Pickup Suggestions for "FrankenTele'

[petemoore]

I'm feeling a powerful inclination to do just this.
 Simply by reading I've it's the right thing to do.

[BD13UK]

If You can Pete ! why not try out a Strat or Tele thats already loaded with Lawrence p/up's at least it will give an indication of what they're about

[Killer Queen]

Whatever you go, Dont go for anything like a 5-way switch. Whatever pickups you have, it is a CRIME to do such a thing to them, when you can get so much out of them. Look at something like brian may wiring-
look at some of the diagrams here
http://www.treblebooster.com/brian_may_pickup_mod.htm

That sort of idea. If you have say, 3 pickups, why limit yourself to about 5 wiring combinations when you can have, like, 30?!
:lol:

Might require a few switches, mind you. Not as bad as it sounds though. You don't need a brian-may-style arrangementr where you have one phase switch and one on/off for each pickup- use an on-off-on DPDT and you can have both in one. Middle=turned off, either side = on, with different phases. And then you want a paralell/series switch. Personally, I mighht be inclined to wire a paralell/series switch for every pickup, so with a 3-pickup combination, i could have 2 paralell and one in series after them. Even more tonal possibilities!
Stompboxes are all well n good, but you might aswell have a lot of options in what you're putting in to them- lots more versatile.
And if you get humbuckers in there? Make sure you get 4-lead ones, so you can split it. Or, if going for the sort of wiring system I suggest, treat it as two single-coils. With a good wiring system you dont sacrifice the original humbucker sound/wiring, but you also gain another 3 sounds. Fantastic!
If you can, try and squeeze 3 pickups in there. There are some really great wiring combinations you can only get with 3+. For example, all in series: neck_bridge in phase and the middle pickup out of phase. Goregeous clean, very articulate, even on a very dark guitar. And everything in series in phase- phat! You can make, essentially, one big super humbucker! Great!

So basically, whatever pickups you get, make the most of them by having versatile switching. And if you can, try and squeeze 3 PU's in there. If you can't, then having one(or more) humbuckers would give the most versitility, with splitting options and the like. (That would be my personal preference in any case.)

But anyway, no point in restricting yourself to a traditional set of 3 or 4 sounds, when you can have so much versatility. (Especially with 3 PUs.)

[petemoore]

Here's how it's wired.
 Tone Zone in the close Bridge position.
 Sounds good with the 500k rolled back, super gain with it up.
 Black and white to ground, [one side of each coil] and one coil to output pot the other through a switch in parallel. Paralleling them was serious volume drop...
 Noisy too. I'm wondering how much shielding this will reduce the noise, the pickup wires look to be wrapped in foil with an independant ground wire, and I used shielded wire for the pot to jack..hmmm noisy...fortunately I have an exchange policy. :?  :wink:
 The strings and copper plate behind the pickup are grounded.
 I tried an alternate wiring, series...using DPDT's
 I need to rethink the wiring, definitely need to figure out the noie.
 I had to wire this up, found the pickup for 40 at GC.
 I cut a fret out of a busted out guitar neck, and split that down to height for close action. Having N/P;s with the bridge setup that took 10 minutes...lol...the strings hold it right in place and it's working perfectly.
 Nice Bright sound, the neck is a total Bich, BC Rich that is, nice clean frets all play perfect, it's very slinky. The Body reponds and can be felt deeply vibrating with lower chord work   . Very easy bends great attack/sustain...nice guitar.
 I'll try calling Bill again tomorrow, I tried and didn't get through...felt a little guilty investing in Seymour Stocks...I definitely want to try a 280 S.
 The guitar resonates and plays very easy, I'm impressed, kind of surprizing I got it all going with the only problem being the noise...I'm kind of wondering if that's all in the pickup itself.

[bwanasonic]

That sort of idea. If you have say, 3 pickups, why limit yourself to about 5 wiring combinations when you can have, like, 30?!
:lol:

Because strangely enough you can often be much more *musical* with a well balanced set of a few controls. It forces you to explore the control you have by just adjusting your playing technique.

Kerry M

[vanhansen]

That sort of idea. If you have say, 3 pickups, why limit yourself to about 5 wiring combinations when you can have, like, 30?!
:lol:

Because strangely enough you can often be much more *musical* with a well balanced set of a few controls. It forces you to explore the control you have by just adjusting your playing technique.

Kerry M

Plus, with that many different combos, although they can be handy, well, let's just say you end up playing WITH the guitar rather than just playing the guitar.

[vanhansen]

The guitar resonates and plays very easy, I'm impressed, kind of surprizing I got it all going with the only problem being the noise...I'm kind of wondering if that's all in the pickup itself.

If you can do stompboxes, a guitar should be cake.  With all the holes drilled and cavities routed, it's just a matter of slapping it together.

As for the Tone Zone, it's not really a noisy pickup.  I'm suspecting the wiring though.  The Red is hot, Black and White get soldered together for standard humbucking, and the Green and Bare go to ground.  What you'd one is soldered both coil finish points to ground.  Red/Black are the slug pole, Green/White is the screw pole.  Bare is the shield ground.

Hook it up as standard humbucking first to make sure it's working right and then go from there with adding switch to split the coils if you want.

[petemoore]

ah HA !!
 Yes I'll try that, it came with no springs or usable literature [waraanty and Dimarzio accessories] and I could find nothing online when I had the chsnce.
 Im using the 'ol clunker mouse, and spent a few hours just getting that going yesterday... :? optical intellimouse just died I guess...
 I've mounted two dpdt's in it, switching bypass for each coil should EZ.
 Thanks Eric for typing up the wiring 'diagram'    
 The Red is hot, Black and White get soldered together for standard humbucking, and the Green and Bare go to ground
 This should hopedully make a difference !
 Shock the monkey...""cover me, when I hum""...I'll be getting some more copper shielding in/on there too.
 My grounding scheme is 'star' from the input jack...shielding and two ground wires so far, one wire for the bridge and one for the 500k pot.

[vanhansen]

Check out www.guitarnuts.com for star grounding if you need more info.  It's under the Modifications area and is called "Quieting the Beast".  Best think I ever did to my guitars, other than load them up with Seymour Duncans.  

Here's a page on Stew-Mac's site for DiMarzio Humbuckers: http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/I-DIMARZIO.html

Check this site out:  http://www.1728.com/guitar.htm
There's TONS of wiring diagrams there.

[petemoore]

wiring it as a HB dropped the noise a few floors !!!
 I'm finding it's much easier to find the position on a switch if there are no 'middle' positions [only two].
 What I would like for a 3 way toggle is a middle position that the switch 'wants to fall into' and outside positions you have to 'push out of the middle positions hole'...only when I'm really concentrating and get a lucky touch can I go to the middle position without using two handigits to 'place' it there...I'm already liking having only 2way switches on the guitar.
 It works great, unlike my left index finger which is experiencing sharp pains when I bend it certain ways...I've coated it in Zinc Oxide, and that's seeming to help.
 I'll injest some more 'chellators' [in cilantro] and see If I can remove some of the lead that may be in there.
 So this thing is a Railin' Guitar...super clear, EZ Bend or 'shake bends' can accurately be had, does great chord sounds...great guitar, easily, and by a great margin my new #1.

[vanhansen]

Cool.  Make sure to share some pics.

[petemoore]

Ok..I'm on that, it should be easy enough to refinish this thing, right now it's thrown together to see what I want, how close I can get to that and just general 'how's it actually working preliminary throw it together and try it stuff...looks rough.
 Preliminary test analysis results are extremely good though, I plan to redo the 'finals' on it [finishing, inlaying TC cavity and pickup cavity shielding etc.] now that it's pretty much set up the way I'll want and debugged.
 Hopefully the new alkaline batteries I tried in my juice eating digicam are too dead to work. Blinking light for a few seconds only.

[petemoore]

I think I just talked to Becky @ Bill Lawrence, very helpful and advised me that "L280SN" should be the proper spacing I want for neck/bridge positions !!!
 Very Nice. I'll be ordering this one up next!!!
 Aack I forgot to ask what is the impedance of the L280SN...? and now I can't seem to find it on the Lawrence site...

[vanhansen]

I don't think you'll find DC Resistance numbers for them.  He measures his pickups in Henries.

[Joe Hart]

If you have humbuckers (even stacked ones), doing a series/parallel switch can be very cool. I have them on all my main guitars, and use them a LOT! Just a thought.
-Joe Hart

[saultime]

Since I've been having a lot of problems with my Thunderchief build, I'm going to do what I always do when my self esteem is crushed: show a picture of my home brew Telecaster copy...

(The Fender decal is fake.) I'm not gonna lie--I've been an annoyingly huge Springsteen fan since the day before I was born. I always wanted a Telecaster like his. I wasn't too thrilled about paying $1300 for a butterscotch 50's reissue--especially when I learned that Bruce's Telecaster (it's really a reject '53 Esquire) is pretty much a frankentele anyway, and that I'd end up ditching the pickups, hardware, ect.

The pickups are the Joe Barden made pickups he designed with Danny Gatton. Yeah, I bought them because that's what The Boss is using in his current Teles. They were expensive enough back when I bought them (125 bucks a piece), but now that Joe is out of business, a set of these go for almost 800 bucks on eBay. Yeah, that's crazy, but not crazy enough to make me sell. Anyway, some people love Bardens, others hate them. I love mine, but I wouldn't drop 2 weeks pay on them either. Bill Lawrence's stuff is just great. I got the staggered saddles from stewmac to correct innotation, and it's wired up a little different--the cap that some people wire in to bleed off high end, I took out. I like high end.

The wood is what I'm most proud of--a fairly light piece of SOLID swamp ash from USA Custom Guitars (swimmingpool rout), and a v-shaped birdseye neck from Warmoth. I finished them myself--about 11 coats of vintage correct wetsanded and polished nitrocellulose laquer. No, it wasn't easy. But look at what I wound up with--my favorite guitar, that I made with my own hands. Fun.

[ninoman123]

:shock:  BEAUTIFUL TELE! I dont think anyone here can say anything about it being fake...since we all clone commercially made pedals anyways. Plus who wants to pay $1300 for a guitar thats only priced that much because it says Sprinteen's name on it?

Ok since we are posting picutures of teles heres mine!



Its a pawnshop special that I got for about $240. Its mexican made in 1990. The finish on the body is unique which makes me wonder if it was refinished or a different body. You might also notice that the control panel is flip flopped.  Well...I did that to make access to the volume knob easier. Its got a 5 way switch for pickup selection and goes like so.
1) Bridge only
2) Bridge and inner side of HB
3) Bridge and entire HB
4) Entire HB only
5) Outer HB only

When I first bought it, I noticed that the treble bleed resistor was already in there! Plus someone added a resistor (I forget the value) on the middle lug and outer lug of the volume pot. I really love this tele. The bridge pickup really puts out and is great for rock. The neck pickup I rarely use but can be good for bluesier and jazz stuff.  Im thinking about ordering brass saddles for it. Does this make that much of a difference to the sound or is it just for mojo? I love my tele. They are great guitars and are really easy and fun to mod.

[saultime]

Actually, I made this guitar not only to save money, but because Fender doesn’t make anything like it…there’s no Springsteen Signature Tele (I don't think he's made an endorsement deal in his entire career. He still sends his guitars to be worked on by the same guy he's been going to since he was 20.)

Ah, the reversed control panelâ€"that’s sometimes thought of as a Danny Gatton thingâ€"he was able to do these insane wah wah type swells.

And the brass saddlesâ€"I think it’s more than mojo if you’re into twang. But I don’t think your current bridge will accept them as a drop in replacement. The good thing is you can just get a vintage type bridge from Stew Mac for a little bit of nothing. Go ahead and order the compensated brass saddles too, for innotation’s sake.

[petemoore]

If you have humbuckers (even stacked ones), doing a series/parallel switch can be very cool. I have them on all my main guitars, and use them a LOT! Just a thought.
-Joe Hart

After some preliminary testing with 2 Spst's switching seriesed, then paralleled coils in/out, I'm definitely interested in looking at a series/Para switching scheme.
 I started thinking about it and that quickly led to thoughts of what it'd look like on paper, I haven't opened Exp Sch to draw up yet...
 Reducing output is certainly a noisier affair with this thing so far..

[ninoman123]

Oh yeah duh. Im dumb. I meant the 1952 Blond they make. Which is outrageously priced either way. If I decided to go to brass I would buy an entirely new bridge, but then again...I sometimes think I might go with a humbucker bridge. Ah who knows, so much to do so little time and money. Life really gets in the way of living sometimes.