Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

Chickenwings

Chickenwings

Alnico 6/8
I'm building a lightweight swamp ash tele from warmoth in a hum/sing configuration cos ive always kind of hero worshipped Albert Collins.
ACollins_HotFunk.JPG
I have a pearly gates neck pickup and a 59 nech pickup in my parts drawer.
I'm thinking maybe the PG (cos i love that pickup) and installing a Jerry Donahue in the bridge (with a push pull coil split for the neck).
The other option is the Hot Tele tapped and a 59 in the neck - i'm o.nly thinking 59 cos it has an A5 magnet like the hot tele...

The fender CS Albert Collins model has a 59 in the neck and a Texas special in the bridge fwiw. Ive had texas specials in a strat but never tried a tele. How does that stack up against a JD or Hot tele from SD?

I have had 59's in a couple of axes and i prefer the feel of the PG, so if i was to go that route....what bridge pups do you guys recommend to complement it?

Here is a video of an Albert Collins style tele in action:
oh yeh...im also thinking of wiring it like this...does it make sense to the wiring gurus? 500k pots and an extra resistor for the bridge. hopefully means both pups can sound as good as they should and seeing the correct load. Should the resistor be 250k or 500?
65564d1291474928t-teles-w-neck-humbuckers-questions-tele-hs-wiring-diagram-hand-drawn-jpg
 
Last edited:
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

You could always go with Lil 59, or PG single from the custom shop. Depending on what you throw in the neck. I haven't tried either, but I assume they'd match well with their humbucking counterparts.
 
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

nah i dont want a mini hum in the bridge. I want a proper tele single but thanks for the reply
 
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

If I were going to do an Albert Collins (and I have thought about it many times!!!) I'd use a Jazz neck and I'd order it unpotted but more than likely I wouldn't use a Duncan bridge pickup but if you are hung up on a Duncan I'd use a Vintage 54.

Will it balance...no but by the time you get a Tele bridge coil that does balance with even a light neck bucker (like the Jazz) it'll no longer really sound like a Tele...

As for the wiring I'd go with "normal" Tele stuff of that time...neck - neck + bridge - bridge on the switch and master volume with 2 250k pots.
 
Last edited:
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

I would NOT go with any neck bucker with an A5. A5 boosts both bass and treble but because there's not much treble to be had coming off the strings over the neck pu, A5 boosts bass/low-mid a lot and treble very little. Which means you have now worsened your problem of a neck bucker being too dark/thick to match with your Tele bridge instead of making it better.

To me the best magnet for a Tele neck bucker is A3: minimal bass response of all the Alnico Brothers, nice and airy and chimey to help it match better with your single coil bridge. And if possible, get one wound below 7k.

Humbuckers and Tele singles inhabit such totally different worlds -- a degree of difference the vastness of which most players don't know until they've tried a bucker or two in the neck of their Teles. So you need every edge you can get to have it still sound like a bucker without overpowering the bridge and putting you in the dreaded EQ dilemma of EQ amp nice for bridge, neck muddy/EQ nice for neck, bridge shrill and brittle.
 
Last edited:
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

Also -- unless you have some unusually transparent sounding covers, go coverless. (I know, I know, vintage look, blah-blah-blah...)
 
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

I run a Jazz neck with my Donahue in the bridge, both via 250k pot (single vol), and like the setup a whole lot.
 
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

i do have a jazz a2 installed in one of my axes (my 175)...i guess i could take it out and replace it with a 59(a2) seeing as the bridge pup is a 59a2.
So i guess now i have three neck pickup choices for the tele, and a choice of a2 or a5 magnets for them.
mebbe i could just use the jazz a5 and use 250k pots like vk does....Or the 59 and a texas special...or a PG and a Jeryy donahue. lol
choices choices!

I have to say that despite all the stuff about mismatches and things...that albert collins tele in the video sounds pretty damn awesome.
 
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

FWIW I've had two pickups in the neck of my H-S tele.

The first was a JS Moore that registered at ~6.8k on my multimeter but it had 7.1k written on the package. Rough cast A2, slug coil was wound hotter than the screw coil. Without a cover, it sounded great. Articulate and fat, bright enough to play jazz chords but only just. Great humbucker sound from it and it split to a decent single sound.

Then I put a cover on it. IMO with 500k volume and tone it's still pretty bright. With the cover it was good, but splitting to the screw coil (because I wanted it under the 24th fret spot) was kind of weak IMO and sounded fairly bland.

Then, I flipped the pickup. This was a huge change and a great improvement. Splitting to the slug coil was waaaay closer to a strat sound than I thought I could get out of a nickel covered neck humbucker. Parallel, very much like a tele neck pickup. Still very sweet and clear, but none of that strat cluck especially around the 12th fret.

The split sound was so close that I sent the pickup to JS Moore to add a coil tap to the slug, so that I can get that much closer to a strat single.

The interim pickup in there is a sh-55 bridge that I disassembled and removed ~.8k from the screw coil. So a 4k slug, 3.2k screw, flipped like before. It's a great sounding pickup - you can get very smooth carlos santana-esque sounds, between the spin-a-split and tone control some decent allman brothers approximations too.

They balance pretty well with the Jerry Donahue I have in the bridge, but IMO the weaker JS Moore balanced a little better than the hotter Seth lover bridge in there now. I should also mention I have individual volumes for each pickup so the balance between the two has never been a problem.

I haven't tried any A3 neck pickups in my tele yet however. In my experience, a (just) sub-7k neck bucker with a ~.5-.7k coil imbalance favoring the slug coil and A2 is versatile, balances with the bridge pickup, and sounds so close to a tele neck pickup when in parallel that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in a live setting anyway.

As for a bridge pickup - I've tried the Jerry Donahue and the Rio Grande Dirty Harry. Neither of them are true tele bridge pickups although the Jerry Donahue comes closest with the brass baseplate. It's about the nicest sounding bridge pickup I've ever heard, but it isn't super twangy like most tele pickups. It's louder than the "hotter" rio grande though. Go figure. At any rate, I think the JD/Pearly Gates combo would balance well and be versatile to boot. But it's not going to be super vintage, exactly. But on the other hand Albert Collins probably just took a PAF out of a Les Paul and stuck it in a tele. I doubt he put as much thought into it as we're doing here haha.
 
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

jimijames said:
As for a bridge pickup - I've tried the Jerry Donahue and the Rio Grande Dirty Harry. Neither of them are true tele bridge pickups although the Jerry Donahue comes closest with the brass baseplate. It's about the nicest sounding bridge pickup I've ever heard, but it isn't super twangy like most tele pickups. It's louder than the "hotter" rio grande though. Go figure. At any rate, I think the JD/Pearly Gates combo would balance well and be versatile to boot. But it's not going to be super vintage, exactly. But on the other hand Albert Collins probably just took a PAF out of a Les Paul and stuck it in a tele. I doubt he put as much thought into it as we're doing here haha.
Click to expand...

That is pretty much what i'm after. Thanks for the great and detailed information.

...how did you wire all that stuff?
do you have any diagrams?

re: vintage...im putting a gibson style humbucker in a tele so im not too concerned about "true vintage". I believe Albert didint install the humbucker, it was there when he bought the axe, but yeah...im sure whoever installed it did not agonize over pots and caps too much but the guitar sounded good enough for the iceman! Thanks again for the info.
 
Last edited:
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

Staying with Duncan units, what about :


BG1400 / A2P [n]


And give it a 4-way mod.



.
 
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

oooh...thats pretty hot. i dont know if thats really the kind of tele sound im after. I just want the bridge pup to do normal single coil tele twang, but not get too outmuscled by the paf in the neck (which will most likely be a PG cos i like the sound and feel).
So its really out of:
1. Jerry Donahue
or
2. Hot Tapped
or
3. fender texas special as a distant third....
 
Last edited:
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?



. . . ^ ^ ^ BG1400 ^ ^ ^ . . .
 
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

Great sounding rock machine that axe. sounds good super dirty, but not so inspiring clean in that clip. I'm aiming for the breathy harmonic presence of a true single but with just enough output to hang with a paf in the neck. That esquire is a brilliant axe and pickup combination, but not quite the sound i'm after. Probably great in a ZZ top style heads down southern boogie band.
Still leaning towards the JD...
 
Last edited:
Re: Best tele bridge pickup to match with neck humbucker?

Another vote for the Jerry Donahue bridge. I started with one, traded it for an Antiquity. Traded it for yet another Antiquity, and came back to the JD. I don't care if its "vintage". To my ears, it's what a Tele is supposed to sound like. I don't even remember what my neck humbucker is. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

P
Tele SH w/ Quarter Pound bridge - neck humbucker recommendation?
Replies
3
Views
145
jeremy
jeremy
Cobrah
Hells Gate neck with Red Devil bridge?
Replies
0
Views
83
Cobrah
Cobrah
A
ASAT Classic Bridge Recommendation
Replies
2
Views
179
marcello252
marcello252
M
Custom Build
Replies
8
Views
151
mlaursen35
M
Mark Abbott
Strange Texas Hot resistance readings?
Replies
2
Views
249
Mark Abbott
Mark Abbott
Back
Top