A mad idea????

axisus

I assume this is a crackpot idea that won't work ......... Would it be possible to make a tele with strat pickup configuration (SSS) but have the middle pup under the scratchplate somehow so that it didn't show? I'm guessing that it would fail being too far from the strings and 'masked' by the scratchplate?

monquixote

I don't know about that, but where people have done "stealth" esquires they haven't worked too well for the reason you identify.

rpr

Think ICBM tried to fit a hidden neck pickup in an Esquire. In the sixties fender tried it in the original Marauder prototype-I'm sure there's a picture of the patent online somewhere, More recently they did this with the SSS configuration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAR_yW2XCqw

DrBob

monquixote said:

I don't know about that, but where people have done "stealth" esquires they haven't worked too well for the reason you identify.

I think that some people have had reasonable success with a 'stealth' neck pickup on Esquire's by putting a slight Gibson style back angle on the neck join by routing the neck pocket at an angle. By doing this the strings pass low enough over the scratchplate where the neck pickup would be for it to work but still hit the bridge t the usual distance off of the body. Don't know if it would work on the mid pickup though

mike_l

IIRC there's been a few guitars made with "hidden" pups. I'm sure Jackson have done some, but with 'buckers so maybe it would be possible with a higher output, over a "vintage" output pup.

OilCityPickups

I posted before on here about this. Leo himself designed the 'stealth' pickup for the Marauder ... with a twinned magnet structure that's very different to a normal single coil ... more like a very narrow humbucker ... without one set of poles being reversed polarity ... and with one coil encompassing both rows of poles. I produced something very similar for Sporky's bass. I just made two of em per pickup and made the whole shooting match humbucking

The point here wasn't to use the doubled mags to 'jump' the magnetic flux further, for example past a scratchplate, but to use the side effect of a larger coil aperture to boost bass and mids.

ICBM

axisus said:

I assume this is a crackpot idea that won't work ......... Would it be possible to make a tele with strat pickup configuration (SSS) but have the middle pup under the scratchplate somehow so that it didn't show? I'm guessing that it would fail being too far from the strings and 'masked' by the scratchplate?

Yes, I (and others) have tried it with an Esquire, but I found that in order to get anything like a usable volume balance between the two pickups, the neck pickup had to be too powerful to sound very good - the sort of extra-hot Strat pickup people buy for output and not tone. And I *like* a slightly louder bridge pickup/quieter neck pickup on a Tele! But this was too much. So I would guess that if you've got a normal neck pickup as well, it would be even worse.

It is purely a distance from the strings problem, the pickguard has no effect on the pickup. (Unless it's a metal one.)

OilCityPickups

Fairly simple to copy Fender design ... but I haven't tried anything like that in a six string guitar context so I'm whistling in the dark sound wise. My guess would be somewhat P90 like due to the uber-wide coil aperture.

Sporky

TheGuitarWeasel said:

I produced something very similar for Sporky's bass. I just made two of em per pickup and made the whole shooting match humbucking

Which is about ready for final assembly, at last!

axisus

would it help to stick a high output SC under the scratchplate and just have the other two as lower output?

RocknRollDave

Sounds like the best you can do effectively is to have the middle pickup in a plain cover (i.e. no pole pieces showing) that is the same colour as the scratchplate.
OK so it'll still be visible, but from a distance it will have the look of a Tele configuration. Tis a compromise, of course, but still..

axisus

You might be right there, but I think I'm gonna have a go at the hiding thing anyway - It just intrigues me!