Heft
Junior Member
- Messages
- 152
A while ago I realized that Mustang/Jaguar necks could be modified to fit strat neck pockets!
The advantage of a jaguar or mustang neck is that they have 24" scale length which makes bends and flashy playing a bit easier. I have a Warmoth Gibson conversion neck that I use for this purpose and 12' strings feel like 10.5's, I'm hopping I can get a lot of milage out of 11's on this guitar.
The main issue with making a mustang tele is was that there wasn't really a good option for a pre-routed bridge out there and the bridge pick up is in the area the bridge should be.
After some research and discovering it was something that was possible. I decided I would order a body and a neck and install my own bridge and make my own custom guitar. You may be thinking that a strat version of a mustang has been done before. -Fender did that in the lead series. So I did it with a thinline F-Hole tele body.
Fender lead 1
The first part of this is that the bridge would sit where the bridge pick up was so I ordered the body with only neck and middle pick up, with the middle acting as the bridge PU and the neck as the neck. This gave me a classic 2 pick up telecaster style guitar.
I went with a Wilkinson Half Tele Bridge. This keeps some of the asthetics and the break angle I like of the Tele but gives me important lee way for installation when it comes to bridge placement. The tele bridge pick up is sitting in a pickup ring that looks chrome.
When the parts came I was really worried at first. It looked like the mustang neck was too tall for the Wilkinson bridge. After some measurements it looks ok. I won't know for sure until I get a few brass nuts to string it up.
Ironically in ordering a thin line body I forgot to order it with a Strat neck pocket! So I have a pick guard on order to hide my shame. For a good 24 hours I was trying to figure out what to do with a thin-line body with no bridge pickup route until I realized I could throw on a pick guard.
Here it is so far
More update to come!
The advantage of a jaguar or mustang neck is that they have 24" scale length which makes bends and flashy playing a bit easier. I have a Warmoth Gibson conversion neck that I use for this purpose and 12' strings feel like 10.5's, I'm hopping I can get a lot of milage out of 11's on this guitar.
The main issue with making a mustang tele is was that there wasn't really a good option for a pre-routed bridge out there and the bridge pick up is in the area the bridge should be.
After some research and discovering it was something that was possible. I decided I would order a body and a neck and install my own bridge and make my own custom guitar. You may be thinking that a strat version of a mustang has been done before. -Fender did that in the lead series. So I did it with a thinline F-Hole tele body.
Fender lead 1
The first part of this is that the bridge would sit where the bridge pick up was so I ordered the body with only neck and middle pick up, with the middle acting as the bridge PU and the neck as the neck. This gave me a classic 2 pick up telecaster style guitar.
I went with a Wilkinson Half Tele Bridge. This keeps some of the asthetics and the break angle I like of the Tele but gives me important lee way for installation when it comes to bridge placement. The tele bridge pick up is sitting in a pickup ring that looks chrome.
When the parts came I was really worried at first. It looked like the mustang neck was too tall for the Wilkinson bridge. After some measurements it looks ok. I won't know for sure until I get a few brass nuts to string it up.
Ironically in ordering a thin line body I forgot to order it with a Strat neck pocket! So I have a pick guard on order to hide my shame. For a good 24 hours I was trying to figure out what to do with a thin-line body with no bridge pickup route until I realized I could throw on a pick guard.
Here it is so far
More update to come!
