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Building a tele. First time. Using Fender Texas special pickup. Anyone know router depth for bridge and neck pickup ?

I was about to ask the same general question, but for a pickguard-less strat.

My Unden plans say 1 inch for the pups for both Tele and Strat, 1-3/8 for the electronic cavity.

Strat and Tele style pickups are usually mounted to the pickguard and have springs for vertical adjustment. With that type of arrangement, the depth of the route isn't critical, as long as it's deep enough it's fine.
There are those that believe that mounting the pickups directly to the body is a better approach, and in that case the depth of the route is critical because it sets the distance between the top of the pickup and the strings. That's the way I usually do it, and I always measure the actual pickup to determine the depth of the route.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Tele neck- @3/4"
Tele bridge- @7/8"

Strat vintage - 5/8"
Strat Contemporary- 3/4"

( my first build, below, was a neck-thru Strat style with no pickguard and I went 3/4" with woodscrews and surgical tubing for mounting the pups and worked out great...also used foam padding to keep them level)


It hangs in my shop...inspiration... even though it's a great player.

I'm glad you guys chimed in - I was about to build a tele and would have followed these plans. I'll probably start with Sandywood's numbers since I can always make it deeper, but I'll also measure the pups when I get them.

With the Vintage style routes for the Strat the bridge cavity will have a round bottom route @ 1/4" deep x @1/4" wide that goes from the channel that connects all the pup cavities to the control cavity. It's there so there is plenty of room for all 3 pickup wires to run under the bridge pup.

If one is screwing pickups down rather than using the pickguard mount it's always good to make sure one knows where the screw is going. I didn't have that concern with mine because it's a hardtail. I haven't screwed down any pickups with a trem Strat style so I don't know if there are any issues and I'm not around a guitar at the moment.

Same issue with the spring claw screws...it's possible to drill the two mounting holes deep enough to make it into the neck pickup cavity LOL.

thanks for the help guys. Got it done. was unsure probably due to reading so much information on line it becomes counter productive.

Sa-weet! Very nice!

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