Clean tight and sweet

[hamerfan]

To make it short: a long scale guitar won't ever sound muddy with pickups made for short scale guitars.

[Despair]

My favorite neck pickup for a tele is a Firebird pickup. Articulate, bright but not harsh, great clean or distorted. I'd expect it to behave much the same for a baritone.

I'd probably pair that with a Kinman tele bridge & strat middle for a Nashville setup, if wanting to stick to expanded tele tones. But I loathe hum, there are plenty of people that would argue for cheaper and more readily available in the US standard single coils.


There's a lot of other great options for articulate pickups. Jazz set is known for being articulate. You could also do a Full Shred neck to ensure there's no bloated low end.

Parallel Axis, stacks if you want a single coil sound, or PATB-1n neck humbucker & PATB-3 Blues Saraceno bridge humbucker are great choices for articulate with maximum sustain (the poles not being directly under the string, but rather either side, combined with softer magnetic field, is great for sustain, and harmonics).

And the Railhammers look like a really interesting option. For your needs, I'd probably stick with the Hyper Vintage.

And Wylde's L500, L45S, and L48T pickups are great options, too. The singles are a great alternative to Bardens (and are what his design was influenced by), and a lot cheaper.

TV Jones has a lot of great Filter'Tron options, and those could be great fun as well. Tend towards twangy, but in a Gretsch rather than Tele fashion. And like all the options I've suggested/seconded, they're known to work well for fingerpicking.


Other options to consider are piezo or hexaphonic pickup system under the bridge saddles. With appropriate IR/parametric EQ/amp, can be a fantastic option for another clean texture, that can do a very convincing approximation of a live amplified acoustic guitar tone (minus the tendency for unwanted feedback in some rigs/venues...).

[pjd3]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, gives me some good things to go listen to, and listen for. The suggestion for the 59 makes me wonder if say, an Antiquity or low wind/low output A2 pickup would be good for the bridge position. And one with 4-conductor for versatility. Surely, if you don't know how a bridge will mix with a neck then its probably good to be able to ser/par/split both pickups individually and see what the large list of possible combinations bring. And a middle pickup, or close to the bridge pickup certainly isn't out of the question. I have to wonder how something like a mid pickup with a bridge coil cut with a neck in parallel would sound. So many combinations that way. Sounds like an awesome venture. One time I modded my Strat to smithereens - added a JB junior right above the bridge, ser/par with itself, with the Strat pickups and 2 out of phase switches, then a separate output just for the JB junior. Didn't get around to doing alot with it but proved to myself that I could do it. It was a fun exercise in over-doing it. As it turned out, I felt Fender got it right the first time around! The best and most useful tones were the stock pickup configs - for me.
I have plans for making this guitar very artsy, in terms of wooden and metal appointments on the body, ash, wood burning, engraved celtic knots and Trees of Life , So I can use having an incling of what pickups will be there to design around them, making things fit.

Thanks again for good things to think about and listen to. It all pushes this project ahead,

Best,
Phil Donovan

[Gtrjunior]

I'm somewhat surprised that I'm responding to this thread.. I have very little baritone experience so I was reading with the intent of learning more.

But following up mincers suggestion of antiquity humbucker sparked a thought for the bridge...

Currently, the most clear and tight humbucker that I know of is a railhammer hyper vintage... Many Reverend guitars are based around this pickup but they also sell them separately..

The reason the hypervantage jumped to mind is the unusual construction. It has bars for the bass strings and way oversized poles for the treble. As a result the base is ultra tight however the treble is clear and smooth... Think of telecaster bridge high-end but with more sustain and body and in my mind that would be a great sound for a baritone.

And here's the big bonus.. it is extremely good at parallel to self... When parallel it loses some mid-range but keeps the bass and treble... Of course no humbucker sounds exactly like a single coil however there's been many times that I found this a better bridge tone then my strats and telies.

With that said, I would sure like to hear somebody try one of these pups in a baritone!

https://www.guitarcenter.com/Railham...saArheEALw_wcB

You bring up a good suggestion.
From the OP’s description I’m thinking he wants the low end (bass strings) response of a humbucker with the high end of a single coil.
Now I don’t exactly know if there is something in the market that aims to achieve this but to me, that’s a good starting point.
Some sort of humbucker/single could hybrid sounds ideal to me.

Also, to the OP.
You mentioned a series/parallel option. I think this is a good idea. I personally find that option much more usable than a coil split. Plus, you get the added benefit of no hum.

[elelpe]

I'd go with Wilde pickups by Bill Lawrence for clarity. I have two Teles equipped with them, one with single coils, another with noise-free rails. I'm sure they excel in longer scale length too.

[Mincer]

A Jazz set won't have any congestion in the mids either. That's a great fingerpicking set if you play complex, dense chords. You can hear each voice really well.

[Teleplayer]

I'd suggest a SH-1n '59 Neck pickup, or maybe '59 set. The 59 in the bridge position will be really bright, but maybe work well when you put the selector in middle position.

If you are finger picking for clean tones, I thought you would mainly use the neck pickup.

[Demanic]

How about the Scott Ian El Diablo, the one with two A2 bar magnets? It's usually used with distortion but I bet that it sounds great clean as well.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk

[pjd3]

I listened around to some of the recommendations posted here and found the Humbucker from Hell to be quite nice and check a few of the boxes in response and tone. There was no congestion of lower mids and no mud to be heard. It sounded stringy and sweet with good dynamics - kinda what I'll be going after. Now, to see it there is an answer for the bridge pickup. I haven't heard a bridge pickup that really hit the nail on the head. A TV Jones bridge was close but it may have been the guitar making it sound just a little too strident, maybe too much poke in the transient.

Thanks and keep the suggestions coming. I know in the end its all up to me and my tastes but, I know there are a lot of folks with much more direct experience with the very large variety of pickups out there and how they differ in different guitars and amp types. I find everyone's perspective valuable.

Best,
Phil Donovan

[pjd3]

Alot of very interesting suggestions here, Thanks! I sure have my listening cut out for me, and thats exactly why I posted this.

I'm totally into giving a shot to odd pickups that aren't traditionally used because I don't really wan't this guitar to be traditional in the popular sense. I'd like it to have a little unique color of its own, personality. The Railhammer sounds interesting. I have to wonder now how the different combinations of serial, parallel, out of phase with other pickups would work to make some different tones that could be found useful and complimenting. Perhaps just add those Type 2 DPDT switches in a few places for a myriad of combination. Perhaps there would be a couple of combos that would very unique and work well. The Cool Rails have me interested also, along with other mini humbuckers that have separate coil access.

alright, time for some listening. Thanks again for your time and consideration.

Best,
Phil

[alex1fly]

Single coils in general are clean, tight, and sweet - as long as your technique reflects this. You're probably fine going with any classic, well respected low output pickups to start with. Then you can make changes from there.

Regular Tele singles, mini-humbuckers, PAFs, P90s, I really don't think you can go wrong. The cleanliness is going to come from your playing and no matter what pickups you choose, you're going to have to adapt your technique to make this style of music sound good.

I'd be more concerned about the amp and any other signal modification than I would about the pickups. A good EQ section will cure a lot of the issues of tonal balance that you're describing.

[Synapsys]

My humble suggestions are:

-Humbuckers: Full Shred set;
-Single coils: Cool Rails bridge and neck (guitar should be routed for Strat pickups).

[zionstrat]

I'm somewhat surprised that I'm responding to this thread.. I have very little baritone experience so I was reading with the intent of learning more.

But following up mincers suggestion of antiquity humbucker sparked a thought for the bridge...

Currently, the most clear and tight humbucker that I know of is a railhammer hyper vintage... Many Reverend guitars are based around this pickup but they also sell them separately..

The reason the hypervantage jumped to mind is the unusual construction. It has bars for the bass strings and way oversized poles for the treble. As a result the base is ultra tight however the treble is clear and smooth... Think of telecaster bridge high-end but with more sustain and body and in my mind that would be a great sound for a baritone.

And here's the big bonus.. it is extremely good at parallel to self... When parallel it loses some mid-range but keeps the bass and treble... Of course no humbucker sounds exactly like a single coil however there's been many times that I found this a better bridge tone then my strats and telies.

With that said, I would sure like to hear somebody try one of these pups in a baritone!

https://www.guitarcenter.com/Railham...saArheEALw_wcB

[Mincer]

I picked humbuckers, specifically the Antiquities, because they have clean and clear highs while also having tight low end for the lower notes. They don't have a typically 'thick' sound that most humbuckers have.

[pjd3]

Thanks everyone for all the responses!
Certainly there are no wrong answers here, this is all in the design phase with an open road - and its what "you" think you'd want in this scenario, not what I think. This will be my first baritone guitar built with celtic type fingerstyle as a focus. I started the neck already which is hard maple, and I have the body drawn out. It may be chambered or solid, not sure yet. Chambering sounds like a bit of fun, I might do it. When I think of celtic guitar, like Stephen Wake, I believe that style benefits from lows that are tight and stringy, never too thick or muddy, and the trebles are very present with a nice defined sweet attack, almost aggressively so but not necessarily harsh or spicky. If I were to take a shot at an absurd analogy, I'm looking for a tone that say, more emulates a twinkly Larrivee acoustic than a dark low-mid heavy Martin. Larrivees to me can almost have a bit of a scooped tone with supple deep lows and sweet twinkly highs, but still manages to sound rich all the way from top to bottom. Perhaps I would benefit from a humbucker with series/parallel/cut coil to capture different responces that would benefit different ranges. some celtic guitar is done with low tunes strings, deep and dramatic while others are capoed high up and totally twinkle away. But I still had to wonder if there is a single coil out there that would check all the boxes for the application described. The pickup choice is in the future but, its time to start listening to a number of them in different guitars under different circumstances.

I was surprised that a few folks called out humbuckers. I'm sure there are a number of candidates but I usually think of a humbucker (in general) as being a thicker sound with less sparkly highs (the fact that you have two coils in series generally lowers the resonant frequency and makes for a more lower mid heavy tone). I was thinking single coils might win this one in the end but, we'll see - it sure ain;t over - just starting actually.

What I did was take the profile of a Telecaster exactly as is, and stretched the entire guitar from one end to the other by the same percent increase as is the string scale from 25.5" to 28.628 which is a multiplication factor of 1.22" I believe (28.625/25.5). And I left the side to side to side dimension alone, only stretched the lenght. The neck looks pretty cool! Cant wait to get to the body. In keeping with a brighter tonal presentation I was thinking Alder, Maple, maybe Ash for the body. I had to wonder if a more dense body wood might help reflect the highs, or keep the high frequency energy in the strings for the pickups to pickup. (accidental pun, sorry). I know wood like Mahogany may be loosely associated with a darker sound. But, who knows, perhaps the pickups would have more to say about the frequency content than the wood.

Well thank you for taking the time to comment on my odd ball project here, and I'm curious to hear some of the suggestions you have made.

Thanks!
Best,
Phil Donovan