Seth Pearly
New member
I've had an Ash Nashville Deluxe Telecaster for the last 6 months. I bought it as my first foray into fender single-coil quacking, clucking and twanging. For the last 20 years, I have been playing on HH guitars (Gibson, Epiphone and Carvin). On this guitar, I've been playing a mix of blues, classic rock, modern and indie rock - a fairly wide gambit as its a flexible guitar. For those who aren't as familiar, the Nashville comes with 3 pickups and a standard 5-way switch in a strat configuration. The stock pickups are all A5 "Tex-Mex" - a tele bridge, strat middle and tele neck.
So far, I have had a blast on the guitar. I have been pleased with the tex-mex neck, and the middle works to give me very useable 2/4 "in between tones", but I've had a hard time falling for the stock bridge pickup. When the tone control is up its ice-picky, and when down, it gets muddly/dead quickly. I have replaced the vintage 6-saddle with a callaham vintage bridgeplate/3 comp saddles. That's helped with sustain, and cut some of the overbite down but it's still very thin when clean. Based on the reviews I've seen, the Jerry Donahue seems to be the pickup to go to (at least for now). In the classic tele spectrum, but more growly (lower-mids) and less pure twang - that works really well for me.
I have read, however, that Fender and SD pickups don't always play well, and looking for suggestions on the neck and middle pickups. In an ideal world, this guitar will sound more like a tele when I'm playing closer to the bridge, and more like a strat as I move to the neck. The nashville has the swimming pool route, so I'm not really limited to classic tele neck-sized pickups (I'll just change the pickguard). I'm also going to be adding a mini-toggle so I can get the Neck+Bridge combo.
As a reference, one of my favorite neck tones of late has been John Mayer's live sound on "Where the Light Is"
I am open to a wide variety of suggestions, though I think right now I'm probably looking at staying in the strat/tele single coil mode, as opposed to adding a 'bucker, mini or P90...
thank you in advance for any suggestions!
So far, I have had a blast on the guitar. I have been pleased with the tex-mex neck, and the middle works to give me very useable 2/4 "in between tones", but I've had a hard time falling for the stock bridge pickup. When the tone control is up its ice-picky, and when down, it gets muddly/dead quickly. I have replaced the vintage 6-saddle with a callaham vintage bridgeplate/3 comp saddles. That's helped with sustain, and cut some of the overbite down but it's still very thin when clean. Based on the reviews I've seen, the Jerry Donahue seems to be the pickup to go to (at least for now). In the classic tele spectrum, but more growly (lower-mids) and less pure twang - that works really well for me.
I have read, however, that Fender and SD pickups don't always play well, and looking for suggestions on the neck and middle pickups. In an ideal world, this guitar will sound more like a tele when I'm playing closer to the bridge, and more like a strat as I move to the neck. The nashville has the swimming pool route, so I'm not really limited to classic tele neck-sized pickups (I'll just change the pickguard). I'm also going to be adding a mini-toggle so I can get the Neck+Bridge combo.
As a reference, one of my favorite neck tones of late has been John Mayer's live sound on "Where the Light Is"
I am open to a wide variety of suggestions, though I think right now I'm probably looking at staying in the strat/tele single coil mode, as opposed to adding a 'bucker, mini or P90...
thank you in advance for any suggestions!
I'll take a closer look at the rest of the line...
