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The tele should have a 'truss rod' that will bring the neck back and the action down. A good guitar shop should know where it is and have the right wrench. If the neck truly is warped then being a Fender-alike and bolt on you can replace it with something nicer, although being cheap to start with you could simply move on up to a new instrument.

There is plenty that can be played just using gain, clean country sounds and blues. Your tele should respond well to chicken picking, if the string-thru and pickups are right, which is fun.

Try to put a finger on what you don't like about the Tele, if it's a combination of looks, shape, balance and feel then look to purchase something that is more you. Try out the strat, Les Paul, and Gibson 335 shapes and see if they suit you more...

Correction there, it's two VCC knobs that set each pickups voice level, then you switch between them. Great for switching between rhythmn and lead playing although the single coil voice is weaker.

Thanks for the reply SouthPaw, didn't realise that was the way NAMM worked, need for bass fuzz has lessened as bandmates don't seem to share my love of Hendrix's 'Gloria'...

G - L - 0 - R - I - A

Well if you're after a Buzz Feiten tuned electric you need a Washburn and a Korg DT7 tuner.

Hum can be lessened with screening. Do your pickup wires have little braided cuffs round them, are the body cavities lined with copper tape/paint? Doing these things cuts down on hum getting in. The copper tape can be bought and applying it just takes a steady hand.

Way back in the 50s/60s all guitars were coated in nitro-cellulose, this was nasty stuff to spray and wore off over the years. In the seventies came poly coatings, which were much tougher. Relic fetishists like nitro because it's vintage and shows the patina of use, poly coats take a real ding to scratch (although they can develop cloudy patches over decades).

If you want to redo your hot-rod guitar the first thing is to strip it, otherwise you may get paint interactions sooner or later, having said this stripping agents are nasty stuff so may you could spray round the back and see how it holds. The base coat is usually white (yep even when the colour desired is black) and then you build up; Base, colour and several 'lacquer' layers. At each stage you need to wait for proper drying (unless you have a paint oven) which takes weeks and 'cut back' with auto abrasives to make sure each layer is as smooth and flat as possible. It's alot of work so look to do something special if you are going to attempt it, otherwise you may find guitar shops (and even friendly auto spray shops) can do it at a good price compared to all your hours of wet/dry sanding...

One song I always reckoned I had to pick on was 'Little Honda' by the Beach Boys. I can get a big wash of surfy boom worked up with fingers alone but it's hard to go straight into the song paddle-plucking like a mad thing. Most practise more...

If you really want to keep the single coil sound then stay with S S S, coil tap will require differing wiring and a push/pull pot or switch. If you are getting hum then consider a pickup set where the middle pickup is reversed for hum cancelling.

Fingers will give you a whole range of sounds and styles and move you in the direction of expressive bass playing. Pick tends to make sense for fast rock and surf styles or if you want a retro vibe but if you work on finger playing you can be fast and punchy enough for 99% of pop and rock IMHO.

Thumb playing anyone?

Back in the 70s everyone claimed Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid' was a one chord song. It isn't and outside the realms of bad punk and stoned hippy droning most music has variation. I could name some songs with one note solos but the key point is the player bends or whamis some variation into the note. This actually harder than it sounds so a beginner should look for songs with basic open chords (avoid sharps, flats, Bs and Fs) mid-tempo with a strong beat, nothing too fey (yep it's hard to play Donovan).