I had a rather nice Telecaster on the bench this week.  It had a couple of problems, firstly it was showing signs of age, rather worn frets and a reported problem with the neck pickup.

Rather worn frets, shouldn’t present too much of a problem..

With the neck off the next step is to take out the nut.  It looks like it’s been replaced at some point since it doesn’t match the radius of the fretboard (you can’t quite see it from the photograph).  The action at the first fret was also quite high but I’ll sort that out later. 

Looking closely at the top of the fretboard you can still see the excess glue where the new nut was fitted.  Firstly I cleaned out the bottom of the nut slot…

and then the face of the fretboard using a cabinet scraper.Then I ground away the bottom of the nut to better fit the slot.  With a better fit it will hopefully improve the sustain a little as well.Next the fret-dress to sort out any uneven or worn frets.  Here was the biggest problem, even with the truss-rod fully slack the neck had a back-bow.  Since I need the fretboard to be completely level before I attack the frets I need to put it on the jig to level it off.With a level neck start the grinding with the levelling beam…you can see here where the file is taking away the high points, just keep going until the beam is touching everywhere..The next problem with this neck is that the truss-rod adjustment is on the heel which makes it almost impossible to adjust it when fitted to the body.  The jig allows me to fit strings at tension and adjust the truss-rod….

Unfortunately even with the truss-rod fully slack the neck is completely flat so I won’t be able to reduce the action quite as much as I would like.

Before I can do that I need to re-shape each fret…..

and re-polish them.

also some lemon oil on the fretboard.

With the neck done now back to the body and that pickup problem.  Can’t see anything wrong so a quick polish and put it back..Clean the pots’ and switch to make sure they work fine.Now put it all back together and set it up.

The action at the 12th fret was a little high….so I dropped down the action at the bridge.Then the action at the 1st fret.  I knew that was going to be high…..so I cut the slots in the nut a little deeper…Then back to that pickup.  The only problem I can see is it’s a little low.  I brought it up a little and dropped the bridge pickup a shade.  With it plugged in I gave them another tweek and it all sounds fine now.And there we go, a new lease of life into a great little guitar…A word or two from the owner:

“Many thanks to ‘George’ for the work carried out on my Tele.

I have had the guitar since new (it is a 1973), but never had any serious maintenance work done until this!! I thought it was time for a little TLC!

I am hoping to use the guitar this weekend at a reunion gig in Chesterfield ….. I have been playing it in the studio and it feels so much better ….. I will let you know how I get on with it!!

Many thanks to ‘George’ for all the work!!”