1974 tele pickups

Just purchased a set of 1974 tele custom pickups. Single coil bridge pickup, and a Fender Wide Range Humbucker for the neck. The seller on ebay is well rated by thousands of customers, and he assures me that the pickups are in excellent working condition and that they sound great. Couple of questions.

First, I paid $700 for the pair. Did I get taken to the cleaners, or does this seem like a fair price to everyone? Certainly seemed par for the course, as far as how similar pickups have been priced on ebay, and '74 Customs tend to go for four grand or more on ebay, so it seemed like a decent deal to me, but i'm just hoping for some reassurance from the community . . .

Secondly, I'm putting these babies in a left handed Warmoth Tele Custom. I'm thinking that I will take a precision measurement of the poles on the humbucker, and then adjust them all relative to one another. For instance, I'll adjust the far right pole to the measurment on the far left pole, and vice versa, thus adjusting the pickup for left-handed use. Do people think this will work, or do I have an overly simplified understanding of pole adjustment?

Thanks for the input as always . . .

Sounds expensive. If you are building a daily player, and not a high end restoration, I would think you could find modern parts that would be quite close in sound and performance for a lot less money. Instruments were good back then, but were not old enough to be significantly different different than modern carefully selected components. I usually set my poles pretty flat unless I have a string that needs a little more bite. Hope it works out well and gets played heavily.

Just my opinion.

Obviously not what I wanted to hear, but I appreciate the honest assessment. So you don't think the fact that the original Wide Range Humbucker isn't produced by Fender any longer doesn't make the set more valuable?

I think you can adjust the 6 magnets you don't see from underneath if I remember correctly.

I have '73 and '78 Customs, and '73 and '75 Deluxes (2 humbuckers) and like the sound of all of them. On my Customs the humbucker is about as low as I can get it to match the single coil in volume but you can always adjust the volume controls too. I usualy have them wide open and use a volume pedal.

I have no experience with the new versions but have heard many say they aren't the same. Sounds like you will have a great guitar with the ones you got. Best of luck.

Just purchased a set of 1974 tele custom pickups. Single coil bridge pickup, and a Fender Wide Range Humbucker for the neck. The seller on ebay is well rated by thousands of customers, and he assures me that the pickups are in excellent working condition and that they sound great. Couple of questions.

First, I paid $700 for the pair. Did I get taken to the cleaners, or does this seem like a fair price to everyone? Certainly seemed par for the course, as far as how similar pickups have been priced on ebay, and '74 Customs tend to go for four grand or more on ebay, so it seemed like a decent deal to me, but i'm just hoping for some reassurance from the community . . .

Secondly, I'm putting these babies in a left handed Warmoth Tele Custom. I'm thinking that I will take a precision measurement of the poles on the humbucker, and then adjust them all relative to one another. For instance, I'll adjust the far right pole to the measurment on the far left pole, and vice versa, thus adjusting the pickup for left-handed use. Do people think this will work, or do I have an overly simplified understanding of pole adjustment?

Thanks for the input as always . . .

No, you did fine.

True. You did do fine.

$450 for a WRHB is a fair price, if not a little on the high side of what they're selling for now. Some have paid less. Some have paid more. And $250 for the bridge pickup is what I'd call full asking price, but not a rip off by any stretch.

One of the important things to remember with vintage WRHBs is that the threaded magnets tend to be loose so you really don't want to be messing around with them too much.

I would suggest, as I suggest to all my customers, that you just leave the pickup alone and try to get the balance right by tilting it just like any other non-adjustable pickup.

Once you have the balance sounding pretty good, then you make the fine adjustments using the threaded magnets.

And don't expect the bridge and neck pickup to have similar output. You will not be able to get them to have the same volume. A Tele Custom isn't made to be that way. It has two sounds. 1) The amazing neck pickup sound. 2) The truly amazing neck/bridge sound. You just have to sacrifice the bridge sound alone.

Hey, they say Esquires only have one sound. :wink:

Thanks for the input. Ordering a one piece swamp ash body, and gonna try to finish it myself with tung oil. Black pickguard, vintage three post bridge, can't wait. Then it's just a matter of finding a lefty tele neck for sale on ebay. I know it's silly, but I want a genuine American made Fender lefty neck. Something about having that logo on the headstock. Really hoping to find a lefty American Standard neck with rosewood fretboard - I prefer the rosewood in general, though my current #1 has a maple fretboard. Been watching ebay for a few weeks, but it's slim pickings for us lefties. Willing to wait it out for a couple of months if I have to, though, just to get exactly what I want. I'm in a little deep at this point to start making sacrafices out of expediency . . . Thanks again for all the advice. I'll post photos in a few months when the project is complete.

I'm pretty sure I saw one in the classified section here.