Nashville tele mod with middle humbucker

[Cberry]

I like the idea of the Nashville mod - but I don't feel like changing round the magnets in my tele - so I thought of a workaround - Use a mini humbucker or a Lil screamin demon.
When the bridge is connected with one reverse polarity - it will hum cancel, the other will hum cancel with the neck - and gloriously, the humbucker will shine by itself alone too.
Anyone done anything like this? Sounds like a logical development of the mod.
cb

 

[Mincer]

Welcome to the forum!

I've done something like this with a Strat, where I used a stack in the neck, a single in the middle, and a humbucker in the bridge. The neck was rw/rp. All positions cancelled hum:

Bridge humbucker
Half bridge humbucker with middle
Half bridge humbucker with neck (sorta tele-ish)
Middle with top coil of neck
Both coils of neck stack

 

[Chistopher]

Middle humbucker is a pretty underrated sound if you ask me, I've never done it on a Tele, but I think it would work nicely

 

[Chistopher]

Welcome to the forum!

I've done something like this with a Strat, where I used a stack in the neck, a single in the middle, and a humbucker in the bridge. The neck was rw/rp. All positions cancelled hum:

Bridge humbucker
Half bridge humbucker with middle
Half bridge humbucker with neck (sorta tele-ish)
Middle with top coil of neck
Both coils of neck stack

If you want to make the middle position more Tele like, you could experiment with putting a 10k trim pot in series with the red/white link to ground on the bridge humbucker so that you could fatten the bridge pickup up a little more.

 

[zionstrat]

First of all Nashville teles rock! With a carved body, I like them even better than a strat because you got that great bridge pickup!

And yes it will work and your center pickup is crucial but it probably has a lot more impact than most imagine.

If you use a stronger pickup, you will get a more distinct middle tone, but I don't find the middle pickup incredibly interesting.

What I like to pitch are the two and four positions, specifically quack. And in my experience, if you want good quack, you want a relatively weak center pickup.

With that said, I often recommend the demarzio cruiser for the center when you need humbucking pup that is strat size. It's a good pickup on its own right, but it really loves to quack from the center.

And although they're not expensive to begin with, GFS makes a knock off that is superb and I use for most of my middle quacky pups.

 

[Mincer]

If you want to make the middle position more Tele like, you could experiment with putting a 10k trim pot in series with the red/white link to ground on the bridge humbucker so that you could fatten the bridge pickup up a little more.

I have to say, it sounds 90% Tele-like, which is good enough for me. I don't have a ton of use for that sound to worry too much about it.

 

[Cberry]

The other option I was considering is 2 separate single coils in the middle - but that was only so I could still have the tele combination of bridge and neck.