Strats and Tele's

Stratocaster and Telecaster Fingerboard

  • Total voters
    28
I love the snap of a maple Strat neck but I appreciate the warmth of rosewood also. I'm a Strat freak since the early 90s. The first one I ever played was in the 70s and it was a late 70s hard tail. What a great guitar that was.
 
Was never a Strat fan ( love the Telecaster though) as I found them thin sounding on the bridge. The neck pickup is to die for I must say. I also found the volume knob got in the way of my ham handed picking technique.

I'm learning how to use one now and it has a maple fingerboard so I guess I'm a maple guy for now..facebook_1470143049376.jpg
 
gasket said:
"it's my '06 MIM Fender Tele '72 Deluxe replica", and I keep in on it's hanger on the fence in my backyard. The poly is so tough the changing season don't bother it a bit.
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Col Mustard said:
I also do NOT like the looks of an old maple Fender neck with the finish worn away in spots and a lot of dirt and dead
punk skin worked into the cracks in the lacquer. My Tele may escape this fate because the neck is covered in
polyurethane. I dunno. The poly shows no cracks or divots, and the guitar is ten years old.

To me that just goes to show that polyurethane is a very practical finish for guitars.
People go all giddy with enthusiasm over lacquer, and I can't argue with that because it's traditional.
Most of the guitars I own were varnished with lacquer. On some of them it's badly worn.
But my two Epiphones and my MIM Tele and MIC P-Bass all sport polyurethane finishes , and it seems hard
and nearly impervious to anything but boshing the guitar with a brick. Go figure...
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Poly is the choice of champions.
 
The strat's "thin sounding" back pickup complaint that shreddy bender mentions is very common, however there is an easy solution. Replace the middle pickups tone pot with a "no load" type pot, then wire the back pickup to the middle tone pot along with the middle pickup. This configuration gives the best of both worlds. You can have the back pickup as normal (no tone control) or with a tone control. You can also have the middle pickup as normal (with tone control) or without which I find to be a useful tone. Obviously you can also have both bridge & middle with or without a tone control too. My 2012 strat select came stock with this scheme & I like it enough that I would install it on any strat I owned. If you get the no load pot as a genuine fender item it has a detent when its turned right up (where it unloads & is out of circuit) which makes it nicer to use than other no load pots I've used. Cheers
 
I really like the maple neck w/ nitro finish on my 2006 1952 American Vintage Reissue Telecaster. It has the perfect feel and playability that covers all genres of music.

IMG181_zpsvkjo19bj.jpg



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I like 'em all but rosewood is my fave. I play such light action, I never feel the wood anyhow. My pet peeve with maple boards is that the owners tend to let them get grimy and pitted before doing any nominal maintenance. If you wipe the bbq sauce off of your hands before you play and wipe the neck down afterward, they won't like sh*t. Nothing looks worse, to me, than a ratty, dirt smudged maple fretboard.
Of course, if you pay the Custom Shop beaucoup bux for one like this:
2011CustomShopTele.jpg

well, you are entitled to your "taste?"
 
Ewwwww! That looks sooooo gross!
I watched a "rig rundown" on Mike Campbell and his Tele looked as cruddy and disgusting as that. WIPE THE DAMN FRETBOARD DOWN EVERY COUPLE OF YEARS FER CHRISSAKES!
 
now see im a little warped i guess cause i love that grimey lookin Tele Biddlin posted a pic of.looks like my Fathers music buddies 1950 Broadcaster.
 
ivan H said:
The strat's "thin sounding" back pickup complaint that shreddy bender mentions is very common, however there is an easy solution. Replace the middle pickups tone pot with a "no load" type pot, then wire the back pickup to the middle tone pot along with the middle pickup. This configuration gives the best of both worlds. You can have the back pickup as normal (no tone control) or with a tone control. You can also have the middle pickup as normal (with tone control) or without which I find to be a useful tone. Obviously you can also have both bridge & middle with or without a tone control too. My 2012 strat select came stock with this scheme & I like it enough that I would install it on any strat I owned. If you get the no load pot as a genuine fender item it has a detent when its turned right up (where it unloads & is out of circuit) which makes it nicer to use than other no load pots I've used. Cheers
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Put a Seymour Duncan SSL-5 in the bridge position. Lots of balls then!
 
DonP said:
There are no maple fingerboards. They look like maple but they are all some horrible claggy lacquer that eventually wears away in patches and looks dirty. Rosewood every time for me.
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Mine's polyurethane... a very hard and practical finish. (it's what they use in Mexico).
It feels fine on the maple fingerboard. I use my Tele for slide mostly, so I'm not digging away at the fingerboard with my nails as much. I've had my Tele for nearly eight years, and keep liking it more and more.

But I agree with you that when a lacquered maple neck gets worn, it begins to look really grubby. All that finger grease and dead punk skin packed into grooves in the wood and crevices in the deteriorating finish. Yuck.
Nothing for it then but refinishing. Or buy another neck... that was ol' Leo's original idea,
trying to offer an alternative to Gibson's glued in permanence. He thought a guitarist should
be able to order a new neck for a reasonable price from Fender and screw it on with his own
screw driver. But new necks seem pretty pricey now.
7 onstage_5x6@100.jpg
 
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shreddy bender said:
Was never a Strat fan ( love the Telecaster though) as I found them thin sounding on the bridge...
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Funny, I can tolerate a Stratocaster but not a Telecaster.

I grew up in a die-hard country-western family. Rock music was forbidden and I played bass and guitar (somewhat reluctantly) in Mom's country band. While I do dig a few old country tunes by Buck and Merle, I really dislike country music in general and any form of twangy guitar tone. I think this is due to being expected to be a country-western musician from the time I was a kid and being forbidden to practice my own style.

It's certain that the Telecaster and Stratocaster are the primary go-to's in country music. They just seem to fit that genre. Same with the Twin Reverb.

I'm stubborn I guess, but I turned down good paying full time jobs in country bands because I don't like the genre and just couldn't be "married" to a Telecaster.
 
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