Squier Telecaster Project

[Mike S]

So after my disappointment with Fender's Custom Shop and the availability of offset Jazzmasters, I'm increasingly thinking about getting something like a lefty Squier Classic Vibe Tele and converting it into a Tele Custom. I know this will require some routing, changes in pots and possible a new pickguard. I would want to put a Klein Broadcaster single coil (as a kid, my friend's dad had a black guard and it sounded amazing) in the bridge position and a Novak Wide Range humbucker in the neck.
I'm wondering what the best way would be to accommodate both pickups without compromising the sound. I see three options and am wondering which would be the best.
1. Keeping the original knobs and plate and replacing the master volume with a 500K pot and the master tone with a 1meg pot. I'm a afraid this will mess up the tone of the single coil.
2. Order a Tele Custom pickguard and install individual pots for each pickup. I'm not a big fan of doing this and I don't want the pickup selector on the upper bough.
3. Keep the stock 250k parts and install a Jazzmaster-style rhythm circuit for the WRHB on the upper bough with a 500k volume pot and a 1 meg tone pot. This seems interesting, but I'm not sure how it would turn out.

Thoughts?

[jesterpunk68]

Why not get a vintage modified telecaster customer instead of the classic vibe telecaster? That sounds like what you want anyway and you would only need to change the pickups instead of routing the guitar and finding a new pickguard.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/TeleVMC3TS

[Mike S]

Why not get a vintage modified telecaster customer instead of the classic vibe telecaster? That sounds like what you want anyway and you would only need to change the pickups instead of routing the guitar and finding a new pickguard.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/TeleVMC3TS

It's not available left-handed.

[frelonvert]

Telecaster are very popular and there is a lot of used or new parts available on the net, on craiglist or on this forum.
My advice will be to search for a nice left hand body and an allparts neck.
Put some quality used hardware (cheap gotho/wilkinson etc...) and the pickups you want.
And you will have a tremendous guitar.
Telecaster are easy to build and to set up too.

[Mike S]

The project is finally on, currently in the shop for routing and cutting. I've got a lefty Classic Vibe. The Novak Wide Range is going in the neck and is going to have its own 1 meg linear mini pots, separate from 250k mini pots for the bridge pickup. They're all going to be in a row on the bridge plate.
So far, it seems like the bridge pickup has some of the classic microphonic issues and the Wide Range is unpotted so I may really have to watch it with the octave fuzzes or I'm going to be picking up numbers stations and half the neighbors boning.