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Pickup Suggestions for "Tele Junior" Build


DixonJern

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This is my first post to this forum and I’m excited to be joining everyone here at HC! I’m currently in the process of building my first guitar and I’m looking for suggestions for a bridge pickup. I don’t have a big budget so I’ve been looking at GFS but would also be open to looking for a good deal on a used pickup.

 

This guitar will be a chambered Tele style walnut body with a bolt on maple neck and fingerboard. The fingerboard is scalloped with stainless steel frets. Electronics wise I'll be setting it up like a Les Paul Junior, meaning a single pickup near the bridge with one volume and one tone. I don't play with a lot of gain and I'm looking for something that won't be too treble heavy that will have some nice and warm cleans, but that still has enough high end to drive an amp with some distortion and cut through a mix.

 

I'm open to any type of pickup (humbucker, single coil, P90, etc.) and am very curious to see what y'all suggest. Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!

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I'm not keen on single-coil hum, so I would get a double-coil pickup in the telecaster bridge pickup form factor. GFS hot rails for tele, don't they have a 'medium' wind? That should be less twangy than a "vintage" wind. Semour Duncan "Little '59" tele-sized humbucker might be nice, you can probably find one used.

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Thanks Mr.Grumpy! I’ve never played anything with a rail style Humbucker before. In general how would you compare their tone to a more traditional Humbucker?

 

Also I should mention (as I forgot to in the original post) I’ll be using an LP jr. style wraparound bridge, so I don’t have any limitation on pickup style or size.

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This is my first post to this forum and I’m excited to be joining everyone here at HC! I’m currently in the process of building my first guitar and I’m looking for suggestions for a bridge pickup. I don’t have a big budget so I’ve been looking at GFS but would also be open to looking for a good deal on a used pickup.

 

This guitar will be a chambered Tele style walnut body with a bolt on maple neck and fingerboard. The fingerboard is scalloped with stainless steel frets. Electronics wise I'll be setting it up like a Les Paul Junior, meaning a single pickup near the bridge with one volume and one tone. I don't play with a lot of gain and I'm looking for something that won't be too treble heavy that will have some nice and warm cleans, but that still has enough high end to drive an amp with some distortion and cut through a mix.

 

I'm open to any type of pickup (humbucker, single coil, P90, etc.) and am very curious to see what y'all suggest. Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!

 

Ever try a TV Jones Classic?

 

They run about 130 bucks.

 

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This is my first post to this forum and I’m excited to be joining everyone here at HC! I’m currently in the process of building my first guitar and I’m looking for suggestions for a bridge pickup. I don’t have a big budget so I’ve been looking at GFS but would also be open to looking for a good deal on a used pickup.

 

This guitar will be a chambered Tele style walnut body with a bolt on maple neck and fingerboard. The fingerboard is scalloped with stainless steel frets. Electronics wise I'll be setting it up like a Les Paul Junior, meaning a single pickup near the bridge with one volume and one tone. I don't play with a lot of gain and I'm looking for something that won't be too treble heavy that will have some nice and warm cleans, but that still has enough high end to drive an amp with some distortion and cut through a mix.

 

I'm open to any type of pickup (humbucker, single coil, P90, etc.) and am very curious to see what y'all suggest. Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!

 

Sounds like you're describing a guitar I built several years ago. Its got a walnut top and rosewood back and the sides are maple. All of the wood for the body came from antique furniture which was between 100~200 years old.

 

I went with a TOM bridge and tail piece because I wanted to use mini humbuckers. I'm glad I did because the walnut top is "Extremely" dense which makes it extremely bright sounding. The antique wood was dam near petrified. I burned out a Dremil routing the pickup holes.

 

The area around the pickup where the lacquer is missing was corrected after this photo was taken. it only had a preliminary coat before I loaded the hardware and took this picture. Its due for another coat now, I just been putting it off. I hate taking it down because I play it so much.

 

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[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","title":"New Guitar 2.jpg","data-attachmentid":32480222}[/ATTACH]

 

I do suggest you expand your options buying pickups. Guitar Fetish has been an Artec pickups reseller ever since they got their start selling on eBay. Check this out - http://artecsound.com/pickups/index.html

 

When reading the listings you'd think they are made by God instead of being dirt cheap Chinese imports. You can find eBay loaded with the exact same Artec pickups being sold at 1/2 and even 1/4 the prices.

 

There are a few sets that come fairly close to matching the stock pickups of budget guitars like Squire or Epiphone. None come close to sounding like premium pickups make by companies like Dimarzio and Duncan.

 

If you do buy from them, I'd advise staying away from anything hot wound unless you enjoy mud tones and limited frequency response.

 

Artec is not an advanced pickup manufacturer like a Dimarzio or Seymour Duncan where they balance magnet strength with coil impedance. They use the same magnets on a hot and vintage wound and the more winds they add the narrower the frequency response becomes. I collected several dozen sets of the hot wound during my repair and building days and every time swapped the hot sets for the vintage the instruments sounded far better. Do your research and check the specs. Besides you can buy all the Artec pickups you want on eBay for half the price of Guitar Fetish.

 

Check your specs, if they don't list them steer clear. A vintage Tele will have a Neck pickup with about 7.2k ohms and 2.45 Henries. The bridge will be closer to 6.6k and have 3.27 Henries

 

The first question you might ask is why the neck pickup has higher Henries but a lower resistance.

Henries = Turns vs Weber. Put simply its the AC inductance that determines how strong the output is, not the DC resistance.

 

The higher Henries in the bridge indicates a stronger inductance caused by more turns or wire. The DC resistance would make you think it has less turns then the neck. What's done here is the physical size of the bridge bobbin is much larger and they use more turns of thicker wire. Thick wire has less resistance, but more turns give it higher inductance. Add to that the magnet is larger on the bridge, it has a higher output then the neck does.

 

This is why its important to know what the Henrys and Resistance are. Budget pickups will likely only list the DC resistance but they will likely use the same wire diameters and the same magnets so its better then nothing. Most will only vary the number of turns to change strength and put less resistance on the neck pickup. As you can see above Fender used thinner wire on the neck which gave it a higher DC resistance but the smaller bobbin created a lower inductance too so its output was balanced with the larger bridge bobbin.

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Any particular genre' date=' tone, amp, guitar, guitarist, etc... in mind?[/quote']

 

Nothing too specific. My main amp is a fender blues junior. I’m a sucker for fuzz (think the intro to Sublime’s ‘We’re Only Gonna Die For Our Arrogance’) so I want something with enough low/mid to tame the walnut body. I don’t want too much ‘jangle’ or ‘twang’ on the cleans but would still like to be able to pull off a somewhat convincing reggae/ska/punk (think Rancid’s ‘Time Bomb).

 

I know that I’m asking a lot from a single pickup and that a lot of the variety has to come from my use of the controls, picking technique, etc. But I hope this helps give you an idea of the sounds I prefer.

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Sounds like you're describing a guitar I built several years ago. Its got a walnut top and rosewood back and the sides are maple. All of the wood for the body came from antique furniture which was between 100~200 years old.

 

I went with a TOM bridge and tail piece because I wanted to use mini humbuckers. I'm glad I did because the walnut top is "Extremely" dense which makes it extremely bright sounding. The antique wood was dam near petrified. I burned out a Dremil routing the pickup holes.

 

The area around the pickup where the lacquer is missing was corrected after this photo was taken. it only had a preliminary coat before I loaded the hardware and took this picture. Its due for another coat now, I just been putting it off. I hate taking it down because I play it so much.

 

[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","title":"New Guitar.jpg","data-attachmentid":32480221}[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","title":"New Guitar 2.jpg","data-attachmentid":32480222}[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks for the response! I do have a few questions about your guitar.

 

First, did you install the neck with a back angle to accommodate for the height of the TOM? I’ve been considering routing a small recess into the body for the bridge so that I can keep a flat neck angle.

 

Also, how would you compare the walnut tone wise to say a maple top?

 

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I can't help you with pickup choices, I'm pretty much a pickup dunce. I might be able to help you with your thinking process on your build. I've recently built two chambered solid body guitars and I am totally sold on that configuration. One was a flat topped screw on neck tele-clone, I didn't own a tele and thought I should add one to my quiver. It has very normal tele single coils (mine happen to be from StewMac because I had them in a box) and very normal tele geometry.

 

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The other was kind of a LP clone - it has a set neck and carved top (but not as deeply carved as a Lester because the blank wasn't as thick). This one got another set of StewMac pups, this time their Golden era PAF style. That guitar has moved on to live with a friend - he plays mostly classic rock on it.

 

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The things I want you to think about is

 

(1) chambering will reduce the weight 1-1/2 to 2 pounds. Chambering may make a very slight difference in the sound (I can tell you more if you are interested)

 

(2) mixing tele and LP parts and geometry can be tricky. TOM bridges stand prouder of the top than tele bridges - neck angle and/or overstand needs to be calculated. TOM's are almost always 12 inch radius, and often slightly narrower string spacing. Wrap around ToM's might limit your intonation choices.

 

(3) if you really want to emulate a LP Jr, they come in a couple of body style - single and double cut. They also typically have the body joint at the 18th fret which results in a short tenon. If you are going to do a screw on neck (sounds like it might be a commercial one) then carefully think about how you are going to route and reinforce the pocket, particularly if you are going to add some angle for the ToM.

 

I've got pictures of the insides of those guitars if you are interested in the chambering.

 

Ps - before I forget my manners, welcome to HCEG. Good luck, looking forward to watching your build. Please post pictures

 

 

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The things I want you to think about is

 

(1) chambering will reduce the weight 1-1/2 to 2 pounds. Chambering may make a very slight difference in the sound (I can tell you more if you are interested)

 

(2) mixing tele and LP parts and geometry can be tricky. TOM bridges stand prouder of the top than tele bridges - neck angle and/or overstand needs to be calculated. TOM's are almost always 12 inch radius, and often slightly narrower string spacing. Wrap around ToM's might limit your intonation choices.

 

(3) if you really want to emulate a LP Jr, they come in a couple of body style - single and double cut. They also typically have the body joint at the 18th fret which results in a short tenon. If you are going to do a screw on neck (sounds like it might be a commercial one) then carefully think about how you are going to route and reinforce the pocket, particularly if you are going to add some angle for the ToM.

 

I've got pictures of the insides of those guitars if you are interested in the chambering.

 

Ps - before I forget my manners, welcome to HCEG. Good luck, looking forward to watching your build. Please post pictures

 

 

Those are some beautiful guitars!

 

To respond to your points and to dive a little bit deeper into the layout I was planning:

 

(1) I am %100 percent sold on the idea of a chambered body and would love to see the insides of your creations. The walnut I'll be using is particularly heavy so any weight relief will be welcome and I've really enjoyed the sound of most of the chambered guitars I've heard.

 

(2/3) I'm a welder/fabricator for a living so I'm comfortable working with metal and was planning on getting a compensated wraparound like this one and filing some notches in the saddles to get to the 9.5 inch radius I need. This bridge in particular is adjustable for string spacing as well. Also the neck pocket will be standard Tele with no back angle and I will be routing a small cavity as seen in this picture to set the bridge at the correct height.

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Thank you so much for your input and I will definitely be starting a build thread soon!

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Nothing too specific. My main amp is a fender blues junior. I’m a sucker for fuzz (think the intro to Sublime’s ‘We’re Only Gonna Die For Our Arrogance’) so I want something with enough low/mid to tame the walnut body. I don’t want too much ‘jangle’ or ‘twang’ on the cleans but would still like to be able to pull off a somewhat convincing reggae/ska/punk (think Rancid’s ‘Time Bomb).

 

I know that I’m asking a lot from a single pickup and that a lot of the variety has to come from my use of the controls, picking technique, etc. But I hope this helps give you an idea of the sounds I prefer.

 

I'd try a standard PAF or hum cancelling P90. The tone trick is a clean/low gain booster following that. The right type will allow you to shape the signal and lower the signal level if you need to. The Chinese variety can be found for well under 50 bucks. There are even Klon clones in that bunch.

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A P100, which is basically a stacked humbucker in the guise of a P90, will "buck the hum" and with the addition of a push/pull, can be converted to a single for a bit of brightness and rock and roll "grrrr". Personally however, never been a fan of single pickup guitars, and prefer to have a neck pickup.

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To respond to your points and to dive a little bit deeper into the layout I was planning:

 

Thank you so much for your input and I will definitely be starting a build thread soon!

 

Here is a look at each of them during the routing. I did the LP thing first and it was mildly chambered, but still lost a pound and a half. I did have to keep enough of a center block for the mortise, pickups, bridge and tail piece

 

[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"medium","data-attachmentid":32480693}[/ATTACH]

 

Here is the tele thing. I was a bit more agressive with the chambering, it lost 2 pounds (everyone who picks it up comments). I think this is basically what a thin line looks like, I didn't do the f-hole in mine.

 

 

[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"medium","data-attachmentid":32480694}[/ATTACH]

 

Obviously this kind of chambering requires access to the insides - a cap or drop top is a big help, You could also do it from the back.

 

That is a very interesting bridge, I have not seen it before. Looks like is solves many of the issues related to a combination bridge and tailpiece.

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Thanks guys! Looks like a hum canceling P90 is a popular choice. Does anybody have one in particular that they would recommend?

 

Personally however' date=' never been a fan of single pickup guitars, and prefer to have a neck pickup.[/quote']

 

Funny enough I actually feel the same way. This guitar is going to be an experiment for me. I feel like I’ve been in a rut with my playing for quite some time now and something about a single pickup suddenly sounds appealing and terrifying all at once. Just the idea that I can’t rely on a toggle switch to change my sound; if I want a different tone I’ll have to PLAY different. I’m excited to use this guitar as a way to grow as a player and push myself out of my comfort zone.

 

Also (because the idea still scares me) I’ll be sure to leave myself the option to add a neck pickup down the road. (;

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The telecaster is along the lines of what I was thinking for my build. (I’ve actually come across these pictures in my research and used them as inspiration!) Do you notice a significant difference in resonance/sustain with the thinner sides of the telecaster compared to the Les Paul?

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Comparing them is apples and oranges - they are different in every way possible. On the other hand I have an interesting comparison on the Lester - I have built two LP clones that are alike in almost every way you can think - same or similar woods, same pups and electronics, same hardware, strings, yadda yadda. We sat down one night with the same amp and an A/B switch and played them side by side (same pick, settings on the amp, room, player......)

 

We agreed that there was detectable difference but couldn't define it. I did not do any frequency domain transforms or any other attempts to "analyse" what we were hearing.

 

The clips are at the bottom of page 6 of this

 

http://www.tdpri.com/threads/a-chambered-lpish-looking-thing.874641/page-6

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