Fender Player Plus Nashville Telecaster - Brent Mason

[pele85]

Hi all -

I have a Fender Player Plus Nashville Telecaster that I'm looking at upgrading the pickups for. I'm interested in retaining the existing wiring and pickup selection, however, I'd like to use some of the pickups from the Brent Mason telecaster.

The pickups that I'm planning to use are:
- Neck: Antiquity II Neck Mini Humbucker
- Middle: STK-S2 Hot Stack Strat
- Bridge: STK-T3b Vintage Bridge Stack

It's my understanding that there are already 500k pots in the Nashville Player Plus telecaster.

I noticed that the stock Fender pickups are "noiseless", which would signal that they are humbucking, however I'm only seeing 2 wires coming off of them, while the Seymour Duncan's all seem to have 4 wires.

Does anyone have an understanding on how I could rewire to retain the existing pickup selection on the Nashville Player Plus? I was hoping it was going to be pretty much plug and play, but that's obviously not the case.

Thanks,
- Peter

[ICTGoober]

Most humbuckers ARE 2 wires. 4 wires simply add the ability to wire coil taps, do phase reversal, or wire in series. The Fender Noiseless series of pickups are VERY good units.

[jeremy]

the antiquity ii mini humbucker should be 2 cond, sure its not an sm1?

[Teleplayer]

"4 conductor" are better because it allows flexibility to reverse the polarity if the pickups are out of phase.

In your case I think you are going to find they are infact "out of phase" as this typically happens when you mix Fender and Duncan branded pickups. The solution is the reverse the wiring connection on the pickups if they are different. Antiquity series pickups will NOT allow you to reverse the connection because the shield wire must be connected to ground to avoid a noise problem. I'm not sure if Fender noiseless pickups in your Tele would have the same issue or not. For this reason it would be preferable to get a mini humbucker that has separate ground connection, such as any Seymour Duncan "4-conductor" model.

As for wiring, I suggest to do a direct swap with the 500k controls in your guitar in the first instance to get an idea if any particular problem needs to be solved. Obviously you need to sort out the connection polarity issue but 500k controls will work. The potential downside is the pickup may be too bright, or otherwise it may cause you to raise the pickup too high and you find the output doesn't balance properly with the other pickups. I suggest to try it first to see if there is an issue or not.

[jeremy]

seems like the plan is for all duncan pups so phase shouldnt be an issue. thats a cool set of pups for sure! i love a mini or firebird pup in the neck of a tele

[pele85]

Here's a bit more context with photos. You can see in the last photo that the bridge pickup has only 2 wires and meanwhile the SD actually has 5. I'm pretty new to this, so not sure which wires to attach to each other...

[ICTGoober]

If you decide not to keep the noiseless Fender units, PM me. We can talk.

[beaubrummels]

If you're wiring all Duncan replacements, just solder red+white together and tape them off so they don't touch anything metal, then solder black to hot and grean+bare to ground. If any of the Duncans are 2-conductor (metal braid with a single center conductor) just solder the braided part to ground and the center conductor to hot.

[Teleplayer]

Yes.. should be straightforward to change all 3 pickups to Seymour Duncan. You can simply follow the wiring instruction in the box and they will be in-phase.