C
Charente
Guest
Hello all. Newbie here.
Please don't take this as a gripe. Just looking for advice to make a great guitar even better.
A few years ago I got a good deal on a 20O7 Fender custom shop Fat Nocaster relic that was new but had been unsold and must have been hanging around with the distributor. Specs are 7 1/2 radius, vintage frets, Nocaster bridge pup and a Duncan '59 at the neck.
Lightweight, very resonant and a surprisingly comfortable baseball bat for a neck. In other words all good.
Problem is the mismatch between the bridge and neck pups. A volume imbalance is to be expected (and actually works to give a very usable beefed up mid position) but the tone imbalance is too extreme to be workable no matter what I do EQ wise. Using my normal amp setting the bridge is as expected but the neck '59 is just mud - not what you want from a pickup known for its clarity.
I've dropped the '59 (which I tend to do with buckers anyway) and raised the bass side screw polepieces which helps a little and I could take them out altogether effectively leaving a single coil.
The case candy did contain a wiring diagram and spare cap for swapping from vintage spec Tele wiring but previous experience suggests that Fender case candy doesn't necessarily match the actual model its shipped with. The familiar but beefier middle position tone suggests standard Tele wiring rather than the bass/neck/bridge setup of vintage spec. PS I tried to query the shipped specs with Fender but got no reply.
OK - I could re-EQ my amps which is a pain when swapping guitars or swap out the pots for 5OOK. But both approaches just shift the EQ curve and the imbalance remains which would mean dialling back the tone every time I switch to the bridge. I also considered fitting a bucker sized P90 which should in theory work a little better with the 250k pots.
Thing is - I appreciate the attention to vintage detail (which is why I went for the vintage neck specs) and I'm sure this is how they were modded back in the day. But you would have expected the custom shop to offer some sort of clever mod - a high pass filter between the '59 and the pot perhaps?
Its very much a keeper by the way - the bridge Nocaster is a good enough tone on its own. Just as I said it could be better.
So any suggestions are very welcome (Thanks in advance).
Please don't take this as a gripe. Just looking for advice to make a great guitar even better.
A few years ago I got a good deal on a 20O7 Fender custom shop Fat Nocaster relic that was new but had been unsold and must have been hanging around with the distributor. Specs are 7 1/2 radius, vintage frets, Nocaster bridge pup and a Duncan '59 at the neck.
Lightweight, very resonant and a surprisingly comfortable baseball bat for a neck. In other words all good.
Problem is the mismatch between the bridge and neck pups. A volume imbalance is to be expected (and actually works to give a very usable beefed up mid position) but the tone imbalance is too extreme to be workable no matter what I do EQ wise. Using my normal amp setting the bridge is as expected but the neck '59 is just mud - not what you want from a pickup known for its clarity.
I've dropped the '59 (which I tend to do with buckers anyway) and raised the bass side screw polepieces which helps a little and I could take them out altogether effectively leaving a single coil.
The case candy did contain a wiring diagram and spare cap for swapping from vintage spec Tele wiring but previous experience suggests that Fender case candy doesn't necessarily match the actual model its shipped with. The familiar but beefier middle position tone suggests standard Tele wiring rather than the bass/neck/bridge setup of vintage spec. PS I tried to query the shipped specs with Fender but got no reply.
OK - I could re-EQ my amps which is a pain when swapping guitars or swap out the pots for 5OOK. But both approaches just shift the EQ curve and the imbalance remains which would mean dialling back the tone every time I switch to the bridge. I also considered fitting a bucker sized P90 which should in theory work a little better with the 250k pots.
Thing is - I appreciate the attention to vintage detail (which is why I went for the vintage neck specs) and I'm sure this is how they were modded back in the day. But you would have expected the custom shop to offer some sort of clever mod - a high pass filter between the '59 and the pot perhaps?
Its very much a keeper by the way - the bridge Nocaster is a good enough tone on its own. Just as I said it could be better.
So any suggestions are very welcome (Thanks in advance).
