I picked up this 2001 Tele with the 20th Anniversary plate the other day. I was reading here about early Affinity models and it looks like this was the year they transitioned to better sealed tuners. http://www.squierwiki.com/Affinity-and-Standard-Telecaster-History I've started cleaning it up and getting it into proper playing shape. I thought I would post some "under the hood" pics. No hidden humbucker routes under this pickguard! I was surprised when I took a look under the control plate to find 2 capacitors. It has a treble bleed cap in addition to the standard cap on the tone pot. The solder joints all looked original so I'm guessing it was shipped this way.
The routes are nice and tight - somebody took pride in this one - A random treble bleed from the factory ? It's the little things in life ! ! A Hearty Congrats ! ! full size pots and a common ground on pots and switch ?
I found the neck pickup cover isn't grounded as it should be on a 3 switch tele. I pulled the pickup out and added a small jumper wire between the black ground lead and one of the cover legs that protrudes through the bobbin. After tacking the wire in place, I was able to get the cover grounded now.
I have often found treble bleed capacitors on Affinity Teles, it seems to be a feature of them. I think the treble bleed is a stock wiring thing.
Thanks for confirming the treble bleed. What's interesting is that I found this Affinity tele service manual that was revised years after this guitar was built that only shows a single tone cap: https://c3.zzounds.com/media/AffinityTele-Service-b75c06eeb7d4e86258f6b8dde142420c.pdf I do see the 2 caps in this control plate assembly that sold on Reverb in the second picture but no dates. https://reverb.com/item/12966653-sq...caster-guitar-prewired-control-plate-assembly Maybe they changed the circuit after 2008?
I've got the neck cleaned up now and polished. Seems to be no fret wear at all. Can you tell how far I had worked my way down in these photos?
I pulled the neck and it had a date of December 8, 2001. Totally makes sense that this tele would get the 20th anniversary plate being shipped on the eve of 2002. There were also markings on the end of the neck, but I couldn't make it out. You can clearly see the maple fingerboard cap. There were also these yellow plastic shim pieces in the pocket. I left them and put it back together.
I've got it all put back together and cleaned up now. I touched up a few small chips along the edges with black nail polish from the dollar store. I was in my local GC the other day and they had a brand new Affinity Tele in stock so I tried it out. I much prefer the neck on this older model. The new one had a neck that felt like I was playing bare wood. I'm pretty sure I've seen others on this forum mention this with some modern Squier models.
