How To Setup A Fender Telecaster Part 3 (Cleaning And Restringing)

Transcript

We have the neck back on. Now we’re going to take off the pick guard to be able to adjust the neck pickup because it does need a little bit of adjustment.

I’m using my little finger here to keep control on that slot screw – we really are spoiled with Phillips or other manners of screw heads that can automated drivers and things like that. There’s the rare occasion thatI’ll use a blade in my drill but as a rule around fine instruments, not the best idea. One slip and you have a problem.

This looks like it’s lacquered becuase… bakelite! Cool. All right, okay, so a little housekeeping.

Cleaning the Hardware

These bridges back here can be really… fun to try to get into for housekeeping.

I use this old horse hair brush which is got 1 inch bristles on it, really really cool. Can’t beat the natural products you know. I’m just gonna dust that out. It’s fairly clean alread. Not too worried about really getting down and dirty with that ’cause it’s fine really.

As usual we are going to use paper towels for our housekeeping services here. I’m just going to wipe up some fingermarks, make it look nice. And while I’m down here I’m going to do a couple things. I’m going to check these bridge screws. I like to make sure that anything that is attaching a bridge to an instrument is battened down.

These can all use a little bit of a turn. There we go, good, any void or sloppiness that would have lived there is gone – it’s kicked out.

I’m going to give these saddles a little preliminary tweak here and while I’m doing this I will explain a little trick that I do. It’s not rocket science or anything like that – I’m just eyeballing this for a moment, okay.

These bolts back here, the customer hasn’t requested it, but what I will do once in a while after a discussion with the owner, is if they want it really finely intonated I’ll replace these screws with other screws like this particular instrument – being a ’52 reissue and all that. The owner of this instrument wants to keep it integral, wants to keep it original etc etc, so we’re going to honor that, that’s all good.

But anyway with respect to these intonation length screws, I would replace them with another screw and there is a little trick where I bend the screw about 3/8″ or so from the head and just put a little kink in the screw. What that does is, the saddle will do this (walk) as you as you turn and screw, It’ll do this and you can actually get the brass saddle to tilt a little bit and really refine your intonation.

Here’s the video mentioned:

Tele saddle hack: How to improve intonation of vintage-style Tele saddles without replacing them.

Anyway I’ll save that for a specific video at some point in the future and I’ll show you exactly how that works. it’s pretty low tech but really quite effective, there’s some tricks to it as well. It’s not, you know, necessarily as cut dried as that. The whole setup process can get a little more dicey when you have bent screws let’s say.

All righty, so next step is putting on some new strings. So we gotta set of tens here we’re going to bust out. And once again, that goes in the garbage once again. Okay, I’m just getting these ready, getting, situated get that there, get that there, get that there, okay.

Cleaning the Neck

I’m going todo a little bit of housekeeping here on the neck itself. Obviously being a finished maple neck we don’t have to do a whole lot as far as moisturizing the wood or anything like that. But what I will get is this is a piece of micro mesh. This is 4,000 very nice. That’ll polish you up okay. You can get it finer than that but 4,000 is going to be dandy.

I’m going to put a little masking tape over that pickup to protect it. That’s low-tack masking tape, painter’s tape if you would. But something specifically low-tack. I’m just going to take this right onto the finish. I’ll just buff these frets up just a little bit, get some of that tarnish eliminated. Tarnish kind of roughens up the surface of the fret and starts to hang on to dirt and junk, so we’re just getting rid of that. It’s all good. That looks just dandy. As far as the the Finish goes you’d never know you had a fine grit on there – polishes it actually.

I’m going to throw a little polish on this paper towel here and get this neck cleaned up a little bit. I have other things that will deal with maple necks in different ways depending on the condition. This is actually in really good shape, that cleaned up just dandy. And while I’m here I might as well go around the headstock and get rid of some of the fingerprints and some of the other junk there. This is still very clean so I’m not worried about spreading anything around, doing any damage very nice, very nice, very nice. This can all go in the garbage and it’s on to string time.

Installing Strings

Again, batch your processes. If you’re going to put a string in, why do one when you can do all of them in the same process. Save yourself some time. So we have that all situated, now, getting the strings up top here. I’m going to hang on to that.

Some of the preliminary adjustments I did down here were also to affect where the string crosses over on the saddle. You want to get as close as possible to your finish point without having to make a whole lot of adjustments and then, the kink in the string will wind up in a different place. As far as intonation, it looks pretty good to me as far as where the final spot is gonna be. You want to distort the string as little as possible – let’s put it that way.

Now at the top end here I would allow for… double post length I’d say? If I were to say how long that is in inches I would say two inches. (Cuts string end) And, we will pop that down in the hole. They like to twist around.

Now if you caught that, I actually wrapped that around so I don’t have to use the winder to do the whole thing. What I like to do is maybe add a little bit more length to the other strings as we go up. So, if you follow, here from the the low E, to the A ,to the D, to the G, I want to add perhaps a little bit of length to my string cut each time. Not too much, but the more string that you wind around the post the greater the pitch is going to be over the nut – especially for the D and the G. The more pressure they have on them, without this the string guide, the better. And again, being careful not to throw too much string around the post itself – the end product.

Here’s a more detailed video on how to instal strings on vintage-style slotted tuners:

How to instal strings on vintage-style slotted tuners

That’s pretty good so now we’re close to two and a half inches on the D string. And finally onto the G string. I’m going to go right up to about three inches here. That will give me a good few times around the post.

I’m a fan of about three wraps but with these things I like to see maybe a little bit more. That’s going to be closer to four which I’m okay with. Because the G string’s about, in this case seventeen thou, that’s an extra seventeen thou – which doesn’t sound like much but when you keep winding them that will add up. And that little bit of extra down pressure back here can be a fraction of a degree perhaps here, but it can be the make or break in terms of a problematic instrument and keep things under control. So we try to accommodate everybody.

Now I’m back to two and a half or so inches worth of extra string. Down the hole in the center, wrap it around couple times save some time. And you notice I go up and down the string lenght like that. That is to make sure that it is set down here and that the string isn’t wound up or bound up – so it’s seated properly.

And last string here. You’ll notice I’m holding on to the slack end of the string here. If I let that go all hell breaks loose. Who’s in control? You or the instrument? And also if you noticed, obviously, I started at the low E and worked towards the high E, or worked towards the high E and therefore each successive string is in clear territory where I’m not encumbered by interference from the strings that are already on.

Okay, so, the strings are on and we’re going to get this looking…

Reassessing the Neck

Okay, before I start making some more tweaks here, that is before I tune it up or get it up to pitch, let’s say I’m making sure that everything is in line. That is, we want to see the center line between the strings. We don’t want the neck to be over here or over there. Because the neck was off, it can be when you put it back on, it can get skewed. So I’m looking at the center line this way. I want it nice and neat. I want to see real estate on both sides of the neck. Looks good, okay. And in this case, it’s a little bit towards the treble side so I’m pull that back towards me a little bit – that’s better.

Never force it because you’ll break it – little word of caution there. You don’t want to go through that experience.

I’m going to put on modest tension, not going to bring it up to full tension. I’m just going to ballpark it – and exactly what I thought would happen. So I tend to do things conservatively. Just with that, with this little bit of preliminary stuff this is key. I have not brought the strings up to full tension and I’ve made preliminary adjustments that are in the ballpark. I’m zeroing in. I’m not going all out and perfect right from the get-go because this is exactly what happens.

I have to take the neck off again to make another adjustment and I might have to do it again so I don’t want to have a situation where the strings are stressed, they’re all kinked up and I have to pull all four bolts out and all that. We are working towards an end result in a logical fashion using our time wisely. Let’s say I’m seeing a little bit too much relief under there which means again that we have to take that neck off – I fully expected that. It would have been nice to not have to do that but I I’m not keen on the adjuster down here.

Here’s a handy video to help with removing, adjusting and reinstalling a vintage style Fender neck efficiently:

How to remove and adjust a vintage-style Fender neck

I don’t feel comfortable pulling it out lubricating it at this point because the instrument is just too new. It’s not warranted, it still works I’m comfortable with the way it works – I don’t want to induce any junk or or a premature lubricants in there that can draw in garbage and permeate the wood. That’s for down the road when things really start to get sketchy. So let’s try to keep it natural for now.

And another thing is, you’ll see some Teles with marks all across the neck pickup across the the top of it from people getting in there and trying to torque the trust rod adjuster – being lazy and not taking it apart. You know, taking the neck off is not good either, but you know it’s better than hacking up the pickup which is a visible thing.

Anyway, I’m going to take a short break again and get the neck off. We’ll expedite all this and then we’ll have at it again.

I’ll be right back.