String trees on a Tele reverse headstock

[constant mesh]

I have a 72 deluxe tele copy body. I'm planning on putting on a reverse headstock tele neck and I was wondering if I need any string trees on it? I know string trees are mandated by the headstock angle, but if I won't be making the neck myself, I just wanna make sure I can pull it off too with a Warmoth, Mighty Mite or maybe even a lefty tele neck. I know Warmoth offers righty neck with reversed headstocks, but I don't know about the neccessity of string trees. I will try my best to find some staggered tuning machines for this one, but these won't cure the problem

Any info on that? Much appreciated, thanks. We are just talking here, I'm still in the planning stage, I didn't buy anything yet except for the body I have had for 10 years now.

I saw BFG playing a Big Tex tele with reverse headxstock on their Texas Live and I'm restless ever since, a rev. tele HS looks friggin' badass

[BEACHBUM]

Re: String trees on a Tele reverse headstock

Wish I could be of more help but my guess is that you won't know until you get the guitar strung to pitch. It's all about string tension at the nut. I've had Fenders with staggered tuners that could live with one tree and others right off the shelf that needed 2 trees and I had to lower them as well. My FSR BSB came new with no spacer at all and has the tree sitting flush on the headstock and even at that it took staggered tuners to get the B&E strings to sustain. Go figure. Your strings will tell you what they need. If they lack sustain or sound dead it's time to add a tree. I'm no expert but the way I do it is to use my thumb at the headstock to push down on the offending string. If it achieves sustain then it needs a tree. Start with a relatively tall spacer and sand or file the spacer until you've got the correct height.

As a side note it's easy to mistake neck adjustment or fret problems for string break angle problems. If you increase the break angle with your thumb and things still don't improve then the problem lyes elsewhere.