Two Teles, Part 6
So the neck needs its actual nut, which I will make from a Stew-Mac vintage bone blank. I get ridiculously careful here, laying out the slot locations (Stew-Mac again, their string spacing ruler) because I’m real picky about how this part of a setup feels, so it’s got to be right. I leave the nut a bit long until late in the process so that I can nudge the strings to one side or the other. Fear of commitment? Hmmm…
I get the nut slots to just the right depth and string the guitar up for the first time. Sounds crisp and lively acoustically, both good signs. But here I hit my first real snag in the whole process. I can’t get the bridge saddles to the correct height, without driving the screws so far into the saddles that they are about to fall out. WHAT THE HELL?? I used one of these bridges before, on a hardtail Strat partscaster that I wanted to use a Tele bridge pickup in. No problems then, why now?
I pull out that guitar and find that Barden has made two changes in this bridge. First, they went to a standard size Tele bridge screw with a hex top. The old screws were a smaller size, and slotted. The second change is that the new screws are WAY too short! Can’t imagine they didn’t notice! I pull out my trusty ’68 maple-neck for comparison, and nope, I’m not imagining it: these screws are WRONG.
Off to raid the parts supply at West Chester Music (they love when I do that, really) and I find a bag of Allparts Tele screws, standard length. I get them home, run them into the saddles, problem solved. Now to send a nasty note to Barden…
For good measure I removed the neck and sanded the flat of the heel a bit. I decided to bring it down slightly because the saddles were setting up a touch high, and I really hate shimming the neck. Worked great! And in retrospect I’m glad the saddle screws needed replacement because the new ones are black. That, with the pickguard, really ties the whole guitar together…