Hello, and welcome back to Mod Garage. Let’s wrap up work on the body of our Telecaster.Usually, the string grounding connection on a Telecaster is a piece of wire that’s routed under the bridge plate to the electronics compartment, where it is soldered to ground. This is the original design from Fender’s very early days, and it’s still the method used today. I like to call it the “cowboy version.” Or, for you Trekkies, this is the version James T. Kirk would have chosen if he were into guitar-circuit soldering. But there is a “gentleman version,” that Jean-Luc Picard would have taken. So, what’s bad about the original design? There are two downsides, and therefore two good reasons for not doing it this way:1. The spot where the bare wire meets the bridge will damage the paint on the body, which is not a real problem because you can’t see it anyway. But this is also the spot where the bridge plate will not be attached firmly to the body, which can cause unwanted feedback. (We discussed this in a previous column.) 2. You will have to run another wire to the electronics compartment and solder it to ground to properly ground the strings. This can be avoided, and we’ll come back to this when we talk about the wiring of our guitar.Let’s remove this wire and close the hole with a toothpick and some wood glue. This is not mandatory because you can’t see the hole with the bridge plate installed but, you know... my inner monk. Simply put some wood glue on the toothpick and push it into the hole. After some drying time, you can chop off the toothpick with a knife, a small chisel, or something similar. You can also clearly see where the bare wire damaged the paint.A tip from the shop: Standard toothpicks are usually made out of any soft wood like birch and are not a good choice for closing holes on a guitar, especially if you need to drill into them later on. Such soft toothpicks can be stabilized by using some super glue, but the much better choice is using toothpicks made from hard bamboo. They are usually a bit thicker in diameter, and much harder compared to standard toothpicks.All you need now is a small strip of self-adhesive copper foil. Cut it to size and stick it to the position where the wire used to be. I like to place it underneath one of the screw holes of the bridge plate, making a perfect connection; the foil is very thin and will not interfere in any way with the bridge plate.The routing for the neck pickup is strange: It’s very big and deep, but the measurements are a bit wonky. It can host a Telecaster neck pickup as well as a Stratocaster pickup, but it isn’t big enough for a standard or mini humbucker. Sure, it would be easy to enlarge the routing, but why someone chose such measurements is a mystery to me. Larger routes are good for reducing weight, and if you want to go to the limit, this is the perfect spot to do so. Simply route away as much wood as possible at this spot—it’s covered by the pickguard so no one will see. You can also use a Forstner drill bit to remove the wood, giving it a Swiss-cheese look. If you don’t mind roughing up the finish for a rakish, outlaw look, you can reshape the body to mimic a Stratocaster’s contours—with the familiar belly cut on the back and the armrest on the front. This will result in a very comfortable and lightweight body, but the finish will be destroyed, exposing the bare wood.When transforming the Telecaster to single-pickup Esquire specs, the routing for the neck pickup is no longer needed; we’ve talked before about how this configuration can create possible feedback problems. Acoustically, closing all unpopulated support routings with foam, Styrofoam, cotton wool, and similar fillers is a perfect method to prevent unwanted feedback without increasing the body’s weight. I decided to use some foam for this, and the process is very easy:1. Get some cardboard and cut it a little bit larger than the routing you want to close; I usually use cat food boxes for this. I made three pieces for the routing of the bridge pickup, the neck pickup, and the support channel of the neck pickup.2. Get some self-adhesive transparent foil and stick it over the routings.3. Use a black Sharpie to mark the outline of the routings.4. Peel off the foil, put it on the cardboard, and cut it to size, giving you three perfectly fitting templates.5. Use the templates to cut the foam to size and put it into the routings. There’s no need to attach the foam; the pickguard will hold it in place.For the bridge pickup routing, use a thinner piece of foam or foam rubber for cushioning the pickup as described in the column linked above.We are almost done with the body. The last step is to soften the shine of the finish to give it a little bit of a vintage appearance, without damaging the body. This is a super easy task: Simply rubbing the lacquer with some 0000 steel wool and an abrasive cloth will break its high-gloss appearance. It takes time to do this evenly, but it’s worth the time and work. It will look much better afterwards, and the outcome on this test guitar was awesome. If you ever decide that you want to go back to a high-gloss finish, this process can easily be reversed by simply polishing the body until it shines again. There’s so much paint on the body that you can play this game several times without permanently damaging the finish. Here’s a comparison of the original high-gloss and the now-matte look of the body.Now that we’ve finished work on the body, next month we’ll start to work on the hardware and electronics, with the pickguard as our first task. The good news: Our $340 budget is still untouched and left for future investments, so stay tuned.Until then... keep on modding!
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