Humbucking Tele

[Jumble Jumble]

So this is a Vintage White chambered swamp ash body from Warmoth, going together with a Fender rosewood on maple neck I've had about 10 years from new. The body from that Fender Tele is destined for a new neck some day.

The Fender neck already has Sperzels on it, they've been there for years.

This is the current state of the body:


That's copper shielding with blue painters tape over it in the cavity there. Also the ferrules are in.

It's getting SD pickups - a nickel-covered '59 in the neck and a Little 59 in the bridge. I'm doing a superswitch 5-way wiring to get:

Neck humbucker
Neck split + bridge split (parallel)
Neck humbucker + bridge humbucker
Neck split + bridge split (series)
Bridge humbucker

When the neck is split, it'll be to the screw coil, but when the bridge is split, it'll be to the "slug" coil (the North). So it'll be hum cancelling in all positions. This also gives me the advantage of the fact that I'll be splitting the neck pickup to the coil that's in the 24th fret location.

I'm also putting a treble bleed on the volume control.

The wiring diagram for this is as follows:



However, I was a little concerned about the amount of awkward point-to-point wiring going on when adding the treble bleed stuff, so I designed this little breadboard:



So this resulted in the wiring looking like this:



I think I just have another jumper to add to the switch, and then the harness will be ready to have the pickups put in.

To complete this instrument I'm just waiting on delivery of a stainless steel 3-saddle bridge that's going in there. I think after that I have everything. I have a tort guard for now but I'm considering other options in the back of my mind.

 

[bagman67]

That's tidy work.  I approve!

 

[Cagey]

I agree; it does look very good.

I'm assuming those black/white wires go to the output jack? If so, they ought to be shielded. It's amazing how much noise that short run can pickup up.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Yeah. I've got some shielded cable now, so I'll probably splice that on before I finish up.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

So guys. The bridge arrived (thank you Cagey) and I've put it on.

Just want to check something - is this level of lift from the body normal? Acceptable? Or a problem?

 

[bagman67]

So guys. The bridge arrived (thank you Cagey) and I've put it on.

Just want to check something - is this level of lift from the body normal? Acceptable? Or a problem?

Could your bridge grounding wire be acting as a sort of shim, providing a little more altitude than you typically want to see there?  I've had that happen to me when I didn't get the thing placed right.

 

[leo12.]

Did you leave the wire insulation on the wire?  its just the wire under the bridge.
Is the pickcup  bottoming out? Are the screws to long? Try the bridge on its own.
Put the bridge on a surface you know to be flat, check for any rocking.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Thanks, I'll try all that. It might well be the ground wire, I don't think I did a great job of flattening it out.

 

[leo12.]

Bagman is probably right with the ash body & that bridge (its pretty solid who makes it?)
it could be the insulation keeping it up. Nice build I like vintage white & chambered yeah.

 

[Cagey]

So guys. The bridge arrived (thank you Cagey) and I've put it on.
Just want to check something - is this level of lift from the body normal? Acceptable? Or a problem?

That's unacceptable. If there's nothing holding it up, like the ground wire Bagman mentioned, then I'd be putting it in a vise and whacking it to bend it into shape. Otherwise, being in the air like that it's going to act like a shock absorber for the strings and you'll lose sustain/articulation.

Before you whack on it, though, find a reliable straightedge and be sure your top is flat. I had that bridge installed on the last body and I don't remember it having that rise to it. But, it's also possible I had the other bridge installed, so check that, too.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

I'd be putting it in a vise and whacking it to bend it into shape.

That's your answer to everything

Thanks guys - sure enough, it was the ground wire. I just didn't have it flattened out enough. There were probably too many strands, too, so I trimmed it down a little. It's dead flat on there now.

Onward!

(to bed, actually - will probably finish up this weekend)

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Bagman is probably right with the ash body & that bridge (its pretty solid who makes it?)
it could be the insulation keeping it up. Nice build I like vintage white & chambered yeah.

Sorry, I didn't see this. It's a Hipshot stainless steel bridge. Saddles are compensated brass.

Just put the multimeter on it to check the ground connection and it's good.

 

[Cagey]

I'd be putting it in a vise and whacking it to bend it into shape.

That's your answer to everything

Hehe! Yeah, well, I was born and raised in the Motor City, and that's how we built cars for many years: hammer to fit, paint to match. Do your best and caulk the rest.

 

[stubhead]

I've seen hacked-up guitabortions on Ebay that have been repaired with that remarkably under-appreciated magic tonewood - Bondo....

 

[Jumble Jumble]

I wasn't happy with the ground wire still, it was still causing a slight rocking in the bridge as I was tightening it up, so I decided to go with shielding tape instead.

It's slightly behind the screw holes so that if it does cause a tiny lift it'll be behind the screws, thus pushing the rest of the bridge down to the body. Probably overkill to worry about that, but now it really is completely flush with the body all the way around.

I finished it up and did setup today. Here's a quick picture, pretty bad quality. Thankfully the wiring worked straight off so no debugging required.


The pickups are awesome, I've never tried the 59 before and never had a humbucker in a tele. It's a lovely neck pickup and the bridge pickup is a great mix of proper Tele sound and humbucker growl. I can see this guitar getting a lot of use, it's a real workhorse - as a Tele should be.

The two coil split sounds are both nice. The series one is a bit like a traditional Tele middle position tone but with more guts. The parallel sound results in a volume drop as expected, but it's a really nice woody single coil tone (the only position that really does sound like single coils). I suspect that the volume drop could come in handy for a quick switch to a rhythm guitar tone.

I've got 500K pots in there and that was definitely the right choice. The buckers need it.

The little circuit in there to implement the tone cap and volume treble bleed works really nicely; I think that'll become a standard feature in my Tele wiring from now on.

And yes I did go and put some proper shielded cable in for the final run. I used braided single conductor like from a PAF. Then when I was about to put the jack in I realised that the tip was totally going to touch the braid. So I sighed, unsoldered it, put heatshrink tubing up the wire to insulate the braid and soldered it again.

I don't think I really hit any problems with this. The pickguard isn't the final one that's going on, so it's not really quite finished. But that hasn't arrived yet. When it does of course, there may be some slight adjustments to screwhole locations or whatever.

 

[Cagey]

Nice! Good move on the bridge grounding. I'm glad that all worked out for you. Sweet fiddle all-around.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Thanks, man.

It is nice. It kinda half feels like a new guitar. I think if you switch the pickups, that's considered an upgrade, but switching the body, hardware and bridge... what's that?

Whatever it is anyway, the result is a very nice guitar.

Body contours: the ribcage contour is definitely nice. I think I'm so used to playing Strats and Teles that the heel contour doesn't matter at all, so probably won't bother with that in future. And the forearm contour, while comfortable, does very slightly diminish the Tele-ness of the guitar, so in my next build, which is to be an all-exotics Tele, I will be going with a flat top.

 

[Cagey]

I've become enamoured of carved top bodies vs. flat, but am moving away from exotic woods on those. To me, the neck is the thing. Every little bit counts there, and there's a lot to be said about most exotic necks.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

I'm going for exotics in the body as a purely aesthetic thing. It's just going to be a "luxury" tobacco sunburst tele. But still having a pickguard, top rout etc.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

OK, so, settling in, I wasn't really keen on the position 4 sound. It was two coils from the two pickups, in parallel and hum-cancelling. The problem was it was the only position on the switch that didn't have two coils connected in series at any point, so it was half the volume of all the others.

So I tried to think of some other way I could connect them. First I considered wiring each humbucker in parallel, and then connecting them in series, but I wasn't sure how it'd sound and there was no way I could get it in there with all the other combinations on the superswitch.

Position 2 is one coil from each pickup, connected in series. I decided that in position 4 I'd do the same again, but wire a capacitor in parallel with the coil from the neck pickup. This should knock out a little treble but not in the same way as a tone control, as some of the treble from the bridge side should still get through.

So I hung a couple of crocodile clips out of the guitar and started testing caps. The effect was nice. I tried a .047, a .033, a .022, a .01 and a .001. I think if I'd had a .015 it might have been good, as for me it was between the .022 and the .010. In the end I chose the .010. It's subtly different to the position 2 sound but it's a nice usable sound. A bit thicker and less tele-like.

Here's a diagram in case anyone wants to try it:

Note that there's no hope here of having separate volume controls for each pickup. The wires are all over the place and you'd end up with all kinds of crazy stuff going on. You just need master volume and maybe master tone.