Telecaster bridge plate material

Blithering

Can anybody answer this question?: Does the material it's made from have any affect on the tone the pickup produces, steel has magnetic properties. where as brass maybe doesn't and plastic is inert in that respect.

The reason I ask is that I am replacing the bridge with a top loader that does not incorporate the pick up mount so I need to fabricate one.

I might use brass or scratch plate plastic, but if steel actually enhances the tone in a good way I would use that but it harder work with.

Roland

Both steel, and to a lesser extent brass, affect the sound. Whether the difference is good or bad is a personal preference. What you could do is use plastic, and if you don’t like the change in tone then put a steel plate under the pickup.

What’s the guitar?

Blithering

My telecaster pickup has a steel plate underneath.

My question is how different mounting plate materials can affect the tone in terms of output, treble/middle/bass response, maybe sustain and how it responds to picking technique.

In other words is it a defining factor or is it trivial?

ICBM

Blithering said:

Can anybody answer this question?: Does the material it's made from have any affect on the tone the pickup produces, steel has magnetic properties. where as brass maybe doesn't and plastic is inert in that respect.

The reason I ask is that I am replacing the bridge with a top loader that does not incorporate the pick up mount so I need to fabricate one.

I might use brass or scratch plate plastic, but if steel actually enhances the tone in a good way I would use that but it harder work with.

It sounds like you’re actually making a pickup mounting surround not a bridgeplate?

If it is a pickup mount, I think it’s unlikely that the material noticeably affects the tone much. Metal of any type may have a small effect since it alters the magnetic field - aluminium pickguards do - but I expect it will be fairly small given the smaller amount involved.

The really important effect of a standard Tele bridge is that the pickup is mounted in the bridge, which vibrates and transfers a signal to the pickup - without that it will sound different, probably a much bigger difference than between different pickup mount materials.

Or you could mount the pickup directly to the body with no surround at all, like Tom Anderson does on some models.

WezV

i made a stratele  with a cut off tele bridge and T-S-S pickup.   I put the cut off section of the bridge as a metal plate moutned under the scratchplate to emulate the full tele bridge.   

Can't say it made any difference.  A baseplate certainly does more

Blithering

My build is a strat tele hybrid!

I have considered chopping the the steel brige plate and using that as the pickup mount as it is only a cheapo one.

(The base plate is the bit of metal stuck to the underneath of the bridge pickup)

Funkfingers

Cold rolled steel, punched into shape and, then, spot welded in the corners is the original formula.

gavin_axecaster

No welding - just punched out of pre-shaped sheet steel. Hence the wrinkled corners that some find offensive!

Here's pics from the Fender production line.

https://i.imgur.com/C7Ud12V.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/KS0MP9m.jpg

ICBM

That's a *lot* of Telecasters... at a quick guess there are over a thousand bridgeplates in that pic alone.

gavin_axecaster

It's my understanding that the same machine is/was used for a number of different products with different molds so they do a run of one line then switch everything over.