Beefing up my tele

[blackys]

Hi guys, I have some questions for you.

I'm not very knowledgable about pickups or hardware, but I want to beef my tele sound up to be able to play heavier rock, everything from 80's hard rock to modern rock such as audioslave, foo fighters, radiohead and such, without losing too much of the base tele sound, and I still want to be able to play blues and have good cleans. Too much to ask for eh?

Right now my MIM tele has stock pickup in bridge but dimarzio twang king in neck (use that one for jazz, I only have 2 guitars so I want it to be very versatile). From what I have read online, people seem to be recommending single coil humbuckers such as Seymour Duncan Little 59' for bulkier and heavier tone, what is your opinion?

Btw, I don't know the difference between 250k and 500k pots but someone mentioned that 500k would work better with the Little '59 than 250k, if so I have no problem with changing that up, but will that negatively affect the sound of Twang King neck pickup?

Thx

 

[Schaf]

Hi guys, I have some questions for you.

I'm not very knowledgable about pickups or hardware, but I want to beef my tele sound up to be able to play heavier rock, everything from 80's hard rock to modern rock such as audioslave, foo fighters, radiohead and such, without losing too much of the base tele sound, and I still want to be able to play blues and have good cleans. Too much to ask for eh?

Right now my MIM tele has stock pickup in bridge but dimarzio twang king in neck (use that one for jazz, I only have 2 guitars so I want it to be very versatile). From what I have read online, people seem to be recommending single coil humbuckers such as Seymour Duncan Little 59' for bulkier and heavier tone, what is your opinion?

Btw, I don't know the difference between 250k and 500k pots but someone mentioned that 500k would work better with the Little '59 than 250k, if so I have no problem with changing that up, but will that negatively affect the sound of Twang King neck pickup?

Thx

I have a tele with a hot rails in it. It sounds great but doesn't sound like a tele. I was going to put an SD quarter pounder with coil tap. That way you can go for a high output tone and tap it for more traditional tele tones. Although, I love the demo that Richie Kotzen does for the Dimarzio chopper t. It sounds very cool.

 

[cardinal]

I have a hardtail Strat with a Lollar Special S at the bridge (so maybe a Tele-ish guitar). When I want to beef it up for that type of stuff, I use either a CAE boost pedal and/or an OD pedal (Maxon OD808 is getting the most use these days). That leaves the stock single coil there for chicken' picken' and quack and whatever but will make the bridge single coil throw down some pretty mean high gain stuff.

 

[rupe]

None of the single sized buckers will sound like a Tele...you need to stick with a single coil or stacked bucker if you want to maintain that sound. I would go with a hotter single coil and boost it with a pedal or add an onboard preamp boost for your bigger, fatter tones.

 

[John4021]

I put Bare Knuckle Piledrivers in my 52 re-issue.
I aint going to back to the stock pickups if that tells you anything.

Roll back the volume and still get twangy/Rolling stones Keef tones.

Bare Knuckles sound clips are pretty spot on if you need a way to judge there pickups.

 

[Spaceboy]

use your tone knob

i play in a grunge inspired band on a tele

bridge humbuckers ruin the tele flavor

 

[sytharnia1560]

I was going to put an SD quarter pounder with coil tap. That way you can go for a high output tone and tap it for more traditional tele tone.

SD quarter pounds are only 2 wires so you can't split them can you?

 

[Anonymous]

i JUST rewired my Gaines Custom tele last week. It's a basswood body with birdseye maple top, maple neck with a rosewood fingerboard, has a single coil slot in the bridge and a ken lawrence vintage C alnico 5 humbucker in the neck (which im either replacing, or swapping the magnet out of) and a wilkinson compensated bridge with brass saddles.

stock, the guitar had 250k volume and tone pots. i replaced those with 1meg push/pull pots (audio taper for volume and linear for tone). put a .002 treble bleed across the volume pot and left the stock .047 tone cap on the tone knob. 250k pots on for me were too dark and bland. i skipped 500k and wanted to try 1meg as i already had a ballpark how 500k would sound with these pickups.

i have the following configurations now available to me due to the wiring i posted below.

forward: bridge (pull volume bridge outer coil only) (pull tone bridge in phase -- tone in or pushed is OUT of phase)

middle: bridge and neck in parallel (pull volume is bridge outer and neck inner coils in parallel) (pull tone is bridge in phase with full neck pickup in parallel and sounds very stratty clean ------ tone IN or PUSH puts the bridge pickup out of phase with neck in parallel and sounds very quacky with clean sounds)

back: neck (pull volume is neck inner coil only) (tone pull/push has no effect on neck pickup)

in the diagram, if you have the green wired on the "in" lug as shown, it will go to ground and be IN phase with the knob IN ( IN IN IN lol ). i switched them, as i wanted my bridge pickup OUT of phase in the IN position, but when you go to the middle position, its back in phase with the neck pickup. if you dont grasp pickup wiring, what im referring to on the duncan bridge pickup wiring is the green and black wires in the diagram. you can switch those and see what results you like to hear better.



with this wiring, i still get a lot of tele honk, snap and general "tele-ness", yet tons of different tones to play with also...all just by adding the push pull volume and tone pots and wiring it the way shown. if your pickups have 4 wires, you might want to try this one!



oh, also, some good info on treble bleeds!

https://www.seymourduncan.com/forum/show ... -capacitor

my Gaines Custom stock:
https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos ... 4924_n.jpg

 

[thenine]

check out the Dimarzio Area Hot T. Will do what you want. Single coil sized with good beef, cleans up well, will keep the tele tone, no 60 cycle hum.

 

[mchn13]

I used a seymour duncan "hot for tele" in mine.. Still a single but about 15k if i remember right. Sounded killer with some gain. Fwiw, i think the stock teles sound great for heavier stuff.

Steve

 

[Schaf]

I was going to put an SD quarter pounder with coil tap. That way you can go for a high output tone and tap it for more traditional tele tone.

SD quarter pounds are only 2 wires so you can't split them can you?

They have two models. One is three wire and can be split for lower output. I just bought a SD hot tele to replace the hot rails I have. The hot tele I have, can be split as well. I think it cuts it from like 15 ohms to 9. So, split is a more traditional output.

Just for the record, the quarter pounder is suppose to sound more like a P90 unless it's split.