Tele Wiring Help Requested

[kbhr]

I have a few questions regarding tele wiring. I currently have a an Antiquity bridge humbucker that I intend to install in the neck position of my Tele and a JD pickup for the bridge. Is it possible to wire these for use with a four way switch or would a traditional three way switch work just fine for such a set up? If using the four way switch option how would I go about wiring these pickups? I am a little hesistant about doing any direct modifications to my Antiquity humbucker. Any suggestions concerning caps and pots would also be greatly appreciated.

As a side note, I also have a Japanese model 72 Tele custom. Any suggestions for updating the wiring, pots, pickups and caps for this guitar? I have a lurker here for quite some time. Obviously, I love Teles.

Any recommendations and help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[jeremy]

Re: Tele Wiring Help Requested

welcome to the forum!!

if you want the series option, go for the 4 way. ive had it on a few guitars and its cool. youll probably have to keep the bucker low to balance volume wise with the jd. the jd wants a 250k pot so id use those, if you keep the antiquity low itll be a little brighter anyway. my suggestion would be to keep the pup low and raise up the poles a little. i might even flip it around so the exposed poles are closer to the bridge.

for the 72 id say get an antiquity bridge pup and a pearly gates neck with 250k pots. get a 5 way and youll have a nice variety of sweet tones

 

[Dirt123]

Re: Tele Wiring Help Requested

You will have to modify the JD SLIGHTLY to use the 4-way. You will have to de-solder or clip the little wire on the bottom of the pickup that goes to the pickup's base plate so the JD can be wired in series, separating the pickup's black wire from the ground. You will then have to solder a new ground wire to the base plate and run that to the guitar's ground.

 

[Dirt123]

Re: Tele Wiring Help Requested

As a side note, I also have a Japanese model 72 Tele custom. Any suggestions for updating the wiring, pots, pickups and caps for this guitar? I have a lurker here for quite some time. Obviously, I love Teles.

Any recommendations and help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I like the big Fender humbucker that come with the guitar in the neck position. I’d keep that. I've seen guys update those reissues by putting a Li'l '59 or a Tele Hot rails in the rear. That'd be a cool-lookin', hum-buckin', hard-rockin' Tele.

I suppose if you wanted to go nuts, you could replace all the pots with DPDT Push-pull switch pots, and then wire both pickups for series-parallel operation, phase switching, and/or splitting options. Imagination runs wild.

 

[kbhr]

Re: Tele Wiring Help Requested

Thanks guys for the welcome and all of the suggestions. They are very much appreciated. It looks as though that I have a lot of options to consider.

Jeremy, for the 72 you recommend an Antiquity. Any specific one?

Thanks again.