Again thanks so much for your input.
As I was doing some research after the fact I went to the Fender website and downloaded the specs on the Mason guitar and saw that the neck pickup did not specify if it was an Antiquity or one of the other mini humbuckers. I think it was in a premier guitar article they called it a vintage mini humbucker which when you use the SD search takes you to the SM-1.
Then I also found this post in a search here.
Got this E-mail from Tom (Fender Musical Instruments) 8 Dec 2023, 10:36 GMT
Hi Dennis
Thank you for your email, and I hope you're enjoying your Brent Mason Telecaster! The neck pickup in this model is the Seymour Duncan SM-1N. The version of the pickup in the Brent Mason was designed specifically for this guitar, as it has pole pieces where the original version of the SM-1N doesn't.
I hope this helps!
Many thanks,
Tom
Gear Advisor - Fender EMEA
I also found that Fender wired the Mason using a 500K pot on the middle volume and a .05 cap which was different than what I did.
I think that was the other reason I wasn't getting the tone I was looking for when I blended in the middle pickup.
Still undecided on the direction I want to go. Do I just rewire everything with the 500K middle and the .05 cap instead of the 250K and .022. or do I also change the pickup to the SM-1N with the rewire?
To comment the sentence that I've put in bold letters: a SM1N with pole pieces IS most probably the same thing than an Antiquity II mini-hum, as Beau' said above...
Of course, Fender might have put a vertical magnet in the "slugs" coil, 6 mini-screw poles in the other coil and an horizontal steel plate under both... but it would be a non-typical design that I wouldn't expect in this case (only idiots like me build odd pickups like that, as I've done it not later than this afternoon.
)
Anyway: 500k pots are logical with mini-hums hosting screw poles. They have more inductance and a lower Q factor (= a flatter / rounder EQing) so they like high resistance controls.
... and a Firebird style pickup with two vertical magnets has a lower inductance + a higher Q factor so it's brighter / thinner... but it should sound largely like a mini-hum with poles once its resistive load lowered.
IOW, it's doable to make both designs sonically close to each others once the resistance of pots adapted, as implied above by Teleplayer.
For the record, I've a guitar with a mini-hum in neck position and a SM1 in bridge position. When I want both to sound like mini-hums, I just lower the tone pot of the bridge pickup. When I want both to sound more like Firebird PU's, I leave the tone control of the bridge unit full up, and I enable an home-made inductive filter in parallel with the neck PU (connected to the separate lug of the tone control, which is a no-load pot, and designed to give to the neck PU the same inductance than to the SM1). Works flawlessly for me.
Regarding the tone cap: I don't think it's critical in this case. But do what you want and be happy.
Good luck in your tinkering.
