I'm getting a Squier Standard Fat Tele soon, and I am hoping this will free up my current Affinity Tele to be used as a project. It's my CAR 2009 with a 2001 Affinity neck.

The plan is to remove the neck pickup, get a new pickguard made, Esquire style, replace all of the electronics (although I may keep the bridge pickup, because I really like it), and rig up the Esquire switching options.

So, a few points and questions...

The pickguard I plan on getting done by PickGuardian. Has anyone used them and has an opinion, advice to go for it or avoid them? For the colour, I was thinking of the aged pearloid, but again, I am willing to listen to creative suggestions. GuitarFetish has some good-looking Esquire guards, but with my last Affinity I tried several times to replace the pickguard and none of the ones I bought came even close to fitting, and I bought about 5 replacements over the journey. It might be more painless to simply get one custom made. The luthier I regularly use doesn't make pickguards anymore, and the only other place I know that does them took about 5 months to do a basic setup on my 51, so I'm forgetting them.

Another issue is the bridge. The bridge on the Affinity really is one of its weaknesses. It's prone to loose saddle-height screws that vibrate and has that HORRIBLE string-through-the-rear-of-the-unit setup that is a nightmare to work with. The problem in buying an aftermarket bridge is that I simply don't know if it's made to american or asian specs. I would prefer to get one with dimensions that match the one I already have.

I will be going for a classic Esquire switching setup.

I will point out that this project is probably a few months away from even beginning, but I want to do it properly and gather as much information as far in advance as I can.