Re: Suggestions for Nashville Tele with Mini Humbucker Neck
If it is going to match with the neck minihum, and still be twangy and sound like a Tele, I like the Jerry Donahue the best, then.
Resurrecting this old thread!
I finally finished the partscaster a few months back. Ash body, maple neck, rosewood board. I eventually purchased the following pickups for this guitar
- Seymour Duncan STL52-1 Five-Two Tele Lead
- Seymour Duncan SSL52-1m Five-Two Tele Middle
- Seymour Duncan SM-1N Vintage Mini Humbucker Neck
I purchased those pickups 10 days after the last post in this thread, FWIW.
The guitar came out great. It's wired with a crazy nine way scream from Sigler Music that I kind of like. But here's the problem:
This guitar does not have that Tele snarl, bite or twang that I'd hoped for. The in-between tones between the bridge Five-Two and the neck mini-humbucker is very nice. All the other in-between (Nashville Tele) selections sound nice. Even the crazy serial (i.e., humbucking) sound okay. But the bridge pickup does NOT sound like a Tele to me. It's almost too "pretty". When I flip the switch back there for the classic Tele twang, what I get sounds too refined. Almost sounds like a middle position Strat pickup or tame P90 pickup.
The guitar has an ash body that I finished in nitro lacquer. It has a vintage style Tele bridge. The neck is obviously maple. So all the "Tele-ness" should be there in the recipe. I guess the fretboard is rosewood, but loads of '60s Teles had rosewood and sound like Teles. So my guess is that I learned a lesson about that SD Five-Two Tele bridge pickup. It sounds beautiful, and if I wanted a jazz Tele, I'd put it at the top of my list. But it doesn't sound at all like what I expect out of a Tele. None of the dozens (or more!) Teles I've played in my life sound this mellow.
Not dark as in EQ (like having the wrong tone cap or wrong pots or something). And not muffled or muted in some weird way. It's clear as a bell. And based on tapping the poles of all the pickups in all the pickup selection positions, it's definitely wired correctly. It just doesn't sound like a Tele.
So after that long diatribe, which pickup should I think about for replacing it? I'm still not looking for some crazy overwound non-Tele thing. I want Tele twang. For this guitar, I'm looking to go from classic country type stuff to Tele blues (thus the mini-hum in the neck) and early Zeppelin Tele stuff, with or without a fuzz. Basically, I want it to sound like a Tele and not a refined Strat or Gretsch or whatever.
Please help!
