I have always liked Keith Richards' Micawber tele - a modified '52 - but I'm not a fan of vintage spec necks so I thought that modifying a regular MIM Tele Standard would be the best route to go. I could have ordered the Keef model that's in production from Fender Japan and changed the neck to a modern spec'd one but that'd been more $$$ and a shame to bastardize such a nice guitar. The '06 used here has the 9.5" radius and medium-jumbo frets that I prefer. This guitar was given to me by a friend so the choice was pretty easy.
The nice thing about the MIM Tele body is that it is made of alder and comes nicely routed in the neck area for either a full-sized humbucker or P90 - no need for any additional routing at all. I ordered a GFS '59 neck humbucker and B/W/B humbucker routed pickgaurd from Guitarfetish. I had spoken with the owner to try an ascertain if the pickguard was a perfect replacement and if the pickup cutout in the scratch plate would cover the cavity routing perfectly. I could get no such definitive confirmation so I rolled the dice and ordered. Total cost was about $60 including tax and shipping.
I received the package the very next day - I don't know how Jay does it but this is the third order from them and I always seem to get next day shipping even though I select ground. Pretty damn fast.
The donor tele had 11 gauge strings on it so I clipped them off, removed the P90 that was installed (it was being used without a pickguard) and cut the wires. I heated up the soldering iron and went to town on my installation. I restrung with D'Addario XL 10s, tweaked the truss rod a bit, and re-intonated.
So here's pretty much the look I was going after:
Keef's Micawber is a honey blonde '52. He, like I, prefers individual saddle adjustment bridges. You can see the bridge was replaced with a gold, modern style. I guess if you're going to slap a humbucker into a tele then there's really no need to concern yourself about losing that tele "twang" by changing the saddles Also, Keef uses a trim ring around the humbucker. This is because the original pickguard was hacked to accommodate the larger pickup and the ring hides the hack job. He's pickup is actually upside down too but I am not sure if that was intentional.
Anyway, here's my creation. The only thing I'd like to do is add vintage tuners to the neck, if possible. I really love and prefer them to modern tuners.