NGD - Bargain Tele - any info?

DeeTee

I just picked up a Squier Standard Tele for the equivalent of about £50. Checking the serial shows it's a 2004 Indonesian model.


https://imgur.com/a/PgkwmeV

Good: The body and neck are in very good nick. The neck isn't too fat, and has a nice satin feel. Perfect for me, really. The tuners seem really solid and stable. Body seems to be a decent full thickness lump of agathis.

Bad: The main issue is that plugging it in, you can barely get a signal. A quick look inside the control panel suggests this is because someone has ripped the ground wire out, and then made a hash of soldering it back on, probably when swapping the control plate for that black thing. Should be a simple enough fix. The strap buttons have been removed, but not ripped out.

So the plan is to get some decent pots, a switch, new chrome control plate and a couple of chrome knobs. Will probably have a go at wiring a four way switch.

My question is, does anyone know much about these? A bit of reading suggests they have decent alnico pickups, but the pots are 500k instead of 250k. Obviously, until I lay my hands on a soldering iron, I can't listen to them myself.

munckee

I had a standard strat changing the pots to decent 250k pots made a huge difference. The pickups suited a strat because they were 60s sounding almost ice picky rather than 50s style. Whether they suit teles I don’t know. 

I put vintage tuners and saddles on from axecaster and painted surf green. Finished up a great guitar. 

DeeTee

Yeah, I'm ordering a couple of 250k pots, a chrome plate and strap buttons asap. Will see what the pickups sound like then. Does anyone have any info on the pickups in these? I tried looking around, but my google skills have failed me.

ICBM

It's very hard to be sure, but in the pic the bridge pickup looks like it has proper rod magnets not steel polepieces, and possibly a fibre bobbin. I can't remember whether that's stock for this model or not. If it does, there's at least a chance that it's reasonably good.

DeeTee

ICBM said:

It's very hard to be sure, but in the pic the bridge pickup looks like it has proper rod magnets not steel polepieces, and possibly a fibre bobbin. I can't remember whether that's stock for this model or not. If it does, there's at least a chance that it's reasonably good.

I think I see what you mean. Would I need to take it out to check properly?

ICBM

DeeTee said:

I think I see what you mean. Would I need to take it out to check properly?

Ideally, yes. If it has rod magnets, you will either see the ends of them on the bottom of the bobbin, or even better it may have a metal baseplate, tight against the bobbin. If it's one of the cheaper ceramic-magnet ones there will either be a large flat magnet - sometimes also under a baseplate, so there's a gap round the edge - or two smaller square-section ones either side of the polepieces.

DeeTee

Cool, thanks. I'll take a look when I switch out the electronics.