Mini hum position in Tele

[Ed the Dog]

So, I have a Glbby mini hum in the neck of a Tele. The bridge is a nocaster. I like it a lot. I would like it better if I could switch the plate to have the volume up front for swells.

 

However, the wrapped wire from the pup is about 1/4 inch too short. If I flip the pup, then I'll have enough wire. Will this change the sound significantly with the pup screws pointing to the bridge instead of the neck?

 

Thanks for any response and have a happy new year.

 

Colin

[WRGKMC]

From your description it sounds like you're flipping the pickup end for end. Sound like you have it installed backwards anyway.

 

A pickup is normally installed so the wire is closest to the hole where it feeds to the control plate. Sounds like you have it crossing over to the other end under the pickups. This can be a problem, not only because it takes a longer wire, but it can get pinched under the pickup when adjusting the pickup height.

 

As far as the pickup causing any difference in hum or tone, it has no effect whatsoever.

 

With normal humbuckers which are wider, the pole adjustments screws are flipped to a different spot under the strings. Some say its enough where they can hear a difference but I've done it more times then I can count. Even if you contour the screws to the string radius, the difference is negligible.

 

The screws move even less with a mini HB when you flip it so the change is purely cosmetic.

 

Some guitars using three full sized HB's might be influenced by having the magnetic poles flipped because the fields are close together and can repel or attract but the separation between a single bridge pup and a Mini on a Tele wont matter at all.

 

I do like having the control plate swapped on a Tele myself. You may also want to try wiring the pickups to separate pots too. This lets you adjust the pickup gains differently and you get a much wider range of tones in the middle position, especially with the Mini HB which has a string output. You lose the tone control but what you gain by having two volumes is much more beneficial. You'd want to wire them like a Gibson too so turning one volume all the way down silences both.

 

The other mod many like installing a 4 way switch. The 4th position puts the pickups in series for some boosted driven tones.

 

If the Mini is a real Gibson pickup its two wire, shield and core. You cant run them in series because they will produce too much hum and converting the pickup to a 3 or 4 wire us risky and difficult so I don't advise trying it. If its a generic, they usually come with 4 wires which allows you to wire it in series so a 4 way switch will work. You could use a 5 way switch and have both the series and split coil setting. The split coil would give you a traditional Tele tone.

 

You have to be careful buying generic Mini's too. There are so many that are hot wound or use ceramic magnets which sound like total garbage

There is only one seller on EBay I've found that makes a mini that's as good as a Gibson. It uses alnico 4 magnets, has a traditional 6.3K ohms and has a 3 henry inductance. They are the only ones out of dozens I've tried that sound like real Mini HB's. The rest are overwound garbage that produce mud tones and have too much gain. The key to a mini is it cleans up when you turn them down from 10 to 8 on a volume knob and retain some brightness which makes them sound like P90's when you turn them down a little and a HB edge fully cranked.