brighter tele neck pickup

[jake_xms3_punk]

i was thinking of putting a str 1 neck pickup on a mahogany jazzmaster style body with a full sized 59 in the bridge. im going to have 500k pots and maybe a maple/rosewood fretboard. do you think it would be bright enough? i've heard they are dark and dull in tele's so it would probably be even darker in mahogany. is there a brighter tele neck pickup i should look into or do you think it would be ok? thanks

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: brighter tele neck pickup

I don't think there is a stock Duncan that is brighter than the STR-1 Tele neck pickup. Maybe the Antiquity II but I doubt it. Both are alnico 5.

There are pickups without covers, like the Fralin Blues Special Tele Neck, that would have a fuller and maybe brighter tone. And there is a Tele neck pickup from the Duncan Custom Shop which has more of a Strat tone: the Tele ala Strat it used to be called. It's changed a little now I believe but still available.

Only problem I can foresee with the STR-1 & 59B is the possibility of the bridge pickup being a lot louder than the STR-1. But I don't know from experience that that would be the case.

Other problem would be choosing 250K or 500K pots. If you want bright from the neck pickup 500K might be the answer.

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: brighter tele neck pickup

+1 on 500k pots making the neck/rhythm pickup sound brighter.

The received wisdom that Tele neck pickups sound dark and dull stems from a mixture of misunderstanding and poor manufacturing practices during the CBS era.

As you probably know, on older Teles, the three-way selector switch offered Bridge PU only, Neck PU only, Neck PU only through a pre-set capacitor/resistor tone network. This last option appeared on the switch where most guitarists would have expected to find the plain Neck PU sound. Some of them must have believed that the Bass Tone pre-set WAS the Neck PU sound. That is how myths get started.

On some CBS-era Telecasters, the pickups are just plain plop.

Finally, for a time, Fender saw fit to employ 1megOhm pots. In my opinion, the resistance taper on these just doesn't suit Teles. (Strangely, on a Fender Jaguar, anything BUT 1meg pots seem wrong.)