Pickup Suggestions for "FrankenTele'

[saultime]

Oh yeah duh. Im dumb.

Well now, let's remember, I'm the one who soldered in a bunch of transistors backwards today... :oops:

[petemoore]

Excellent work, nice when you can get it !!!
 The best review of a piece of equipment is that it is doing what you intended and expected it to. In Guessepe's particular, considered opinion.
 Those Tele's, I mean Tele's are very nice looking pieces.
 With a bolt on neck and nice body, DIYing to taste all the way with the rest...you can't miss !!!
 I'm planning on a serious bit of shielding job and finish during the next tear down, which will also include a switching modification and a Lawrence L280SN...or two...
 I also have a coil tap on my Dimarzio Dual Sound in my LP which also creates unreasonable noise unless I'm playing...often even then really...
 I suppose there's nothing more can be done than shielding/shortening the wires.

[vortex]

Kay, here's my SQ Jap tele with P-90 & JD bridge pu's. Stewmac stacked tone/vol  pots for each pickup. . I totally agree about the brass sadles contributing to the "classic" tele sound,

[petemoore]

Nothing better than DIYing...I just placed the copper cage around the Tone Cavity...Drilled 3 holes and cut around the jack, mounted that under the controls [2 switches a pot and a jack], made an oval side piece from a strip, connected these two with a ground wire, then the coverplate is also copper, this is necessary in my case.
 Huge drop in noise floor for a couple hours work.
 I'm having no problems at all enjoying the Guitar...can't get enough of it now, AAMOF I just got off an hours playing, the controls are very usable, it has a great range of tones...and...IS Low Noise now  

[BD13UK]

Pete ! if You wire the Dual Sound series/parallel http://www.dimarzio.com/media/diagrams/4Conductor.pdf  instead of a single/humbucker coil cut the noise should disappear, of course it's not identical sounding to single coil but it will prevent 60 cycle hum, You can use a push/pull pot instead of a mini switch if You dont want another switch on the scratchplate or if it's a back loaded guitar.

[Joe Hart]

Yeah, I use a series/parallel switch, and if you voice the tone and volume treble bleed carefully, you can get a pretty convincing single coil sound without the hum.
-Joe Hart

[petemoore]

What I need is a nice broken guitar  :?
 For stuff like switch and coils etc.
 It appears I have some reading to do about series parallel switching.

[petemoore]

Did the reading and wired it for Dual Sound and so ithe coild wiring shall stay. Super Low noise floor to speak of...the Parallel Tone is great, the series tone is a bit over the top for My FF's [at 13+k] ...I'd like to rethink that now, also I have a DPDT 'open' in there now.
 I was thinking of wiring a resistor to the output pot with a defeat switch on it...perhaps a voicing cap on a resistor or...haven't quite figured that one out.
 If there's one word to describe the tone character I would like to alter it's "thick', especially series, one the bass, treble cuts but there is mud when full on.

[petemoore]

Thanks for all the help, it's great fun working with this thing.

[hairyandy]

Here's a shot of my main beast:



It's a '59 Tele Custom knockoff made by my friend Phil at http://www.fretshop.com.  I've beat this thing to death for 5 years and it's better then the day it was made.  It's super resonant with lots of bite and sustain.  The pickups are a Fralin Tele hot in the bridge and a Duncan Seth Lover in the neck with normal stock wiring.  I also flip the control cavity to have better access to the volume knob and I added the StewMac compensated saddles.  I also replaced the volume pot with a Bourns 300K and it's way smooth and has a great taper.  You can get them on Ebay, just do a seller search for Frankenfoot, he's got a bunch of them that he's always selling.

[smccusker]

so many awesome teles. makes me wonder why i botherd paying through the nose for a fender.

[hairyandy]

so many awesome teles. makes me wonder why i botherd paying through the nose for a fender. Sad

My '59 Tele Custom knockoff wasn't cheap.  He's selling them for about $1400 but you get to pick out everything about it including pickups, hardware, color, paint type, neck size, body weight, etc...You can really get exactly the guitar you want.  You can end up with a much better  guitar than an off-the-shelf Fender, even though a lot of the more expensive Fenders are really good.

[Joe Hart]

I've had great experiences building guitars with Warmoth parts. It's a little pricey, but they build exactly what you want. And when my last neck stood me $350 (and that's just for the unfinished neck), the end result can be a fairly pricey guitar. But I own 17 guitars, and if my house was on fire, I would run back in to save that guitar.
-Joe Hart

[petemoore]

My brother copped 6 necks off ebay, used a couple and sent me the rest [*3 of them 6-2=4...*one broken] of them for a few Stratoblasters on a push pull DPDT Volume pot !!!
 One was an Epiphone LP "Blem', brand new with a pale then red mark under the laquer of the headstock. It went to a Junior Clone which plays perfect but it's a 'honker' neck...thick.
 You never really know what you're getting till youve got it, or until you've got it made and can try playing on it. But I can sight a neck and pretty much tell how close it is to being 'cool', without getting the luthier tools out.
 Tele body isn't that hard if you have table saw, router, big clamps etc. basic wood shop stuff and a spindle, plate, and mounted belt sander. Neck pocket being the most tricky, but not too tricky on a Tele...just leave enough 'in front' [don't shape the body there], so the router guide doesn't 'fall off' in front...set the sides with wood strip stops...pretty easy with a little bit of jigging.
 The main costs of this guitar was in the hardware, pickup and bridge pieces, I spent 60 on guitar parts online, found the rest around here.
 I'm pretty sure I could spend 500-1000+ on a new guitar, and still not have *exactly what I want  :wink: .

[mojotron]

I've had great experiences building guitars with Warmoth parts. It's a little pricey, but they build exactly what you want. And when my last neck stood me $350 (and that's just for the unfinished neck), the end result can be a fairly pricey guitar. But I own 17 guitars, and if my house was on fire, I would run back in to save that guitar.
-Joe Hart

Warmoth parts are great, it's really worth it if you can do the finish yourself too - I just don't like polyurethene on a guitar neck. You can get stuff like a single piece neck that's quarter sawn and has a huge fretboard... a single piece ash body with an aproximate weight... I hear USA Guitars parts are good too, hear they have a '57 strat neck that is copied perfectly - including a few wierdities.. and, they will design a body for a specific weight for you.  

Pickups are a funny thing, you really have to take the wood into account as well as the neck wood and fret board radius.

So, the guitars I've built have been strats, but I think the parts would all work on a tele. With my swamp-ash strat w/maple neck, I like Fender Fat '50's neck and middle pickups (if you have one), and an HS-2 in the bridge. The f50's pickups have a great warm sound and just enough high end to prevent muddyness. The HS-2 is average at room volumes, but works with the resonance of the body at stage volumes to give you a nice warm sound with plenty of rich harmonics.

On LPs with the Mahogany neck/body w/maple top, I really like the Gibson Classic '57 and '57+ in the bridge - this is a total "vintage" sound. I went this direction because I used to have some old Les Pauls and had to sell them in the '80s. So what I did is I got a brand new Epiphone Les Paul Standard, put the Gibson pickups in it, and poof  :shock: I got my old friends back except I think my Epi LP actually sounds a bit better at stage volumes then my old Gibson LPs did... One thing about how I play a LP/4-knob-gibson is that just leave the pickup selector in the middle spot and use the volume and tone knobs to change the sound. I will someday duplicate this on a strat or tele to ballance the neck and bridge pickup - something to think about...

On basswood body guitars, I have used PAF knock-offs, again, and I found that the FRED in the bridge sounds great beause of the increased highend that compensates for the richness of the low-end sound of the wood. In the neck, with a basswood body, I like any PAF type of pickup. The FRED is a good choice here too, but if I wanted more of a P90 sound I have used the SD Jazzman pickup, and for more of a LP sound the Classic '57 works great too. I settled on a PAF Pro in most cases mostly due to the fact that I like the FRED and Gibson '57 and the PAF Pro is somewhere in the middle of these.

So - I don't know what kind of wood you have for body/neck.. but there's my thoughts on pickups  

[brian wenz]

Hello Hello--
    Just so that everybody knows----
WWW.OTTOSGUITARS.COM
 Custom-made  Fender-type stuff for half the price!
Brian.

[dr]

....whenever I get motivated to build another guitar, it will be a Telecaster set up similar to the setup Steve Morse has on his;two split coil humbuckers center tapped, two single coils,and a single coil mini humbucker,like on the Les Paul custom (all inductor pickups will have DPDT switches center off and phase reversal wired); I also will finally have a use for the saddle piece pickups and the neck mounted piezo I had on my old Harmony, as well as the Fishman mike to conceal in the semi hollow body of my dreams.......as soon as I wake up.....