Iāve been meaning to post this for some time but didnāt get around to it until now. Iām so happy with this restoration that Iāve been playing it for 2 months solid and didnāt get around to posting 
Back in April, I bought a very old Squier Affinity Telecaster for $50 (equivalent). It was in very poor shape: very dirty, all the metal parts tarnished, rusty strings, tarnished rough frets. Crackling electronics. I set the action as well as I could and could tell the neck was more or less OK. Boy did it sound bad with those strings and electronics. Having built a Strat from really top quality parts, I bought this as a cheap restoration project. I already have an Affinity Tele with Tonerider Alnico 2 blues pickups which are super clean. So this restoration was to make a hotter tele with 4 way switch and the exercise was to make it play as well as possible.
So it really has had a complete restoration but it didnāt cost the earth. I managed to find relatively low cost parts that had really good reviews (which turned out to be accurate). The only thing that was expensive was the fancy pickguard that I got on Etsy from S Korea and it really is a quality piece and makes the guitar look great (IMO).
I completely sanded the neck all over (even removing the Squier logo) to remove the lacquer and made it super smooth and oiled it - much nicer than lacquer. Completely levelled and crowned and polished all the frets. Changed the pickguard for a fancy one. Put in Iron Gear Steel Foundry overwound pickups and new pots, switch and knobs. The switch is a 4 way so that I have the 2 pickups in both series and parallel. Brass saddles and new tuners (very cheap but good).
That sounds like a lot of money as its essentially a new guitar except for the neck, body and bridge plate.I havenāt added everything up but I have a guitar that plays and sounds way better than the amount I paid, thatās for sure and its so enjoyable to see that hard work pays off.
It plays great and I got the action down really low, which is what I wanted. The neck is very good. Sounds totally different to my other Affinity so Iām really happy. The only thing I didnāt manage to do was to to change the nut. It has a plastic nut which is cut just fine. But just to say I improved everything, I bought a Tusq XL nut. However, the old nut is stuck in really tight. I tried to remove it but without lot of force I canāt get it out and Iām scared to damage what is now a very nice neck. So I will have to swallow my pride and take it to the luthier for this last modification.
Here are the pictures. My wife keeps reminding me that I very stupidly forgot to do the ābeforeā photos, so you canāt see what a transformation it really is.
