Guitar repair part 2

After a week and a half I got the call from Long & McQuade that my guitar was ready to be picked up again. I went the same evening, inspected the guitar and took it home.
I also got a new strap because I have only one and I had put that one on the acoustic again. Because I'm planning to play both regularly to keep up the hand strength I gained from playing acoustic for a week and a half I thought it made sense to have a strap permanently attached to both guitars.

Although the string alignment is much better now it's still not perfect. This is not due to a lack of skills of the repair man but after getting the caliper out I found that the saddles on the MIM telecasters are slightly too wide for the bridge. They should be 13/32" but they are just a fraction wider. Enough to prevent everything from sitting perfect.

In order to solve that problem I went to Stewart MacDonald on-line to order a set of new saddles which hopefully will be exactly 13/32" wide. I hope to have them in a couple of weeks. Next time I put new strings on the guitar I will also replace the saddles and that will hopefully make everything perfect.

In my research on-line I have found that it seems much easier to find parts, upgrades and retro-grades (replace parts with old-style parts) for the MIM telecasters than it is for the US made ones. The MIM telecasters have the holes for the bridge drilled the same way as the older models so it's easy to put an ash tray style bridge with 3 saddles on it if you like that old style look.

I like that look a lot too but I'm not sure there is an advantage to that as it is harder to get the intonation right with those bridges. I could see myself getting different pickups at some point but it makes little sense right now. I don't even have a good amp (read: tube amp) so that is not a priority right now. When I play on the Traynor YCV20WR during my lessons my guitar sounds quite good already so maybe a good amp would be sufficient.

And yes, I know, the real sound comes from the player, we're working on that ...