Telecaster, Humbucker neck, POTS?

ellangus

I have a Fender Telecaster with a maple neck.

It has a BKP 'Flat 50' in the bridge and I've fitted a BKP covered 'Crawler' humbucker in the neck (to be changed to a Mule when I can get one reasonably priced).

It's the age old problem - The bridge wants 250k pots but the neck pickup wants 500k's.

Any suggestions?

dchwhite

Do you use the tone pot much? If not, what about rewiring it to have two volume controls, one 250 and one 500?

chrisj1602

Wire the neck pickup without the tone pot? Diagram HERE

Or maybe try it like the Graham Coxon model which has a Tele bridge and Duncan '59 neck and has 375k pots.

Adam_MD

Use a 500k pot for the neck and wire a resistor in between the bridge pickup and pots so it sees a 250k instead of the 500k. I'm pretty sure @ICBM posted values for this before.

zenzeypher

this

Adam_MD said:

Use a 500k pot for the neck and wire a resistor in between the bridge pickup and pots so it sees a 250k instead of the 500k. I'm pretty sure @ICBM posted values for this before.

frankus

Use a 500k linear in the volume - the bridge needs more treble, never less.
On the tone I'd use a 500k log but wire the pickup selector so one side routes from the volume out lug to the common on the selector and then lugs for the pickups opt for voiced capacitors per pickup.

I have a 4 way selector with 0.22mfd on the neck, 0.22mfd on neck and bridge, 0.0.47mfd on the bridge, and nothing on the bridge (because real men don't use tone controls).

That way I can bore people with jazz noodlings on option 1 (with the blanket over the amp sounds of a rolled off tone) and then SURPRISE ICE-PICK IN THE HEAD by flicking to option 4.

ellangus

Thanks All,

Some good ideas there. Out with the soldering Iron methinks!

I had considered buying a toneshaper:  but that might be like using a sledge hammer to crack a nut.

Thanks again 

juansolo

I used 300K pots when I did that. Flat50 bridge and Mule neck is an awesome combo BTW. I recently swapped the Mule for an OilCity Mighty90 which I'd recommend highly also.

ICBM

Adam_MD said:

Use a 500k pot for the neck and wire a resistor in between the bridge pickup and pots so it sees a 250k instead of the 500k. I'm pretty sure @ICBM posted values for this before.

I would either do this or use a 250K volume pot. I don't think you want to increase treble on the bridge pickup at all - Fender did, with 1Meg pots in the 70s, and they're pretty much the definition of ice pick tone - and if anything, the neck humbucker will sound brighter than it would in a Gibson-type guitar anyway.

You can still use a 500K tone pot if you're worried about it being too dark, that just gives slightly more top-end and doesn't affect the pickup loading.