Question about Installing a Bridge P-Rails in a Fender Modern Player Telecaster

[greypilgrim76]

You can reverse the leads on the neck pickup and leave the Triple Shot wiring the way it is.

This would definitely be an easy way to get the neck and bridge working together without messing with the Triple Shot wiring, but would it cause issues with the middle p/up?

Also, the rail of the Triple Shot is closest to a Hot Rails pickup, which is pretty far away from an actual Tele pickup. It has a lot more mids, and doesn't really twang. Using the Triple Shot, I think the entire pickup in parallel might even be closer to an actual Tele sound.

Yeah, it's definitely not gonna be classic Tele, but I figure it's worth the tradeoff to get the P-90, too. The basic story of the MP Telecaster is "jack of all trades, master of none." Which is fine for now. (And a great reason to get more guitars later!)

[Mincer]

You can reverse the leads on the neck pickup and leave the Triple Shot wiring the way it is. Also, the rail of the Triple Shot is closest to a Hot Rails pickup, which is pretty far away from an actual Tele pickup. It has a lot more mids, and doesn't really twang. Using the Triple Shot, I think the entire pickup in parallel might even be closer to an actual Tele sound.

[greypilgrim76]

Hi All,

I'm getting ready to make some changes to my Fender Modern Player Telecaster Plus, and though I think I've got the bulk of them sorted, I have a few concerns about pickup magnet polarity and the matchup of some pickups. I figured I'd throw them out there and see if anyone has any thoughts.

Basically, I'm planning to replace the stock bridge humbucker in the Tele with a bridge P-Rails using a Triple Shot mount, and I'm also going to replace the coil-split switch for the humbucker with an neck-on switch so that I can get the bridge and neck p/ups on at the same time. (The current wiring doesn't allow for that.) I've got all of the wiring sorted, I think, but I have a couple of concerns about matching the new pickup with the others correctly.

First, I know that Fender pickups are reverse polarity from SD pickups, so I think I need to swap the hot and ground wires from the Triple Shot to the switch/pot. Is that correct?

Second, while I know that with this setup I can pair the other two pickups with the P-Rails in all of its permutations, I'm most interested in pairing the neck Tele pickup with the P-Rails rail to get something approaching a traditional middle-switch Tele sound. (I know it won't be quite the same. That's okay.) I'm not sure which magnet in the P-Rails would be hum canceling with the neck Fender pickup as it comes from the SD factory. Does anyone know if it'd be the rail or the P-90, keeping in mind that the Fender neck pickup will be the reverse of a SD neck pickup? And if it's NOT the rail, is there a way to wire the P-Rails to the Triple Shot so that it IS the rail?

Third, if I'm wanting to get the rail as close to a bridge Tele sound as possible, does anyone have a recommendation about whether to install it normally or turn it around so that the rail is closer to the bridge than the P-90? And if I DID turn it around, does that affect the wiring or polarity?

Okay, I think that's it. Hopefully, somebody out there knows a bit more about these things than I do.

-GP