Telecaster Love Thread, No Archtops Allowed

[neatomic]

hah...why you always need more than one tele...one for flats, one for rounds...i even like the idea of one with james burton 8-38's!!! singular tone!!!

cheers

[jazzbow]

Looks fantastic, this is pretty much exactly the mod I am thinking of doing (trying to choose between the CV custom and the CV thinline as a base) so I would love to hear how it sounds. Also how much of a pain was it to do - did you have to enlarge the neck pickup rout in order to fit the CC.

All modern Telecasters have a humbucker rout so I put in a vintage vibe humbucker sized Charlie Christian type pickup.
Simple!

[Geert]

Looks fantastic, this is pretty much exactly the mod I am thinking of doing (trying to choose between the CV custom and the CV thinline as a base) so I would love to hear how it sounds. Also how much of a pain was it to do - did you have to enlarge the neck pickup rout in order to fit the CC.

The neck pickup rout fits the Lollar CC no routing is needed.
The hardest part was cutting the pickguard.. without the suitable tools to do it

[Herbie]

The neck pickup rout fits the Lollar CC no routing is needed.
The hardest part was cutting the pickguard.. without the suitable tools to do it

Hah! Anybody can be a luthier with right tools, but the real art is to make them with wrong tools!

Every great guitar builder has started on the kitchen table with a dull knife and a too big hammer!

(I am in that phase still...)

[Geert]

Hah! Anybody can be a luthier with right tools, but the real art is to make them with wrong tools!

Every great guitar builder has started on the kitchen table with a dull knife and a too big hammer!

(I am in that phase still...)

Right! dull exacto knife, and lots of filing afterwards....
But it turned out oke, and working on your own guitar is allways satisfying.

I remember using a piece of my sons mecano to make a pickguard bracket for my Loar.
It still holds after 8+ years

[christianm77]

First guy to make an archtop out of Lego gets the Special Prize.

[jazzbow]

First guy to make an archtop out of Lego gets the Special Prize.

Well?


ES 355 with bigsby


And amplifier...

But keeping with Telecasters...

[guido5]

Does anyone have preference one way or another on the Tele or Humbucking formats of the Lollar Charlie Christian pickup? I'm going to build a Warmoth Tele so I have a clean-ish sheet of paper. I want to get the best version and plan the right route for it...

[pants]

Does anyone have preference one way or another on the Tele or Humbucking formats of the Lollar Charlie Christian pickup? I'm going to build a Warmoth Tele so I have a clean-ish sheet of paper. I want to get the best version and plan the right route for it...

I personally used the original hexagon version as a) I like the aesthetic and b) I found a new "used" one on Reverb for a pretty good chip off the original price. I've not had personal experience with the HB sized version but I've heard people praise it just as highly.

[jazzbow]

Does anyone have preference one way or another on the Tele or Humbucking formats of the Lollar Charlie Christian pickup? I'm going to build a Warmoth Tele so I have a clean-ish sheet of paper. I want to get the best version and plan the right route for it...

Hey Mr G.

I have the Vintage Vibe CC pickup in humbucker size. I originally got it for a slim line hollow body...



I absolutely love this pickup. It spent time on a Strat for demo purposes. I don't have a picture of that unfortunately.

A quick note on the Vintage Vibe pickups, in case you didn't know, is that you can easily swap out the magnets and you can get any shape/style of pickup in that configuration. I ended up with AlNiCo 2 magnets. As testament to these pickups I have now put it into 3 guitars now. Just solder it in and away I go!

So now it resides in a Squier custom Tele classic vibe thingumy...


It's now got a SD custom AlNiCo 2 bridge pickup and a 4 way switch mod to compliment it.

I would say that the original thinner style pickup shape would be easier to place under the 24th fret harmonic point, the humbucker blade is a 3rd of an inch south. Does it make a difference? Can you buy faery dust and moonbeams? Probably.

So I bought the Tele for the pickup, funny that! I have played around with the 5 way switch mod but settled for the 4 way.
The extra bass cut mode on the 5 way was ok it, was located after the bridge position and I would accidentally drop into it when I really wanted spikey channg. There's quite a difference between spikey channg and woolly chunng.

But I do like the aesthetic of the humbucker size...


But it must have a pickup ring to truly pull it off, just like Mr Bickerts.....


It just looks right to me.

But a final thought on the humbucker size CC pickup;
I have the pickup quite low down in the body to balance it out as it is a blade polepiece. Importantly the coil is the size of the pickup and that increases the area in which the pickup senses the string vibration (if you look at original Jazzmaster pickups they have a massive coil and a unique tonal character too).
Pete Biltoft of Vintage Vibe can shape the blade to your string radii and importantly get a notch in the B string area as it comes out quite loud through an amp without the notch.
Now I didn't get the right radii or notch on my CC but wow, it has tonality in spades!

Hope this helps

[JoePassFan]

I bought a few new Telecasters recently. Three or four of them being copies. Just one Fender.. a Standard in Candy Apple Red. I just got it last week. I've only been playing it for about an hour but so far it seems great.. a really nice playing Telecaster. I'll try and grab a few pictures of it soon and post to the thread. Definitely my favourite Fender.. I never really got on with Strats the same way I do with Telecasters.

[destinytot]

My Tele's found its natural habitat:

[jazzbow]

Scofield's out in his UberJam band with the biting Ibanez Tele.

Yes found a novel way of storing his picks. See if you can figure if out!

[roegtr]

Playing a little jazz on this newer am.special Tele with an 80s Gibson paf humbucker. Going through a Fender Super Champ x2. D'addario chromes with an unwound third.

[madbanjoman]

What I have been playing lately. A tele copy with an maple arch top and semi hollow mahogany body and 3 p90 pickups. It has 3 volume knobs and one tone knob. With the middle pickup volume turned off the 3 way switch is like a traditional tele. With it rolled up you can get all three and the two in between. I have been favoring the neck and middle on with the tone rolled down a bit.

[madbanjoman]

This one is a 1999 American made G&L ASAT Classic Thin-line. I replaced the bridge with a Fender classic three barrel bridge. Where I really departed the norm was the electronics. It has two Bill Lawrence Wilde noiseless pickups that are very clean. I have 5-way switch and a blend knob that allows 7 different combinations. From the bridge to neck:
bridge/bridge and neck out of phase in series - neck and bridge out of phase parallel/neck - neck with tone cap/neck - neck and bridge parallel in phase/neck - bridge/bridge and neck in series and in phase. For jazz I get a choice of a neck single cool sound or a neck humbucker sound.

[jazzbow]

. Where I really departed the norm was the electronics. It has two Bill Lawrence Wilde noiseless pickups that are very clean. I have 5-way switch and a blend knob that allows 7 different combinations. From the bridge to neck.

How do MBJM.

Yeah, that 5 way mod is really cool. The tone cut for the neck pickup makes for a useable rhythm sound. Have you considered the Q filter tone mod? Put in a switch twixt Q filter and tone cap and the tonality is endless!

Have you ever seen Mr Lawrence's video on the Wilde pickups f/book page where he uses the neck pickup on a Tele as a tone capacitor? And his work on magnetic fields with different bridge plate materials?

I find it amazing that a simple guitar like a telecaster can provide endless electronic possibilities with just two pickups.

For myself on my Squier Tele I fell in love with CC pickup and.... (see previous posts). I was noodling away through a frankensteined micro cube last night and try as I did I could not find a bad sound with that guitar.

[madbanjoman]

How do MBJM.

Yeah, that 5 way mod is really cool. The tone cut for the neck pickup makes for a useable rhythm sound. Have you considered the Q filter tone mod? Put in a switch twixt Q filter and tone cap and the tonality is endless!

Have you ever seen Mr Lawrence's video on the Wilde pickups f/book page where he uses the neck pickup on a Tele as a tone capacitor? And his work on magnetic fields with different bridge plate materials?

I find it amazing that a simple guitar like a telecaster can provide endless electronic possibilities with just two pickups.

For myself on my Squier Tele I fell in love with CC pickup and.... (see previous posts). I was noodling away through a frankensteined micro cube last night and try as I did I could not find a bad sound with that guitar.

I have another set of Wilde pickups in a Heritage H140 les paul copy with the Q-filter connected to two knobs with other two knobs as master volume and tone. I love what the q-filter does to those pickups. I had the privilege of getting both the q-filter and the pickups along with a wiring diagram from Bill after having a long talk with him on the phone about what I was looking for in a guitar sound. I don't remember if I saw the video you referred to or not. If I did, it was a long time ago and worth watching again. Bill was a fascinating person to talk to. When I bought these pickups, you ordered by phone and usually got his wife Becky, but if you had questions Bill was willing to chat a while about what was clearly a passionate subject for him.

[jazzbow]

So has any Tele fan here tried the Reverend Pete Anderson Eastsider T?







There's a lot to like here, most notably a 43mm nut width and a compound radius 10" to 14".
Other points being chambered Korina body, out of phase switch, dual action truss rod, pin lock tuners and alnico 5 magnets in vintage voiced pickups.


Here's a look at the tone chambers, enough space for a CC pickup in the neck. I'm in!

The story goes that Pete Anderson (PA) wanted a T style signature guitar but the F boys couldn't come up with the goods.
Reverend had already had a hollow body Pete Anderson signature guitar so they took on the job of building one for him.
Joe Naylor wanted to use the Buckshot as the platform for the new series but PA wanted a traditional T style guitar.
So Joe Naylor decided to make the best T style guitar he could.


The Reverend Buckshot, Tele DNA for an interesting take.

One way to view the Eastsider T guitar would be as a paternal relative of the telecaster, much like the G&L ASAT classic.
Therefore the Reverend Buckshot and G&L special would be of the same gene pool with a twist!

So anyone try one of these?

[destinytot]

Playing a little jazz on this newer am.special Tele with an 80s Gibson paf humbucker. Going through a Fender Super Champ x2. D'addario chromes with an unwound third. <br>

Among the most compelling playing I've ever heard. Thank you!

[roegtr]

Hey
thanks for the comment sir!
I replaced the original pickup since it was very bright and I had the Gibson paf laying around. However, I've been thinking of possibly getting a TK Smith CCII to get more of an old school sound. The paf has a very round tone and especially so with the 250k volume pot. It works pretty well for jazz.
I did write in the description of the clip that it's quite bright, but listening back, I think it's not too bad.

[Blackbox]

Hi, I’m new to this forum, to say hello to all Tele aficionados. Picture shows my 52 RI Hot Rod Deluxe Tele and Vox AC 15 (there is also a pair of f-holes in the background though ...). I like it reading around here, very interesting.

[Naquat]

Yeah, the stock pickup sounded horrible on mine too. I thought it was the pickup but if your having the same trouble then there must be some sort of voodo from the CC pickup. I cured the problem by replacing it with a Duncan AlNiCo 2 bridge pickup as the CC pickup I have has an AlNiCo 2 magnet in it too.

In case it has not been mentioned. Many of the tele style bridge pups have a metal plate and are grounded to the bridge plate. In that case you can't reverse the wiring but you can reverse the Lollar CC wiring so you will NOT get that funky "Out of Phase" sound like a 70's phase shifter. LOL

[jazzbow]

In case it has not been mentioned. Many of the tele style bridge pups have a metal plate and are grounded to the bridge plate. In that case you can't reverse the wiring but you can reverse the Lollar CC wiring so you will NOT get that funky "Out of Phase" sound like a 70's phase shifter. LOL

Hiya.

The Duncan has a copper metal plate too. The problem was the hot lead from the VV CC Rider was hanging on to the pickup literally by a thread.

Also the original Squier bridge pickup didn't like having the ground to the plate resoldered to a seperate ground wire whereas the Duncan alnico ll took to this mod in its stride without problem.

The Tele bridge unit is supposed to work efficiently with its bridge cover in place in conjunction with the copper pickup base plate. I can't tell the difference.

If you check out Bill Lawrence on the 'net, search out his paper on electro conductance using different materials and thicknesses for a Telecaster bridge plate. It makes my head swirl but it's interesting reading.

[Greentone]

roetgr,

I like the sound of your Telecaster in the Donna Lee clip. The playing is slick, too! You know, whatever pickup you put in there--it will still sound like a Telecaster--BUT, it does tame some of the single-coil treble friskiness on the Tele when you put a humbucker in there.

Nicely done.