View Poll Results: What pickup would you prefer on a "jazz" Tele?
- Voters
- 141. You may not vote on this poll
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Single coil
79 56.03% -
Humbuckering
48 34.04% -
Other (please explain)
14 9.93%
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You know what would probably sound awesome in tele neck position? A johnny smith. I emailed Lollar once to ask if they'd do a custom johnny smith that I could mount in a mini humbucker ring and they said yes. I just don't have a husk for it.
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03-04-2021 01:55 AM
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Lollar Charlie Christian sounds pretty darned good on a T-type.
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Originally Posted by omphalopsychos
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I really like a P90 in the neck on my Tele - for any style of music, but it's a great jazz sound to my ears.
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I've toyed around with the idea of putting a mini-humbucker in my Tele and talked to my luthier about this - he cautioned me : if I combine a humbucker with a normal single coil (I'd leave the original pup in the bridge) I'll have "problems" with the pot (and resistor cap)-values and their reactance with the different types of pickup when I switch to the middle position. If I'd only use the neck pup exclusively it would be ok to match the circuit to THIS one pup but it would not be the adequate choice for both. How do you guys solve this ?
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Originally Posted by gitman
I don't know what pots are in the Fender Hot Rod Tele, but they came stock with a mini-humbucker and a single coil in the bridge. They sounded amazing as well. Might want to see if you can dig up the specs on what they used?
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It's been done many times , I know - John Suhr also offers this combination and many others too. Since a humbucker wants to "see" a different pot-resistance than an single coil there has to be some electrical trickery involved in order to have both pickups work/sound like we want them to sound. Guess a letter to John Suhr will solve this.
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Originally Posted by gitman
For what it's worth, Fender sells a volume pot for just such a situation; it has both 500k and 250k on a dual-ganged pot, and might be a good idea for those who use a humbucking neck pickup:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/0990847000--fender-dual-500k-250k-split-shaft-potentiometer
This will solve your problem at minimal cost and without any trouble.
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I say a Seth Lover Humbucker or a Charie Christian style!
I have a Seth in mine but love the CC Humbucker size single by Pete Biltoft is fantastic in my hollow body Guild and I bet would be sweet in a tele!
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Anybody put a Jazzmaster pickup into a Tele neck position?
Or a P90?
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Any pickup will do. A jazz-tone comes from playing jazz not from specific equipment. There's also a wide span of what people consider to be jazz. As a rule of thumb – play too many notes and there's a good chance that people say "that's jazz". ;-)
Honestly every pickup will do as long as you have the right ampification to get nice, round tone.
Personally I used single coils (Fender Nocaster, American OVs) blades (Joe Barden) and TV Jones Powertrons on tele style guitars and each of them would do. I have a slight preference for the single coils as these can be clear AND warm – well balanced.
On hollowbodys I also tried P90s (also single coils) as well as the mini humbuckers and full size humbuckers of my Ibanez. Like them all with a slight preference for the floating minis on the GB10.
So maybe a mini humbucker would be a good "do it all" option?
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You don't have to choose, you can have both in the same guitar. Single coils with series wiring in the middle position.
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Here is the humbucker mod:
How to get two more sounds out of your Fender Telecaster - YouTube
Ironically humbucker here doesn't mean hum-canceling. Both parallel and series can be hum cancelling only if the pickups are in RWRP configuration, otherwise no hum canceling (potentially hum doubling).
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I don't think anyone's discussed the many setup options for a humbucker yet in this thread. A given pickup may sound different enough in multiple guitars to matter, if only because the harmonic spectrum of a vibrating string will be altered by the guitar's setup as well as the resonances and attentuations of different harmonics in and by different woods, weights, etc. Stringing through the holes in the back of a Tele style tailpiece will alter the string's sound compared to running them through the body. A 3 saddle bridge will sound different from a Hipshot, etc.
So even if it were true that a pickup will sound the same in any solid body guitar if it's sensing the exact same sound from the string, the sonic output of a string can be very different even between two guitars of similar construction. And when you throw in the possible amplifiers and speakers you could use, it's very hard to generalize that any pickup is "best" for jazz. But there are several options available on a humbucker. If you install it with switching, you can select among coil splits, taps, phase etc to tailor your tone precisely and dial it in as you like it. A coil splitting switch basically turns your HB into a SC. If you have a pair of humbuckers on a Tele with coil splits and phase switches on both, you have a wide variety of sounds. Many jazz players ignore or are unaware of these options for most modern humbuckers.
The Carvin 727 that I sold a few weeks ago had a coil split and a phase switch. Each pup could be a SC or a HB. You could put them out of phase either internally or between pickups. You can also use dual volume controls to blend different sounds from two pickups for an amazing variety. I'd set up my last 6 string Tele with a pair of Duncan Hot Rails wired with push-push pots for phase reversal, along with minitoggles for coil splits. It could pump a fat, classic jazz tone from a small speaker cab or become a clean, woody P90 even through a big cab with a full bottom. And it still did the Tele thing if I needed it.
One tip I discovered if you try this out is that (before thinking it through) I chose push-push pots because they don't protrude any further than standard ones. Push-pull pots stick out when in the "out" position, which I didn't like. But there are 2 sides to every story and I didn't consider the pros and cons. Push-push pots are better because they don't stick out and are harder to accidentally push. But push-pull pots are better because you can tell how they're set just by sight or feel, so there's no question of how you'll sound when you start the next tune. You have to decide which +s and -s are more important to you before choosing.
Especially if you're building a partscaster or ordering a custom Tele style guitar, I'd urge giving strong consideration to humbuckers with the above options.
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Lollar on my Tele...been using it for 10 years .....a great jazz sound.
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Which Lollar?
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Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
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Charlie christian
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Humbucker or Mini Humbucker
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Originally Posted by mrventures
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Originally Posted by Robertito
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^ Above
Originally Posted by gitman
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My jazz tele has a Lollar 50ies P90 at the neck and a ceramic sc-sized humbucker at the bridge. 500K pots, .022uf tone cap. Treble bleed at the volume pot (resistor and cap parallel, can’t remeber the exact values).
It sounds just fine in the middle position! The bridge humbucker has around the same output athough, around 7.5K and they are RWRP…
To answer the original question: I like a P90 at the neck for jazz on a Tele. But I recently built a 50ies specs Tele with a standard Tele neck pickup (alnico5 magnets) and in all honesty: that sounds great for jazz as well!Last edited by Little Jay; 05-10-2022 at 12:31 AM.
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Honestly I don't think you can go wrong with Fender's Pure Vintage '64 set. Both pickups sound fantastic, and for about $130 for both.
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I prefer Singlecoils for my playing, others may prefer Humbuckers.
Telecasters with Humbuckers sound somehow wrong to me, but that’s totally personal taste. On my last build I use a Häussel Broad neck pickup that sounds unbelievable good. A standard Telecaster neck pickup but wired to a class of its own.
I also love my signature Tele Neck Pickup wired by David Barfuss, a custom design with Alnico 5 Jazzbassmagnets and many many windings. The pickup is a tad higher than usual and delivers a very mighty yet clean tone that resembles old Dynasonics and CC‘s, still retaining Telecaster vibe. Very cool too.
My conclusion- find a pickup that transfers the unplugged tone of your guitar as good as possible with a tonal character you like. And don‘t forget the influence of the guitars wiring!
Sonny S. -- Les Paul Player
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