Help selecting singles for HSS w bridge p rails

[k8sne]

Hi everyone,

I recently fell in love with the American vintage II 63 Tele but am way too poor so thought I’d try sprucing up my old Ibanez SA160 to console myself. Warning! I am a complete noob when it comes to mods.

The Ibanez is an HSS w mahogany body and maple neck w rosewood fingerboard. The components and pups are pretty ****e though.

I dable in blues, rock and pop and much prefer warmer/smoother sounds.

I’ll change the 5-way selector and to 500k pots but am getting lost when it comes to pups. I’m pretty keen on p rails for the bridge in parallel (I won’t bother splitting) but am not sure what singles to go with.

Esp when it comes to the whole output, wind and polarity direction stuff. I’d be keen for any advice but I’m tossing up these options:

N: lil 59
M: lil 59
B: p-rails

N: custom staggered
M: custom staggered
B: p-rails

N: cool rails
M: vintage hot
B: p-rails

N: cool rails
M: cool rails
B: p-rails

Again, I’m a complete noob so any advice would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

[Mincer]

Welcome to the forum!

Before deciding on pickups, you will probably have to answer a few more questions to narrow things down. First thing is...what do you like in neck and middle pickups? Do you want them to sound like single coils or humbuckers? Is noise-cancelling important to you?

[GuitarDoc]

By not splitting the P-Rails to the P-90 coil you'll be missing out on the best tone the pup has to offer. The parallel sound is certainly good, but you really have to experience the P-90 to thoroughly enjoy that pup.

I've got half a dozen guitars with P-Rails in them and I'd say overall that I use the P-90 coil at least 90-95% of the time, parallel 5-10%, rail coil <1%, series 0%. You can easily add a p/p pot to go from parallel to P-90 so you can have both tones.

As far as the other pups, what do you want from them? Bright and chimey single-coily? Warm and smooth? Somewhere in-between? Hot/high output for leads? Will you want to be using lots or minimal amounts of gain? Mostly rhythm? Since there are several hundred pups that will work, we need to know what you want.

[GuitarDoc]

Mincer beat me to the punch.

[k8sne]

Haha wow that was quick. I’m in Australia so it was well past my bedtime.

Ok so:
- I prefer neck/middle to sound humbuckery warm and smooth. Not a fan of bright.
- Noise cancelling would be ideal but not a deal breaker
- I’ll do p/p for the p-90
- Don’t want hot. Medium output
- I like the sound of scooped mids
- Use minimal gain
- 50/50 rhythm and lead

Am I contradicting myself?

[Mincer]

Haha wow that was quick. I’m in Australia so it was well past my bedtime.

Ok so:
- I prefer neck/middle to sound humbuckery warm and smooth. Not a fan of bright.
- Noise cancelling would be ideal but not a deal breaker
- I’ll do p/p for the p-90
- Don’t want hot. Medium output
- I like the sound of scooped mids
- Use minimal gain
- 50/50 rhythm and lead

Am I contradicting myself?

Well, sorta. 'Warm and smooth' is not really a 'scooped mid' sound. But if I could suggest a 'warm and smooth' non-scooped mid neck & middle, look at the Little '59 or Hot Rails (neck version). For more scooped mids, look at the Lil' Screamin' Demon.

[k8sne]

Yeah ok. I had been leaning towards lil 59’s so that’s cool. The others had been suggested but the SD pick up selector which got me questioning myself.

happy days. Now to source. Everything is so expensive in Aus!

Thanks so much for the advice!

[GuitarDoc]

^ +1
If you use a Lil 59 in the neck (for warm & smooth), you could use the Lil Demon in the middle to have more variety of tones. These are strat-sized humbuckers so they can be split or parallel also.

[k8sne]

Ooo ok. I’ll look into lil demon.

what brands do you recommend for pots and other hardware?

[Mincer]

CTS pots (I might start with 500k all around) and a Oak-Grigsby 5 way switch is a good start.