Big Tone Jones
New member
I recently bought a Fender Muddy Waters Telecaster, reputed by many to be a tone monster and a heck of a bargain. Mine, however, wouldn't stay in tune and the bass strings were, well, muddy. New strings made only a slight improvement. I could have returned it or tried installing different pickups, but I had a gut feeling that with a few tweaks it would come to life.
Step one was to loosen the neck and retighten it, making sure the neck was seated firmly in the pocket, especially on the bass side of the neck. The tone began to get a bit more definition.
Step two was to replace the standard non-compensated brass bridge saddles with compensated brass bridge saddles from Callaham. That solved the tuning problem and noticeably improved the definition of the bass strings, but now a couple of the treble strings had taken on a sitar-like tone.
Step three was to cut slots into the bridge saddles. My theory was that this would help the strings transfer energy more efficiently. If nothing else, it eliminated the sitar tone and kept the strings centered over the pole pieces--but the low E still lacked the snarl and growl I was looking for.
I was now starting to run out of low-cost tweaks. Fortunately, I remembered reading a suggestion in Dan Erlewine's book, "How to Make Your Electric Guitar Sound Great!" Per Erlewine's instructions, I removed the bridge plate and sanded it on a piece of wet-dry sandpaper placed on a perfectly flat workbench. The idea here is that because the bridge plate is stamped from a thin sheet of steel, it's not perfectly flat on the bottom and therefore doesn't couple to the guitar body as well as it could. Sanding the bottom of the plate evens out the peaks and valleys, improving coupling.
Well, to make a long story shorter, it worked! There may be more I could do (and I'm certainly open to suggestions) but my Muddy Waters Tele now twangs, growls, snarls, jangles and howls with the best of them. Does anyone else have any tweaks that had made dramatic improvements in the tone of their Teles?
Step one was to loosen the neck and retighten it, making sure the neck was seated firmly in the pocket, especially on the bass side of the neck. The tone began to get a bit more definition.
Step two was to replace the standard non-compensated brass bridge saddles with compensated brass bridge saddles from Callaham. That solved the tuning problem and noticeably improved the definition of the bass strings, but now a couple of the treble strings had taken on a sitar-like tone.
Step three was to cut slots into the bridge saddles. My theory was that this would help the strings transfer energy more efficiently. If nothing else, it eliminated the sitar tone and kept the strings centered over the pole pieces--but the low E still lacked the snarl and growl I was looking for.
I was now starting to run out of low-cost tweaks. Fortunately, I remembered reading a suggestion in Dan Erlewine's book, "How to Make Your Electric Guitar Sound Great!" Per Erlewine's instructions, I removed the bridge plate and sanded it on a piece of wet-dry sandpaper placed on a perfectly flat workbench. The idea here is that because the bridge plate is stamped from a thin sheet of steel, it's not perfectly flat on the bottom and therefore doesn't couple to the guitar body as well as it could. Sanding the bottom of the plate evens out the peaks and valleys, improving coupling.
Well, to make a long story shorter, it worked! There may be more I could do (and I'm certainly open to suggestions) but my Muddy Waters Tele now twangs, growls, snarls, jangles and howls with the best of them. Does anyone else have any tweaks that had made dramatic improvements in the tone of their Teles?
Much obliged, Jonesey. :burnout:
