New neck for my Mexican Telecaster coming soon.

[DrNomis_44]

Hey Everyone,

Next week, I'm going to be buying a new neck for my 2014 Fender Mexican Telecaster as a replacement for the stock neck which has developed a twist in it, I've had a look on a website called The Stratosphere and it looks like they have quite a few new Fender Player Series 22 Fret Telecaster necks on sale for pretty reasonable prices, so after a quick browse I've elected to buy an all-maple 22 Fret Fender Player Series Telecaster neck W/Genuine Fender Tuners.

I'm also going to be ordering some new sets of Kurt Mangan 42-09-gauge strings, two new 250k A CTS Pots, three new 0.047uF Orange Drop Capacitors, and two new 3-way pickup switches from Realtone Music.

I'm basically going to be doing some restoration/maintenance work on my Mexican Telecaster, as it just so happens, I've got some spare black and white cloth-covered wire which I will use for doing all the wiring, so there's a fun restoration project I'll be working on in the next few weeks in the lead-up to this year's Christmas season, a mate of mine wants to do a recording session at his place, so hopefully I can get all the work on the guitar done in time.

Will post pics of the guitar once the work has been completed.

[Simon Barden]

I’m not sure if your Mexican Tele use push-on knobs or grub-screw ones. I’ve seen both on Mexican Teles depending on the level of thd range they come from.

If push-on, count the splines on the current pot shaft. If it’s 18 spline, then the current knobs won’t fit a 24-spline CTS pot.

If grub-screw, make sure you order solid-shaft pots.

And make sure the pots are short-shaft ones as there’s only the thin control plate to mount to, not a thicker wooden body.

[DrNomis_44]

I’m not sure if your Mexican Tele use push-on knobs or grub-screw ones. I’ve seen both on Mexican Teles depending on the level of thd range they come from.

If push-on, count the splines on the current pot shaft. If it’s 18 spline, then the current knobs won’t fit a 24-spline CTS pot.

If grub-screw, make sure you order solid-shaft pots.

And make sure the pots are short-shaft ones as there’s only the thin control plate to mount to, not a thicker wooden body.

It actually has two grub-screw type knobs, but I going to be replacing the two original 250k A solid shaft pots with two new 250k A CTS splined shaft pots that have short shafts, I have already got two chrome grub screw knobs that fit splined shafts that I can use.


I'm also thinking of swapping-out the stock scratchplate for a new one, either a white one or a white pearloid, the stock one is getting a bit bent out of shape and I've tried straightening it up before with little success.

[Simon Barden]

Is it a 5-screw or an 8-screw pickguard? The 5-screw ones do tend to twist over time, which is why Fender switched to 8-screw pickguards.

[DrNomis_44]

Is it a 5-screw or an 8-screw pickguard? The 5-screw ones do tend to twist over time, which is why Fender switched to 8-screw pickguards.

It's actually a white 8-screw 3-Ply scratchplate, the mounting-screw holes in it are getting a bit worn as well, I've decided to go with a new white pearloid 8-hole scratchplate, just to spruce it up a bit, Realtone Music have them in stock and they do fit Mexican Telecasters well without any mods.

Scratchplate screws are all stainless-steel ones, the original ones got a bit corroded.


I ended-up replacing the original bridgeplate because it had some rust and corrosion on it, and the saddles had pitting on them, I replaced it with a new chrome Gotoh bridgeplate with six modern style saddles on it, and i swear that if my ears aren't lying to me, the new Gotoh bridgeplate actually improved the overall tone of the guitar, I'm still keeping the Tonerider Hot Classics pickups because I found they work so well for me, the original pickups had a harsh treble that I didn't really like much, switching to the Toneriders definitely fixed that, I like the midrange in the tones I'm getting, the guitar seems a bit louder than usual, mainly due to the fact that the Toneriders are hotter-voiced, there's more lows and mids in the tone from what my ears tell me, I have no problems getting my Mexican Tele to cut through a live band mix.

I might see if I can order a can of conductive paint from Stewmac next week so I can use it to shield the body routs while I'm at it.

[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.

[DrNomis_44]

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.

I guess I could check on my local Bunnings website to see if they have that kind of paint in stock, they might not but it's always worth checking first anyway, I'll do a google search for any Australian suppliers of that G shield paint, last time I tried shielding the routing of my Tele's body, I used some rolls of adhesive copper snail tape I bought from Bunnings, the adhesive they use on it appears to be conductive, using copper tape to do the shielding didn't really make much difference to the background hum-levels, and I did make sure there was continuity where there was supposed to be.

As a sidenote, I swapped-out the stock neck-screws for some other ones that were slightly larger in diameter than the stock ones, but they went-in easily enough, and if my ears aren't lying to me again, I can hear a slight improvement to the guitar's tone, I never knew something as simple as swapping-out the neck screws would have an effect on the guitar's tone, or I might just be imagining it, which doesn't surprise me, my current theory is that the slightly bigger neck screws must be attaching the neck tighter to the body so that the neck has no choice but to stay-put, they're improving the coupling of the neck to the body, sounds like a crazy theory doesn't it? it works for me anyway.

[Simon Barden]

Shielding will help reduce hum with single coils, but it will rarely reduce it completely. Obviously make sure the foil is properly grounded and don't forget to ground the underside of your scratchplate. I always do the whole undersurface. I run copper tape up from the control cavity (there's normally no gap between the control plate and the scratchplate so you can't see it) and across the top of the guitar to the neck pickup cavity, with plenty of copper around the neck pickup to make contact with the scratchplate copper.

Then it's all down to how electrically noisy your playing environment is. Playing at home I rarely get any noise from my single-coil guitars unless I'm too near the amp.

[DrNomis_44]

Shielding will help reduce hum with single coils, but it will rarely reduce it completely. Obviously make sure the foil is properly grounded and don't forget to ground the underside of your scratchplate. I always do the whole undersurface. I run copper tape up from the control cavity (there's normally no gap between the control plate and the scratchplate so you can't see it) and across the top of the guitar to the neck pickup cavity, with plenty of copper around the neck pickup to make contact with the scratchplate copper.

Then it's all down to how electrically noisy your playing environment is. Playing at home I rarely get any noise from my single-coil guitars unless I'm too near the amp.

I've found that if I play my Mexican Tele through my Boss Katana amp I don't really hear much hum coming through, but you're right, single-coil pickups are notorious for picking-up any electrical noise, it's the "nature of the beast", having a good solid ground connection to the bridge helps a lot too.

Apparently the Tonerider Hot classics are wound/wired so that if you select both they act somewhat like a humbucker, I like them so much I don't really feel the need to swap them out for something else, I did see a set of EMG Tele pickups somewhere, possibly on the Stewmac website.


Only four more days, including today, till I finally get the new neck ordered online.


Buying one of these:

https://stratosphereparts.com/fender...c-shape-maple/

It's a 22 Fret neck and the stock neck is a 21 fret neck, the new neck has an overhang just after the 22nd fret, so as far as I can see he heel should fit the neck pocket, should be virtually a drop-in fit with zero mods, same radius and scale-length.

My understanding is that Fender's Player series of guitars are what used to be Fenders made in Mexico series of guitars, Fender would have used the same specs for the neck heels and neck pockets so a Player series neck should fit my Telecaster.

Since The Stratosphere usually part guitars out and sell the individual parts, I shouldn't have to go through the stressful process of cutting string slots in the nut to get the 1st-fret action right cause it has already been done at the factory when they put the neck on the body.

[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.