Seymour Duncan P-Rails pickups

[DaveT]

I have a cheap Chinese Telecaster copy that I use as my test-bed guitar.
I had a pair of cheap PAF humbuckers in there with each pickup having a rotary switch to give 6 different sounds - not all of them useful! For full details look here -> http://www.skguitar.com/SKGS/sk/Images/diagrams/six_way_rotary.htm

I could hear no difference between the humbucker coils in parallel to give a single coil sound and using just the coil closest to the neck.

After watching the SD P-Rails video on You Tube I haunted eBay for a cheap used pair. Done!

I must admit I am very pleased with them.
I mounted the bridge P-Rails on a neck humbucker mounting pad for a carved top guitar so that the Rails part of the pickup is closest to the bridge, and closest to the strings. That gives enough of a trebly sound for me.

By having 6 different sounds on each pickup, a phase switch for the neck pickup, and the Tele 4-way switch you get far too many different possibilities. 6 + 6 + 36 + 36 + 36 + 36 = 156 of them.
The two 'pickup out of phase with itself' options are next to useless until you use them out of phase with the bridge pickup. Then it sounds good to me.

My Plan A is to keep the 6-way switching on the neck P-Rails but only use a 3-way switch on the bridge P-Rails, and then fit them into a decent Thinline Tele body and neck from Warmoth.

 

[dmraco]

I have used them twice. Very nice IMHO.  Good luck.  The phase should be cool.

 

[Hendrix]

can it be done with 5 way SUPERSWITCH  too ?

 

[stubhead]

I have had #1 Tele wired with a superswitch for the bridge L500XL, all by itself - that goes to concentric volume/tone knobs, then to a three-way switch, where it meets up with the neck single-coil, a Lawrence... L290, I think? Which also has it's own volume/tone control. And - I leave the three-way in the middle probably 80% of the time. The superswitch on the bridge PU gives me front coil, series, parallel, back coil and out-of-phase. And I don't use the out-of-phase, and very rarely the coil closest to the bridge.

And, I agree that when sampled by itself, the parallel setting and the coil towards the neck sound quite similar - but the fun starts up when those settings (and series bridge coils) get matched up against the neck pickup. When I get the volumes set right, all I have to do is move that five-way into series, parallel and front coil and fiddle with the bridge PU volume and tone to get a huge variety of sounds.

It's mining the same territory that the great four-knobbers like Jimmy Page and Duane Allman worked, and since I grew up with a Gibson in hand, this is just a good way to get after the same things. All you have to do is listen to the live "Elizabeth Reed" solo and you can hear what he's doing to the thing... It's delicate - you have to pay attention - and I can see why there are some advantages in consistency using the more modern method of have a programmed stomp for each tone. but I like inconsistency... a good night to me is when I've played at least a few things I'd never played before (and almost surely couldn't play again :laughing7. Fookin' hippies...

WOAH - LOOK AT THOSE PEDALBOARDS.....