Quote:
Originally Posted by thepassivevoice
The next question, then, is whether you can get a Strat neck sound in a Tele-sized pickup.
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I think you can get pretty close, but I don't think you can ever totally nail it, for three reasons:
1) As I'm sure 99% of you know, the Tele neck pu is a good deal smaller than a Strat pu, not only in width but in length too. (The length difference might also be an issue when mounting the pickup or fitting it through the pickguard.) But because the coil is more narrow, it will never see as big a chunk of the string that a Strat pu sees.
Possible partial solution: You would have to have the pu custom made but you could have a pickup made with Tele length but Strat width. This would mean no cover though, so if you have to have that vintage look, fuhget aboud it...
2) Because of reason #1, Tele neck pu's almost always use 43 AWG wire instead of 42 as on a Strat pu. For reasons having to do with coil geometry and other factors, 43 just sounds different. It also gives misleadingly high DCR's for those used to DCR readings from 42-wire pickups, e.g., a 6.5k Tele neck pu is not as strong as a 6.5k Strat pu.
Possible Partial solution: Have one wound with as much 42 crammed on the bobbin as humanly possible. Taller rod magnets will help with this by adding vertical space that will allow for more turns.
3) The cover -- which is the easiest problem to fix. Just remove it. Depending on the material, the cover sucks away a LOT of the sparkle and snap.
So at the end of the day, the only real way to get the Strat sound is to slap a real Strat pickup in there. That said, some combination of the above mods might lead to a neck pu with a sound you like even better.