Thoughts and questions about a short scale Tele neck

Too picky?

Hell no

Those specs sound great to me.

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I know for sure that warmoth sells short scale, not sure about the radius.

 

Conversion neck. Warmoth & Musikraft make them.

 

I have three Warmoth conversion necks, all the same standard slim profile. They have a v-shape but not sure they can/will accommodate your custom radius.

I love them, can’t play anything else! I made a conversion neck for my Brotherhood Build based on one of the Warmoth ones. Same length and width but much fatter profile. If you are into making necks I can post a pdf of my neck drawing.

 

I've taken a real liking to short-scale guitars and found a used Modern Player Short Scale Tele on Reverb that I picked up. It's the first Tele I've had that has a humbucker (which I sort of consider sacrilege). The scale is shorter than you spec: it's 24" (you can read all the specs here).

My understanding is that there were only a limited number made, and they were built in China in 2014. (A review here). The build quality is quite good, despite the review's comments. The neck in particular has a high-gloss, smooth action to it, and I like playing it. I have had some issues with the high e string "slipping" off the neck, but that may be partly the way I've been playing and bending.

Anyway, they are a rarity, given their limited number. I've been considering a Sterling Music Man Cutlass, which is a short-scale Strat body, but as I posted elsewhere, I have to make room before I add any more gear to my "man house." My man cave has spilled out into the living room and is threatening to take over!

(The short scale compared to a "regular" size Tele):

 

https://www.warmoth.com/Guitar/Necks/ConversionNecks.aspx

Warmoth has a few in stock in various configurations but you can specify anything you want.

 

The other guitar player in my band has an Anderson short scale T and he just had them build a short scale Strat. He has smaller hands and he loves the feel.

 

Both of my Tele-style guitars have Warmoth conversion (24 3/4" scale) necks. Mine are "Fatback", 'cause I love a fat neck. I believe they only come in Warmoth's compound radius (10"-18") but I could be wrong. All I know is they feel GREAT to me.

 

Warmoth or USA Customs will make any spec you want..i did it on a strat. Love a short scale but it did change the sound...you may lose the tele spank with a short neck. Mine was around 450 10 yrs ago...more now i guess. You can do it but it will change your sound.

 

Since when is Gibson scale, short scale?

 

L-5 and Super 400 are 25.5 scale length, right? All Gibsons aren't the same scale.

 

Well no, the majority are 24 5/8, one their so called 24.75. Most Les Paul's, my L6, a host of others. My grandpa's Byrdland was 23.5 so no, not the same at all

 

Gibson also made some long-scale Les Pauls, with a L-5 length neck.

 

I really like your specs, Tex .

I can also understand the difficulty you're having in finding "your neck".

I gave up on finding "my neck" from the usual sources, especially with the vintage compound radius.

I call it a "vintage compound radius", because a few of the Teles that came out of the old Fender factory had just that radius. Nacho's book documents this.

I've seen the skills you have on a few of your builds, so you'll probably end up doing the same thing I did, roll your own. That's the way to get everything you want in a neck .

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I tried doing that too .

Building a good neck to a specific set of specs is a fair amount of very detailed work.

I was able to get some pretty nice necks, but nothing that covered all of my bases.

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AMEN!

 

Warmoth are the ones I've had. Not sure about 7.25/9.5 though. Mine were the Warmoth compound I think... Have you tried MusiKraft? Both makers have the options on their "build a neck" form. Just try that and see what they have.

 

Also worth a phone call to Warmoth. I have a magazine article with an interview with Ken Warmoth and he talks about working with customers to meet their requirements and specifications. The article does show a picture of the pendulum belts sander that they use to radius fretboards and what I recall from the discussion is that they can set it to almost any reasonable radius at each end of the board and it does the compounding as it sands.

One of my friends ordered a custom neck from Warmoth - he lives in NZ, had it shipped to me in the States, I assembled his guitar and delivered it to him. Not inexpensive but it was a great neck and had some really interesting features.