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Hyphen Nation wrote:

Radiohead625 wrote:

The weight of the body, and the type of wood in the neck [all maple, vs Rosewood cap, etc] would have some tonal effect, but it would live in between tele and JM sound.

I was thinking going with either alder or trying that paulownia wood for the body with a rosewood board. Haven't really decided yet. I wonder how the telecaster electronics would affect the tone.

My understanding [and practical experience] is that the neck has more to do with tone than body. The most obvious demonstration of this is an aluminum neck Kramer I have that has crazy overtones. Maple necks tend to be nice and bright because of the rigidity of maple, etc. I don't have any experience with Paulownia, but I think Alder and Ash are the classic fender body woods. I'd go for light weight, myself.

There are two ways Electronics will effect the sound:

The pickups themselves will definitely bring their characteristics through. Tele's are bright, and cutting guitars, mostly due to the nature of the two pickups. I loosely think of tele's and Jags as lead guitars and JM's and strats as rhythm. Tele and Jag pickups just cut, burn and scream in my experience. Good Jazzmaster pickups [Curtis Novak] combine a bit of a classic clarity of a single coil, but they are wider and the way the wire is spread out flat, it adds a bit more mids and dimension to the tone. I say good JM pickups, because a lot of JM's out there [the fender japanese ones for instance] are wound a lot more like strats, and just stuffed into a JM pickup cover.

The other MAJOR factor in wiring it up will be the pot values you use. Jazzmasters typically use a 1meg tone pot which gets really bright…like icepick bright. I usually keep mine parked at about 5 [500k or less]. That being said, there are times [signal chain, band mix] when having that extra bit of high end is nice to cut through. If I was to build or get something like the Danocaster that inspires lust above, I'd probably stick with standard tele values, even if I put a JM pickup in the neck. The two builds I'd like to explore are just that. Tele body, JM pickup and offset trem, and JM body, tele or charlie christian pickups.

Don't forget tone is a funny thing. You can go into a guitar shop any day of the week, pickup 4 of the exact same make and model and they will all sound and feel different. A good set up will make most guitars feel and play awesomely.