I have a 20 year old Mexican Telecaster which still had the cheap steel sixties saddles.
Also the neck was stretched too far backwards, the frets were dented from faulty use by the previous owner, who was a very beautiful girl by the way. So is the guitar.
However, even with all these setbacks the Chris Fleming design tele still felt good, it has a chuncky neck, nice dark rosewood fretboard and good sounding handmade pickups. So I used it for raggedy Open G riffs.
I took off the low E string, tuned the remaining 5 strings in Open G, and used the tele year after year for Rolling Stones Keith Richards riffs like “Can’t you hear me knocking” and “Honky Tonk Women”.
Then, whilst breaking a string, some weeks ago, I got a Thomann epiphany after reading all the good reviews about these ABM Glockenspiel Saddles;
I flattened the frets to loose the dents, took off the neck and gave the neck her necessary relief. Then I bought these here ABM VCS saddles and installed them, put on new vintage nickel strings, tuned them, adjusted the height of the saddles a little, intonated them and woweeeh what a Johnny Cash difference for these few euros.
The tele really came back to life, even with my headphones on full throttle I can still hear the sparkling and crisp sound of the high strings.
These saddles are really fabulous and a great German product of real Glocken-brass, which you have to find out for yourself. Buy them at Thomann and put them on your telecaster, if you are not handy enough take the saddles to your luthier and watch his face amaze in joy.
Thanks for reading and thanks for things like these which make music so much more enjoyable!