New (newbie).

[Trevor Davies]

That sounds about right to me. The difference between your neck and a standard scale F neck should be about 19mm. Half of that is the nut closer to the body, so the bridge would only need to be ~9.5mm closer to the neck pocket with a standard rout. A difference of 2.5mm should be well within the saddle travel of a Tele bridge.

One piece of advice that I have gained through hard experience: Don't do the final placement of the bridge until you have (a) routed the neck pocket, and (b) dry fitted the neck. You want to make sure that the strings line up properly along the neck and over the pickup. And you will want the saddle for the high E string to be 24.75" from the nut. Of the two measures I generally find getting the strings lined up over the fingerboard and pickup to be the more challenging of the two. There's usually enough adjustment to move the saddle forward or back a little, but there's no easy way to adjust the bridge laterally once you've drilled.

TD has a lot of experience with this, and I have only cut a new one once. But I have the neck pocket a hair or two off axis a couple of times. It is much easier to move the bridge a little than it is to compensate for a route that is slightly off. In turn, I try to get the neck, bridge and pickups to line up first. Then the pickguard, then the control plate to get things to line up as well as possible.

Yes as fender3x stated - I usually route and set the neck first. Then place the bridge to ensure the strings are parallel to the sides of the neck, add the pups so the pole pieces sit under the strings and then add pickguard/control plate.

[EsquireEsque]

Just done the neck socket - pretty happy with it (although it's a mm or so too deep!) also found a bit that was "splintered of" on the side of the neck socket - so gluing that back together.

Once bits won't fall off - I'll re-measure where the saddles, bridge, pickup rout and control panel rout should be.

I'm also waiting for a bit of aluminium to arrive - I'm going to make a panel a bit longer than normal and shape it - I've seen that a laminate knife can be used to cut aluminium (with repeated scores)

[fender3x]

Sounds good! 1-2 mm is pretty easy to deal with with a shim--if you need it. I learned here (Thanks, Simon!) to keep some veneer around just in case. That said, there may be enough adjustment in your saddles without a shim. This is what I love about Fender style guitars. The range of adjustment that you have available compensates for a lot my inadequacies as a carpenter

I have never shaped aluminum. Will look forward to seeing how you approach that. Will you be chroming it?

[EsquireEsque]

Sounds good! 1-2 mm is pretty easy to deal with with a shim--if you need it. I learned here (Thanks, Simon!) to keep some veneer around just in case. That said, there may be enough adjustment in your saddles without a shim. This is what I love about Fender style guitars. The range of adjustment that you have available compensates for a lot my inadequacies as a carpenter

I have never shaped aluminum. Will look forward to seeing how you approach that. Will you be chroming it?

There's also the benefit of routing rather than drilling - and shielding and perhaps chambering to reduce weight... but I didn't think of using a shim or of keeping some veneer for that purpose (I'll keep that in mind now though)

I've read that DIY chroming is possibly rather dangerous (made more probable given I don't have any background knowledge) and should only be done with pre-prepared "kits".... the cost of which is probably more than having it chromed by a firm - If I can find one that does such small jobs....... otherwise I'll try to Electroplate it with nickel. and see how that turns out... aluminium offcuts are rather cheap (the laminate knife will be many times the cost!) so I'm not worried about bad results, If need be, I'll simply drill a hole for the output jack where the slot for the switch is (I've already repositioned the volume and tone knobs).

[fender3x]

There's also the benefit of routing rather than drilling - and shielding and perhaps chambering to reduce weight... but I didn't think of using a shim or of keeping some veneer for that purpose (I'll keep that in mind now though)

I've read that DIY chroming is possibly rather dangerous (made more probable given I don't have any background knowledge) and should only be done with pre-prepared "kits".... the cost of which is probably more than having it chromed by a firm - If I can find one that does such small jobs....... otherwise I'll try to Electroplate it with nickel. and see how that turns out... aluminium offcuts are rather cheap (the laminate knife will be many times the cost!) so I'm not worried about bad results, If need be, I'll simply drill a hole for the output jack where the slot for the switch is (I've already repositioned the volume and tone knobs).

It's fairly easy to get a regular sized control plate with three holes, either drilled for three knobs, or drilled for two knobs and a 3/way Gibson-style switch.



You can also get an undrilled plate.

That said, I saved the electroplating vid...will be thinking of an application for it...

[EsquireEsque]

I understand they are easy to get in the US - but they're comparatively expensive and shipping is politely described as a "blatant rip off".
Unfortunately buying a US part turns it into a $50 to $60 part.

If from China, a control panel is $13 to $14 total cost.... unfortunately these are all two holes and a slot or plastic.... or not in chrome if they're blank.

[fender3x]

Yikes! Will watch your nickle plating experiments with interest on your build diary ;-)