Neck pickup in modded Tele very quiet!

JudasVigilante

Hi, my question is this: I bought a Harley Benton tele and modded it more or less completely, new everything. It's perfect but for one thing, the neck pickup, which is a brass covered Wilkinson single coil) is very low output in comparison to the bridge, also a Wilkinson and bought as a set.

I have the neck pickup screwed much higher than the bridge, almost right to the strings, but still it's output is about 33% down on the bridge which is much lower.

Could this be a wiring problem or is this how tele neck pickups are, I can't imagine that.

Any help would be much, much appreciated.

Cheers.

octatonic

Do you have a multimeter?

ICBM

Tele sets are fairly unbalanced by design, but maybe not that much…

Does the neck pickup sound OK, apart from being quiet? It should be a bit duller than the bridge. A lot of that - and some of the lack of volume - is due to the cover, so you could try removing it. First just disconnect the ground wire between the eyelet and the cover, and if that doesn't do enough try taking it right off.

zenzeypher

could it be out of phase ? is that a thing with HB + SC

JudasVigilante

No sorry I don't have a multimeter. About the cover, I did read on the web somewhere that the brass covers are the worst offenders for dampening the output. It could be out of phase , I dunno, I'm not sure how out of phase pickups sound/behave. They are both single coil ones and should be a matched set.

The pickup does sound ok @ICBM other than being quiet, and they sound quite good with pickup selector in middle if the neck was a bit louder. It's really just a volume thing. I've got a couple of strats and nothing like this has happened before, though maybe it's a tele thing.

If I could get the neck as loud as the bridge , it would be one of my main axes, it's that beautiful. (IMHO)

This is the guitar in question here: 

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/33483/hb-modding-challenge-te-30-tele/p3

Thanks for all your help guys. Knew someone would know alot more than me on here.

ICBM

Being out of phase doesn't affect the sound of the pickup by itself, and it makes the middle position very thin and honky, so it's not that.

Try snipping the little link wire on the bottom of the pickup between the eyelet and the cover tab. That will make it brighter and louder, both actually and perceptively.

JudasVigilante

Will that do any harm to the tonal characteristics of the pickups or cause a bad earth or anything detrimental at all @ICBM? ;

It's only the 3rd guitar I've ever soldered, could it be a weak connection somewhere?

Thanks for taking the time to help me out. Sorry for being a NOOB!

Paul

ICBM

JudasVigilante said:

Will that do any harm to the tonal characteristics of the pickups or cause a bad earth or anything detrimental at all

It will make the pickup slightly brighter and louder, but also slightly more prone to background noise. Not too bad though - no worse than a Strat neck pickup.

Just carefully cut the wire, and make sure there is a tiny gap between the two ends. If you need to put it back later, you can just put a spot of solder across the gap.

JudasVigilante said:

It's only the 3rd guitar I've ever soldered, could it be a weak connection somewhere?

No. That would produce either a very thin, weak sound or a lot of hum. (Or both.)

JudasVigilante said:

Thanks for taking the time to help me out. Sorry for being a NOOB!

No problem, everyone has to start somewhere.

JudasVigilante

Thanks once again, @ICBM. You the man when it comes to electrics. Your help is much, much appreciated. If you're ever in Co. Down, I owe you a pint! 

JudasVigilante

that's made a world of difference to it @ICBM. I don't play live anymore due to family committments, just home studio, so a bit of possible hum isn't going to bother me. Thank you so much. That's your good deed for the day! Dib Dib Dib! Cheers.