How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

Gamlejohn

Gamlejohn

New member
I have a set of Antiquity I in my Tele and I love the sound of the bridge pickup. The neck pickup however is a little muddy for my taste, and it requires two different amp setting to get the best out of the two pickups.

Is there anything I can do to brighten the neck just a little without changing the sound of the bridge? Is the Ant II brigther than the Ant I?
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

If you don't need a tone control on the neck pickup, then you could bypass it and boost the neck signal a little. Then the tone could be adjusted separately for the bridge pickup as well. I think that's the cheapest solution to try, so I would start there. However, if you already have a no-load tone pot, then bypassing it won't change the neck tone.
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

Try moving the pickup farther away from the strings. You also might try
doing away with the tone control. Just de-solder the capacitor lead and tape it off. You can also try 500k-ohm pots in place of the standard 250k
pots. The antiquity II should be warmer and hotter than the Antiquity I.
Hope this helps.
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

I second the pot value change, maybe you could find a 300K and split the difference.
I don't know if you play with the volume rolled off a bit, but if so you might want to try the Treble-Bleed mod.
Good luck
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

I'm pretty certain the Antiquity Tele mags are aged like the other Ant mags.

If so, you could also try de-aging the magnets. Get a strong magnet (like a neodymium disk mag) and a polarity tester (you can get both pretty cheap at Stewmac) and hold the disc against the top of each rod magnet for a second or two. Make sure the side of the disc mag is the opposite polarity of the rod magnet. Not a disaster if it isn't, just flip the disc over and do it again if you had the wrong side of the disc facing the rods on the first try.

The fully charged mags will be brighter.
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

I have a PJ Marx humbucker pickup that had become demagnetized so I put it in between two strong speaker magnets to recharge them. You can use a compas to tell the north and south axis of the pickup and then just line them up and let it charge for a couple of days. I let mine charge for two weeks and the magnets are now much stronger. Humbuckers are side to side polarity while single coils are top to bottom. I may end up taking the pickup to someone who recharges magneto's.
 
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Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

I had the same problem with my GFS repro neck pup. I removed the cover and the sound opened up a great deal! Much snappier and brighter. However, I don't know if I would do that to a more expensive pickup, such as SD Ants. On the GFS pup the cover was just pressed on and was easily removed with a flat screwdriver.
I'm very pleased!
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

Have anybody actually tried to remove the cover from an Antiquity neck pickup? I love the sound of the ants, but they look like something from an archeological dig. Who knows what's under the hood?
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

Tumblinman said:
I had the same problem with my GFS repro neck pup. I removed the cover and the sound opened up a great deal! Much snappier and brighter. However, I don't know if I would do that to a more expensive pickup, such as SD Ants. On the GFS pup the cover was just pressed on and was easily removed with a flat screwdriver.
I'm very pleased!
Click to expand...

That was more than likely a brass cover. The covers at Guitar Jones are nickel silver and very transparent tonally.
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

Ok... One more question:

Since I can't get myself to rip the cover off the neck pickup, recharging the magnets is out of the question. And that leaves me with no other option than to change the pot(s) to a higher value. Right?

The problem is this: my bridge pickup is already very bright and I'm shure 500K pot(s) would make it totaly icepicky. Could I change the volume pot to 500K and add a resistor to the bridge pickup to keep the 250K value for this pickup alone? If so what resistor?

And do I change only the volume pot (my 250K tone pot is a non load pot)? And what about the cap (right now it's a .022mfd Orange Drop)?

I know. That was more than one questions. Oh well...
 
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Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

Gamlejohn said:
Ok... One more question:

Since I can't get myself to rip the cover off the neck pickup, recharging the magnets is out of the question.
Click to expand...

No. You have to pull the pu out of the guitar to do it, but you can charge the magnets from the bottom.

Or you could do it from the top too without even taking it out of the guitar, just put a rag over the cover so the neo disk doesn't scratch it up.

But I still thinking swapping to a nickel-silver cover would do wonders. EDIT: Then again this is Duncan and they use the good covers -- unless they're using brass covers to be authentic or something.
 
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Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

Put a resistor between the pickups ground and it`s gound point. All pickups
lose some treble to ground,this will guide some more treble to your pickup:)
Play around with some resistors to get the right one. I`v done this a couple of times and it works nice.....;)
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

You can just tape another magnet onto the bottom of the baseplate of the pickup. It should brighten the pickup rather nicely. I haven't done it myself but I read a couple articles on it in Guitar Player magazine. Try looking it up online.
 
Re: How can I brighten the Ant neck in my Tele?

I replaced the neck pickup (Fender V.N.) in my tele with an SD Antiquity II Surfer Strat pickup and the tone seemed a little brighter and, overall, much better. Of course, you will have to replace to the pickguard though.
 
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