TD's Scratchy Thinline

[Trevor Davies]

More work on the Solid Pine tele. I had purchased a Pitbull chrome tele hardware kit and an ebay red tortoise shell thinline pickguard for this build.

Added the neck to the body.
Added the controls and neck pup to the pickguard.
Soldered the wires for the pups, jack plug, and the switch. Tested using the tap test and all seems good.
Added the bridge, making sure the strings are spread evenly over the neck and the bridge pup, and having the correct scale length.

[McCreed]

Knot bad!

[dozymuppet]

I see what you did there.

[Trevor Davies]

Added some strings and let it sit for a week.
Today I filed the nut slots using the 3rd fret capo method, set the saddle heights for a low action, and adjusted the length of the strings. All seems to have gone well. (Not sure if I'm a big fan of the vintage style barrel saddles as far as intonation goes - maybe I should try the staggered style barrels, or stick to 6 single saddle bridges!)

[FaustoB]

Looks amazing!
I see what you mean about the bridge, I never realised that type of guitar bridge existed..

Great work though, a tele is on my wish list for sure

[McCreed]

Looks great Trevor.
The D & G string are famously problematic in regards to intonation with the 3-saddle bridges. Sometimes they're spot on, other times, not so much.

However, there is a compensated tuning work-around that sometimes referred to as the Jerry Donahue method:

Jerry Donahue On Telecaster-Style Bridge Intonation

[Simon Barden]

If you can find these https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/produc...?ie=UTF8&psc=1, I can recommend them as very good value, and very cheap indeed for titanium saddles. I only bought mine a couple of weeks a go and they were just over £15 for a set, which made them comparable to a set of the Wilkinson brass saddles. But for some unknown reason I got sent 5 sets. So at £3 a set, that was fantastic (though I need to find 4 other teles that need them now)!

I used them to replace the 6 cast saddles on a Squier' 51 bridge, that suffered from the same bad top-loading bridge design as my Squier Mini Strat had (I fixed that with a string-through bridge).



As you can see, the rear of the string lifts the back of the saddle up, so the height adjustment screws ends up only loosely touching the bridge plate (and on some strings the saddles can actually be left floating and won't adjust any lower). Causes a lot of buzzing and weak string sounds.

A quick trawl of the web showed that by simply drilling 3 new holes in the rear of the bridge, you can fit Tele barrel saddles, which then only have standard downward force on them. It worked really well, and easier than replacing the whole bridge.

The E + A saddle is the only one that isn't perfectly intonated, but not out by much (say 3 cents) and less than a barrel saddle would give. But a lot is going to be dependent on the actual string set used and the individual foibles of each string as to how consistent the string radius and mass/unit length is.

[McCreed]

Simon, don't know if it's much of an issue with barrel saddles, but those saddles on Amazon are 10.8 string spacing. Are the kit bridges 54mm or 52.5mm E to E string spacing?

I know it won't effect the actual spacing of the strings due to the saddles design, but just thinking of the space between the three saddles themselves on the bridge plate.

Maybe I'm creating a problem that doesn't exist...

[Simon Barden]

IIRC, it's USA Strats that have 54mm string spacings, whilst the others are generally 52mm, For Teles, the spacings are a little bit narrower, at 52mm or 50mm (approx.). I discovered this on the piezo bridge Tele which I'm still working (or rather, not working) on, as the piezo saddles were for a 54mm Strat spacing, requiring a custom modified Tele bridge to fit them as no Tele bridge I found had 54mm spacing.

10.8mm spacing works for 52mm, and as they aren't notched at all, they will happily work if the string spacing is 54mm. But, yes, 50mm would be too small for those saddles to fit (as would quite a few alternatives). So definitely measure the string spacing before getting any replacement saddles. The overall barrel width is important, as if too wide, they will splay out. But also if they do come with notches, they also need to be in the right place. You won't easily cut a notch that's just 0.6mm different in location to the original unless you first file the top of the saddle right down.

[Simon Barden]

D’oh! Maths brain was switched off, couldn't sleep last night. 5 x10.8 = 54mm. But the saddles are 21mm wide, so will happily fit in a 52mm spacing bridge with the ends touching. So they will fit 54mm and 52mm spaced 3-saddle bridges; though my inability to find 54mm 6-saddle bridges means the 10.8mm string spacing may be a cut and paste typo. 52mm overall = 10.4mm string spacing.