Telecaster Specification Hunting

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TINMAN82 said:

stimpsonslostson said:

Barnezy said:

Only downside to a partscaster is they are worth a fraction of what they cost to make if you ever want to sell it. 

True, but if you’re building to an idiosyncratic spec preference then I’d hope you were building a dream guitar. 
With a solid body/set neck I’d go to a custom builder (Feline probably) but a telecaster is something I’d be confident in my own abilities to put together. 

True, but it doesn’t mean the sum of those parts will match the dream. I made a premium strat based loosely on the Eric Johnson design and ended up selling it for parts.

It also assumes whatever neck you buy is equivalent to Fender CS quality. The musikraft neck I ordered wasn’t up to that level and required a luthier fret dress to prevent choking out on bends despite a 12” radius.

Even if you theoretically know what you are doing, it is worth paying a professional to put the whole thing together and finish it properly. Those final tweaks can be the difference between alright and great. I know I’ve set up my own guitars in the past and they have played and sounded fine, but then when a pro got their hands on it it came back a lot better.

Also, buying parts online, premium of otherwise can be a bit hit and miss. A guy on another forum told a story about getting his dream Strat body routed and painted by a reputable parts supplier in the US, only to discover when it arrived that it weighed a ton and sounded completely dead. As it was a custom job, no returns accepted. If you can at all, try to have someone who knows what they are doing select the bits.