Favorite Telecaster Pickups

[big_teee]

What are your favorite Telecaster Combination.
Telecaster Popularity seems to be at an all time high.
I used to mainly make Humbuckers, then the rage was the Strat.
Lately I've done more Telecaster work than anything else.
There are the Traditional Tele pickups that can be made a variety of different ways with A2, A3, & A5 magnets.
With Different magnet heights, and Different amount of turns, with different sizes of wires.
There are different Bridge plates in different lengths, the old Ashtray bridge, with 3 saddles, and the longer flat bridge with separte 6 saddles.
You can use a tele lipstick type stock pickup, mini bucker, big bucker, or P90.
So what do you like in a Tele?
I'll give my likes and dislikes on another post.
T

[John_H]

What else do you need?

[big_teee]

That looks like an oldie.
But, one of many Tele configurations.
I have a Knock-off import in the shop that has 3 pickups.
It has My A3 pickups in neck and bridge, and a 6k A5 Strat pickup in the middle.
It weighs in at 9 lbs, and the sunburst body looks like mahogany.
It sounds great. It has the long flat bridge with strat type saddles.
I've had several different players that play fenders try to buy it.
So Far I haven't let it go.
What else do you guys like in a Telecaster.
T

[jbltwin1]

Humbucks! I'm just NOT a single coil guy. Other than maybe some old 90's. HMMMM. I've got a Strat somewhere that could stand a set of P90's. Maybe THAT will be my after the first build. Black P90's black strat, black pickguard. A stealth strat!

[big_teee]

Humbucks! I'm just NOT a single coil guy. Other than maybe some old 90's. HMMMM. I've got a Strat somewhere that could stand a set of P90's. Maybe THAT will be my after the first build. Black P90's black strat, black pickguard. A stealth strat!

Roger that, and thanks for the Post.
We have a Strat Thread, this one is for Teles.
Mini Bucker blades fit well in Strats, the blades are a bit short for Teles.
Here's the Strat Thread.
http://music-electronics-forum.com/t34724/

[jbltwin1]

Actually, I should have finished my statement since somebody didn't get it! I am PLAYING A HUMBUCK TELE. THAT was the point. IN ADDITION, I just mentioned the strat. I was NOT detracting from the thread, just adding to it.

[big_teee]

I like Humbuckers too.
I seem to get more requests for Single Coils, but I mainly have buckers in my guitars.
I make some Tele pickups for Local Country players, and here, they all like bright Single Coils.
The problem I have found with mating humbuckers with Single coils like in a Tele is the volume difference.
I have taken out or reduced the wind count on neck humbuckers in Teles, for different guys, because of the over powering neck Humbucker.
Most players that go with a two humbucker guitar, go with the gibson style, with the 24-3/4 inch neck, not the tele or fender style 25-1/2.
I love options, and the tele has many Pickup options that you can go with.
What do you like in a Tele?
T

[Kindly Killer]

The Broadcaster design (normal A5 bobbin with AWG43 wire) can yield a great pickup for me with almost any amount of wire. I feel like I can just keep stacking more and more wire with that combination, and I get more and more mids without completely losing anything - i.e. the tradeoffs are better than most of the pickup designs I've attempted. One of the best bridge pickups for any genre, and it's one of the easiest [for me anyway] to wind by ear. Good candidate for multiple taps, though I haven't tried it. Best one I've heard off the rack is Bareknuckle.

Tele neck pickups are hard to get right. Or maybe I should say it's been a long road for me and I'm still not there LOL. The whole trick is to get a nice low peak without losing the detail in the top. Lower TPL seems to help. Getting closer to the magic recipe for me, but still struggling. Using AWG42 sounds really nice, but there's not enough meat on the bone for melody - not for me, not without adding something to the circuit.

By my winner-stays-in, one-on-one pickup testing methodology, I still can't make a neck pickup that beats my all-time favorite, the Ducan STR-1 - lowbrow, I know, but it's got the thing. It's girthy yet detailed, and not too boomy. I want to get just a little more meat than the STR-1 without losing the basic response curve. Tall order. After I beat that damned STR-1 (or just give up and use it LOL) I want to try dual blade type in tele. I would probably be happier with that, anyway. But at this point I feel like I have to finish my mission.

I need to try different types of covers. I would love to hear anyone's impressions about that. The Duncan STR-1 has a [traditional?] chrome-plated brass cover. The covers I have are chrome plated nickel-silver. Gonna try chrome plated brass and plain nickel-silver (no plating) - the latter should let me retain more top end (yes?). Doing a search here, I'm kinda surprised there isn't a whole giant thread about just tele neck covers. Seems like a huge mojo item on the most difficult pickup to get right...

What else... played the Fender Noiseless tele set for a good couple of years. They have their own vibe, which is very nice and musical, but not very tele-y. They have a smoother attack, which is easier to manage, and more mid girth, which is easier to mix, but very little of the harmonic aurora borealis teles are known for. You can still tell it's a tele.

Played a Fender tele in a store in Cedar Falls, IA that had a Duncan firebird pickup in the neck. That was really nice. I bought the same pickup and put it in my favorite tele for a while. It is basically the WRHB vibe but without the drawbacks. Balances well with a normal bridge pickup, and it's tighter, EQ wise. It has a very good amount of air for a humbucker. It's about halfway between a tele and a really good PAF. Good good combo.

Oh yeah I use an angled bridge pickup like all fenders, but angled the opposite way. So on strats I make my own pickguard and just flip the bridge pickup cutout, and on teles I just buy a fender left-handed plate and rout the pickup cavity to a rectangle just big enough to accommodate. Why anyone is still trying to make their guitar boomier in 2013 is beyond me. Just convention, I guess. To be fair, I never thought of it until I by chance played someone's strat with a Jimi Hendrix Signature Series Pickguard [because you know he is looking for endorsement deals in the afterlife]. Also I make a living playing mostly 4-hour club grind endurance hack-fests. So when there is a problem with a guitar my nose really gets rubbed in it good and hard.

[Kindly Killer]

Okay this is interesting. The act of putting every tele-related thought into words really got my juices flowing. I remembered the tele I used for a collab with a friend from my alt-rock days. It was an alt-country project that we did in the summer of 2006 and subsequently did nothing with. I remembered LOVING that guitar and the tracks we made with it. I wondered if I could find the pickups I made for it and I found the neck pickup! It is the exact sound I'm shooting for. I suspect that that experience re-formed my idea of what a tele is supposed to sound like - mother's cooking type effect...

Here's a basic tracks: https://soundcloud.com/beastmusician/003-firstsong

I made it in January 06. It has 7800 turns of AWG42 - that's a surprise. It would have been somewhat sloppily hand guided on my first really decent winder (number 4 or 5 that I built). I remember that I got bored with hand guiding at the precise moment that I got good at it, which was in 07. That's when I starting hacking away at auto-traverse gadgets.

EDIT: going by measurement, there's no way it's AWG42. It must be 43 and I just wrote 42 in my notes out of habit. The previous 20 pickups in my notes were all humbuckers, so I probably just did it out of habit. I wound another with 7800 turns of 43 and it is very similar, though not as juicy.



I can't remember where I was buying parts back then. I remember I bought a couple of orders from Stephen Kersting. I tried StewMac's stuff when they started - anybody remember when that was?

How can I figure out what kind of cover it is on this old pickup? I know anything plated you will see a layer of brass, but how can I tell what it is inside? I don't have a full science lab - just calipers, postal scale, the elepro gaussmeter, the extech LCR, etc...

[big_teee]

I've wound neck P/Us with 42 and 43 wire.
I have pretty much settled on the 43.
I made a heavenly sounding A3 Neck pickup, wound to 6.75k.
I put a bare nickel cover on it.
It really shines.
There should be a layer of copper, with plating, not Brass, I don't think?
T

[Kindly Killer]

Terry thanks for info. I'm interested to try A3. AFAIK I've never played a tele neck pu with A3 slugs. I do remember doing an experiment where I swapped the mags in a stock fender usa std strat between a5, a2, and a3. A3 was my favorite for individual pickups, but didn't have enough glass in the in-between positions.

On the covers I was just going by color - I know nearly nothing about metals. I'm sure you're right about copper in plated covers. I need to just buy a handful of samples and try different ones.

43 vs 42: I solved the mystery and edited my previous post. My fave pickup is messy scattered 7800turns of 43. Not 42. I did try one with 8200 turns of 42 single, very uniform low TPL (can't remember the number - I put them in my winder and I only write it down if I save the pickup). Anyway that pickup had the Don Mare Hayride vibe, which is nice, but it's more like a tele-strat hybrid.

Also forgot to mention that my ash body, rosewood fb tele has a Johnny Smith pickup in the neck. Made it from the AllParts kit. I got the specs from the Mario Milan book. That pickup is absolutely dreamy in that guitar. That replaced a SD firebird pickup. The JS pickup is perfect. Plenty of meat on the bone and plenty clear. Zero problems.

Nobody's mentioned Charlie Christian pickups in teles yet, which is amazing. CC in a tele is huge, official THING because Danny Gatton did it. Also it's a great pickup. I made my own set. I basically made a strat type bobbin using forbon and the blade in place of the mags. I got the dimensions from the patent, though I did jam it into a HB space. I want to say I kept all dimensions the same except for length. I got plain steel bar stock from the hardware store for the blades. For covers I just cut the tops out of HB covers and gooped the whole thing together with silicone glue. I remember reading everything I could on them and finding two versions of the pickup. The early one used bigger wire and few turns - can't remember any more than that. I think the later version used 10k turns of AWG42, which is what I did for mine. I never tried to fit them into a tele, but I do have a recording of them in my big jazz box - it's a laminated L5 derivative, similar to Sadowsky Jim Hall: https://soundcloud.com/beastmusician/ill-be-seeing-you

The CC pickup is unusually wonderful. It softens the attack - like all mag-on-the-bottom pickups - and it is very vocal. It is like the SM57 of pickups - it's just premixed to sound perfect in ensemble. It's a little dull on the top compared to what we're used to today, but there's some info up there. It's the sound Wes Montgomery came up trying to emulate, and Wes' sound is what every subsequent generation got hung up on until the current group of young cats. I made two of them and put them in my jazz box neck and bridge; the bridge has a pretty neat vibe, but I'd be hard pressed to point to any recordings where you can hear a CC in the bridge.

The CC is probably a great tele pickup. Never tried it, but I know a lot of people love it. Without looking I would bet there are at least 50 videos on YouTube with CC teles.

[big_teee]

Great Info about tele's Kindly Killer!
I can tell you really have love for the Telecaster.
I mess with all kinds of guitars and pickups, and only had much interest in Tele's the last year or so.
The A3 neck pickup I have is in a 3 pickup guitar.
On that guitar I have the A3 in the neck, and a strat neck type pickup in the middle.
I have a A3 pickup at the bridge, it's wound with 42 guage wire.
The guitar is real heavy, it is supposed to be Alder, but looks like Mohogany, and is heavy like mohogany.
It has a Rosewood FB, and it has a wonderful tone.
I started a thread a while back about the CC Pickup.
Because of its unusual size, and mods required to the body route, to put it in most guitars, I lost interest.
I had one guy wanting me to make him one, and I talked him into a regular A5 with a bare cover.
He loved it.
I have been going to try a strat sized dual blade or rail pickup in the neck spot, but haven't.
The regular tele neck pickup wax potted with a grounded cover is not too bad noisy.
It's still a SC, but quieter than a Strat SC, IMO, with the bare nickel shielded cover.
A mini humbucker is a good option, the only problem, you need to keep them low wound, so they don't over power the the SC in the Bridge.
I just rebuilt a tele that had a p90 in the neck and a regular SC in the bridge.
I underwound the P90, and over wound the bridge to make them balance.
I ended up with the bridge SC over 9k to get a darker tone to match the P90.
My Friend who plays classic Rock, and Blues, Loved it when we got done.
He still sends me emails thanking me for how I matched it up.
Do you flip the lid on your tele's?
For those who are not into Tele's, that is turning the control plate around, and putting the switch at the back and the volume at the front.
Any other OCD Tele Fan's out there?
T

[Kindly Killer]

My ash/rosewood tele is homemade, plus I made a few mash-up designs that have tele body shape and layout with details borrowed from other guitars (scale, woods, pickups, hardware). On the homeade hack jobs the control cavity is rear-routed and I put the knobs exactly where I want them.

On factory made tele bodies/plates I just drill another hole to move the volume closer to the tone control. I cover the hole with a piece of tape.

Another tele tip: file a groove in the volume knob and glue in a rubber ring from the plumbing section of the hardware store. Also flush the wax out of the pot with naptha - makes it turn so smooth. Not just for Roy Buchanan tricks - teles are super sensitive to control changes, and it makes a difference for me if I can ride the volume knob without really being aware that I'm doing it. The rubber and naphtha make it a matter of touching the control with my pinky. A stiff, stock, metal knob is more of a whole-hand affair.

Never realized I had so much to say about teles.

I'm sure the whole effect-of-the-traditional-bridge and baseplate thing has been hashed out here? E.g. is it a tele if it has a hardtail strat bridge?

[big_teee]

Oh the Traditional vs. Long flat Bridge with Strat Saddles.
You cured the problem I have with the Ashtray bridge, by using the left hand version.
The regular Ash tray has that aggressive slant and the E&B string poles are quite close to the Bridge Saddles.
Making the High notes quite shrill.
The Flat long bridge is better in that respect.
The Ashtray bride seems to have such a resonate effect though.
With string through ferrules and the ashtray bridge, the guitar is quite loud, even unplugged.
My lefty ashtray bridge guitar has the very large diameter steel saddles, and it has great sustain.
But to Keep us on track with pickups, being this is a pickup forum?
So far I've tried A2, A3, and A5, and pretty much like them all.
If using a nickel cover the A5 is probably best, because some loss of highs with covers.
Anyone else got any Tele guitar wisdom to offer?
T

[bbsailor]

My ash/rosewood tele is homemade, plus I made a few mash-up designs that have tele body shape and layout with details borrowed from other guitars (scale, woods, pickups, hardware). On the homeade hack jobs the control cavity is rear-routed and I put the knobs exactly where I want them.

On factory made tele bodies/plates I just drill another hole to move the volume closer to the tone control. I cover the hole with a piece of tape.

Another tele tip: file a groove in the volume knob and glue in a rubber ring from the plumbing section of the hardware store. Also flush the wax out of the pot with naptha - makes it turn so smooth. Not just for Roy Buchanan tricks - teles are super sensitive to control changes, and it makes a difference for me if I can ride the volume knob without really being aware that I'm doing it. The rubber and naphtha make it a matter of touching the control with my pinky. A stiff, stock, metal knob is more of a whole-hand affair.

Never realized I had so much to say about teles.

I'm sure the whole effect-of-the-traditional-bridge and baseplate thing has been hashed out here? E.g. is it a tele if it has a hardtail strat bridge?

Kindly Killer, and all interested in Tele Mods

On Monday Night, 9 Dec, 2013 I got to see Bill Kirchen of "Hotrod Lincoln" fame at the Stafford Township, NJ Public Library for a free concert. He was playing his modified Telecaster where he reversed the control plate so the volume knob is most forward, then the tone knob, still within easy reach, and the switch is located to the rear of the mounting plate (but reversed so the forward position points to the neck pickup). This way he can easily reach the volume knob to do swells and the tone knob to do wa-wa-like tones. See this link for Bill describing and showing his Telecaster mods. Bill Kirchen, King of Dieselbilly, talks Tele! - YouTube

I hope this gives you some additional things to consider.

Joseph Rogowski