Guitars, so one of next year's guitar build projects is going to be a Butterscotch Telecaster with a maple neck, black scratchplate, Tonerider Hot Classics pickups, Gotoh chrome modern style bridge, and etc, guitar, kind of a modern take on an old 50's classic.

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

I don't know if you can get Rustins paints easily in Australia, but I use their G Shield screening paint for a lot of my cavities these days. It works very well and it's a lot cheaper than anything else, especially the small pots of stuff that a lot of guitar shops sell. It's £8 here for 125ml. https://www.northwestguitars.co.uk/g...g-paint-125ml/

Unless you are buying other stuff from StewMac, I'd have a look round to see if you can get anything more local to you.

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I just checked the Stewmac website and got a bit of a shock, they are charging over $70.00 for a half-pint can of conductive shielding paint, so, it looks like I'm going to have to resort to buying a few rolls of adhesive copper snail-tape for shielding the wiring and pickups in my Mexican telecaster cause the snail tape works out cheaper and I won't have to wait a few weeks for it to arrive in the post.

You can make your own using white glue/ wood glue, vinegar and graphite. Of course the graphite isnt cheap or you can get some cheap carpenters pencils and grind up the lead. Google the recipe for exact amounts.

I personally use Aluminium foil as you get 10 metres for around the $5 mark and just use what ever glue you have. No need to worry about if the glue is conductive as you can just use a single piece and if you over lap doesnt cause a problem. Most pickguards use the same on the underside.

Have also bought some copper foil that was used for shielding from Amazon but Aluminium foil is way cheaper and easier to use.

Bummer Bunnings (in my area anyways) don't stock the snail tape anymore.

For the shielding to be effective it needs to all be connected to ground. It certainly needs to overlap. If you don’t use conductive glue then you are relying on some mechanical contact occurring between the foil pieces. But why rely on luck?

Shielding/slug tape with conductive adhesive is easy enough to get hold of in DIY stores and on Amazon/eBay. A 30m roll of 32mm wide tape should cost no more than AUD $20, probably less, and do many guitars. Double-check the width as you don’t want it too narrow. It needs to overlap and if too narrow you use a lot just getting an overlap on each application. You can cut it down to size if you need the occasional thin strip.

But if you want shielding paint (it is easier to apply in some instances than tape or foil), so just search for it. There’s nothing special about it for use on guitars, it’s pretty generic stuff. And you certainly don’t need a half pint or 250ml tin unless you are doing around 20+ guitars. My 125ml tin of Rustins G Shield has already done four guitars and is about 1/4 down on full. Too big a tin and you’ll end up wasting most of it.

But you do need to ground it. I sometimes use thin connecting wires held in place by copper tape, and sometimes by small screws and washers.

Earlier today one of the strings broke on my Mexican Telecaster guitar, the G-string, so seeing as I was going to have to take all the strings off it at some point anyway, I pulled all the strings off it and got out my new notched straight edge I had recently bought as well as the new fret-rocker that came with it, I used the notched straight edge to check the neck straightness and sure enough the neck does have a twist in it which is towards the low E-string side of the neck, I tweaked the truss rod to get the neck as straight as I could make it and it has a slight forward bow on the high E-string side, just out of curiosity I used the fret-rocker to check for high frets and there were quite a few of them, no wonder I had fret buzz issues in lots of places on the neck, I'm replacing the neck anyway due to it being twisted.

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Originally Posted by Bakersdozen

Bummer Bunnings (in my area anyways) don't stock the snail tape anymore.

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That's a bit of a pity, I've used it for shielding before, it's practically the same as the adhesive copper shielding you can buy online from the Pitbull Guitars shop, I think from memory a roll of snail tape from Bunnings was something like Au$6.00 or so, it's about 30mm in width.


I just checked the Bunnings Darwin website and this is what they have in stock with regards to Copper Snail Tape:

https://www.bunnings.com.au/on-guard...-trap_p3010314


Turns out I was wrong about the price, but that's the adhesive copper tape I tried using for guitar shielding purposes, and apparently, they still have it in stock.

Lots of choice on Amazon. 4m of tape for $10.50 in Bunnings isn't great value.

https://www.amazon.com.au/s?crid=2BM...pe%2Caps%2C252