'57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

[guitarschlimm]

Hi y'all, I'm new to the forum and I hope to get some advice how to go about fixing a pickup issue with a '57 Tele.

Here is the situation. The lead pickup of my '57 tele basically works, has a healthy ohm reading of 6.55 and a great sound (not lacking any bass), it has a little more hum than other PU's though. The problem is, occasionally it stops working completely, but comes back on when I tap on it a few times. The switch and pots appear to be fine.

Now I had a few old fender pickups die on me, but they were either completely dead, or very thin sounding. Since this PU sounds good when it is working, I still hope that I can cure it somehow without having to send it for a rewind. Do you guys have any ideas what to check and how? Or do you think there is nothing further to check and it has to be rewound anyway?

Thx for your input.

Cheers
GS

 

[Mincer]

Re: '57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

Welcome to the forum!

The first thing I would do is try to eliminate the possibility that it is another connection that is shorting out. You can wire the pickup directly to the jack, and see if you can re-create the short. If you can, it is likely it is the pickup itself. Perhaps coil wires are on the edge of breaking but make a connection most of the time, or where the lead wire meets the coil wire is on its way out. If you can elimante the rest of the wiring and put the problem down to the pickup itself, it is absolutely worth getting fixed. But let's eliminate the rest of the wiring as a problem first.

 

[hamerfan]

Re: '57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

When i was young, i had only ****ty guitar cables, so i first replace them. Then, 2 input jacks died on my guitars and one input jack on an amp, so they would be my next concern. Then i would fire up my solder gun an resolder the guitar wiring. Just heating up the joints and let them cool down.

 

[guitarschlimm]

Re: '57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

Hi

Thanks for you input guys and sorry for the late reply. I managed to fix the pickup in the meantime. I intended to reheat the two solder joints on the pickup only to find out that there was no solder at all to reheat. Really interesting. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture. It looked like they simply stuck the wires in the holes back in '57 and forgot to solder the wires to the pickup. So much for Fender QC in the 50's This probably explains why this guitar didn't see much play time in its 60 year existence. The pickup was probably cutting in and out from the very beginning...

 

[Mincer]

Re: '57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

Wow, very cool! I am happy you are back to rocking!

 

[The Ballzz]

Re: '57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

WOW!
A genuine '57 Tele that "didn't see much play time in its 60 year existence"? You lucky dog you!
Enjoy That Twangin'
Gene

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: '57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

When you get tired of that twang and want to get rid of it, let me know. It will go nicely with my '57 Strat.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: '57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

Yeah, if you don't want it I'll trade you a bag of picks and a high e string. My collection is short a '57 Tele...

 

[guitarschlimm]

Re: '57 Tele Pickup intermittent...

Yeah, if you don't want it I'll trade you a bag of picks and a high e string. My collection is short a '57 Tele...

It's the only '57 Tele with original solder joints that are only two days old... very, very rare I still have to get my head around if I can call them original solder joints. Nobody else soldered before, so I guess I can...