Questions about the Telecaster Carved Top with Tone Pros bridge

[SEANVARLEY]

Hello,
Has anyone built a Telecaster Carved Top with the Tone Pros bridge and humbuckers? I am ordering parts and it looks like I should use tall pickup mounting rings for both bridge and neck pickups.
Does anyone have advice on the hardware?

 

[stratamania]

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

I would say you need tall rings for a TOM bridge and angled pocket (at least at the bridge end).  You can also put a piece of sandpaper over the body where the ring will go to finesse the fit.

You might not need to go to these lengths but might be useful to know.

[youtube]qBusI7wEjOc[/youtube]

 

[TBurst Std]

I would say a short pup ring for the neck and a tall pup ring for the bridge.  That is how carved top LPs come.

 

[Cagey]

It depends on how much pickup you want to hide. If there's no cover on the pickup, you might want the taller rings. I have 4 carved top and 1 flat top Tele here, and I used the metal rings on all that required rings, which are even shorter than the short plastic rings.

Note that with the carved top Tele from Warmoth, the peak of the top is at the same height as it is on a flat top Tele, as they carve a regular Tele body rather than add a layer and carve that back. Also, the very top is still flat, so you not only can still use a Tele-style combination bridge/pickup mount, but the pickup rings themselves will require flat bottoms. Those are kinda tricky to find, as most of them are designed to mount to carved tops whose carving continues over the entire top. In other words, pickup rings like you'd buy for an LP or ES-type guitar will need to have their bottoms levelled parallel to the tops or they'll mount crooked.

These won't mount properly without modification​

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Dimarzio has some rings that can go large like that, but not sure if color matching is going to be easy with regards to cream.

However, with that Red body, I have a set of Red Rings laying around that should work fine for you.  I had them on my PRS some 20+ years ago.  They're flat bottomed, and even if the bridge one is too tall for you, you can sand the bottom as needed easily enough.

If you're interested, PM me your address & I'll P.I.F. them to you in an envelope straight away, so long as you're in the mainland 48 United States.

 

[stratamania]

Thats good information to know Cagey.

 

[TBurst Std]

It depends on how much pickup you want to hide. If there's no cover on the pickup, you might want the taller rings. I have 4 carved top and 1 flat top Tele here, and I used the metal rings on all that required rings, which are even shorter than the short plastic rings.

Note that with the carved top Tele from Warmoth, the peak of the top is at the same height as it is on a flat top Tele, as they carve a regular Tele body rather than add a layer and carve that back. Also, the very top is still flat, so you not only can still use a Tele-style combination bridge/pickup mount, but the pickup rings themselves will require flat bottoms. Those are kinda tricky to find, as most of them are designed to mount to carved tops whose carving continues over the entire top. In other words, pickup rings like you'd buy for an LP or ES-type guitar will need to have their bottoms levelled parallel to the tops or they'll mount crooked.

These won't mount properly without modification​

The flat bottom rings are out there in tall and short. They are used on SGs, Midtowns, etc

 

[Cagey]

Right. They're just not easy to find. I mainly wanted to let him know about the configuration of the carved top Tele so he wouldn't buy just any rings. The tilted ones are far and away the most common so if he didn't know they wouldn't work, he might buy the first set available. 

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

My offer still stands.