My Tele/Strat is do complete!

[Lewguitar]

Assembled this guitar from parts yesterday and it sounds great! Custom switching allows for every pickup combination...10 sounds...5 of them humcancelling. WD neck. Fender body. Fender Custom Shop ‘62 bridge/vibrato. Duncan Custom Shop A2 Hot For Tele Tapped bridge pickup has two different outputs: Hot and hotter. Hot goes to position #1 on the 5 way switch and Hotter goes to position #5. Lindy Fralin Vintage Hot neck pickup goes to position #3 on the 5 way switch. Positions #2 and 4 give me the neck pickup combined with the bridge pickup. There’s a little mini off/on switch that adds the middle pickup (Antiquity Surfer) to the output of the 5 way switch...and when I add the middle pickup to the neck or bridge pickup there’s no hum. The guitar is noiseless for five of the 10 sounds. I’ve had this custom wiring scheme rattling around in my head for years but never did it. It works great.

 

[VinceT]

My Tele/Strat is do complete!

Interesting. Presuming you’re numbering 1 as the traditional neck and 5 as the traditional bridge, how does your muscle memory feel with this scheme? I, and I think many Strat players, have such a reflex for flipping to either the neck or bridge while in flow, that going bridge to hotter-bridge (or vice versa) would be more than a little weird.


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[Lewguitar]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

Interesting. Presuming you’re numbering 1 as the traditional neck and 5 as the traditional bridge, how does your muscle memory feel with this scheme? I, and I think many Strat players, have such a reflex for flipping to either the neck or bridge while in flow, that going bridge to hotter-bridge (or vice versa) would be more than a little weird.


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Seymour plays a Tele with this same wiring on the 5 way switch.

He uses the same Hot For Tele Tapped bridge pickup and has one output at #1 and the other output at #5. Neck pickup at #3...in the middle. I don’t know whether he uses the Tapped output at #1 or 5.

But all I did was add the switch to add the middle pickup To Seymour’s Tapped Tele wiring.

I played this same guitar with that wiring for a couple of years and didn’t have a middle pickup in it.

The frets were worn out and I wanted a change so I ordered the WD neck and added the middle pickup wiring.

But yes...It took some getting used to.

 

[jeremy]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

i have a custom made guitar with a similar switching system but slightly different pups. similar tapped custom shop pup but on a strat bobbin rather than tele, #42 pe 6.5k/9.5k a2. antiquity II jag pup in the neck with the same 5 way wiring. but my "middle" pup is a a2 bucker i wound and its closer to the neck pup. theres a three way for singles/both/bucker. this is the only pic i could find. very versatile and fun guitar to play. i got used to the switching pretty quickly

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

I just resurrected my old USA Peavey Predator with a MIJ Fender Tele bridge pickup. The Tele bridge in a Strat is good stuff.

Jeremy, the middle bucker slid toward the neck like that is a pretty sweet idea. Does it sound like a brighter neck pickup like it'd seem?

 

[jeremy]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

yep. kinda like a neck pup on a 24 fret guitar. its like 8k, #42 pe. one coil min/nom other nom/max, polished a2. wired to a 500k volume pot and no tone unless the singles are active too

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

What’s interesting is that my favorite pickup combinations on this guitar are unavailable on a conventional Strat.

The neck pickup combined with either of the bridge pickup outputs are the two best sounding pickup combinations on this guitar.

The neck & middle and middle & bridge are very good too, of course.

 

[jeremy]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

i use the neck/bridge tones a fair amount too, the blend is very nice between the a5 neck pup and a2 bridge. the tapped output/neck is great for spanky clean rhythm parts

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

i use the neck/bridge tones a fair amount too, the blend is very nice between the a5 neck pup and a2 bridge. the tapped output/neck is great for spanky clean rhythm parts

One way to wire a Strat to get the bridge and neck combined is to swap the leads for the neck and middle pickups where they are soldered on the 5 way switch.

Put the neck pickup in position #3 and connect the middle pickup to where the neck was.

Now you’ll get: middle...middle and neck...neck...neck and bridge...bridge.

 

[jeremy]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

ive done that but neck and bridge strat pups dont really do much for me, or at least i prefer the middle/bridge option which i use a fair amount. i think its something about the a5 neck pup with the a2 bridge pup with a plate, theres something going on there that i really like. i dont like that position on a traditional tele so much, the neck pup is just not for me, but when i put a firebird pup in the neck the combined tone is great!

 

[rhaggard74]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!


Just built this in the last month. I traded 3 mics for the guitar and pulled all the electronics and bridge out. I put locking tuners and a callaham mexi bridge on it. Loaded it with a hot stacks s9 in the bridge s6 in the mid and s2 in the neck . Wired it up with all new electronics and a 7 way wire system. Everything I read said that a tele neck on a strat body wouldn't intonate properly but I had no issues.

 

[jeremy]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

they should intonate fine, same scale length. usually its the square vs round heal that is the issue

 

[RorySquier]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

I've installed a neck pick up on/off switch just a while ago on my '98 MIA American Standard Strat that's in my avatar and I love the extra sounds especially with all 3 pick ups on at once...very sparkly sounding. I like the neck and bridge pup combo for that Tele sound but I also found out they are out-of-phase for that very cool nasally tone. It was a very simple mod that worked out very well.



;>)/

 

[rhaggard74]

Re: My Tele/Strat is do complete!

they should intonate fine, same scale length. usually its the square vs round heal that is the issue

There is a small curved gap from the round pocket and square neck. When I took the neck off to see if I could date the body when I got it I was suprises there was no extra screw holes in the neck all 4 lined up perfect. I'm not that experienced with neck swaps either.