Tele neck pickup, vintage vs modern, i.e. brass+43AWG vs nickel silver + 42AWG

Discuss, why do you prefer one or the other? Seems to me, many are looking for a brighter, more stratty tele neck pickup, and the way winders are getting this is by using thicker 42AWG wire (like a strat), and by using (possibly thinner) nickel silver covers that let more highs through. The twisted tele seems to be a good example of this.

I dig the nickel silver covers on Tele pickups - both types of wire. Just allows the pickup to "breathe" more in my opinion.

i don't like wire 42 on tele neck pickups; sounds too metallic and klangy. my fav neck pickups usually have nickle-silver covers, AlNi III mags, and wire 43.

I like the rounder tone of 43 gauge wire in a tele neck pup over 42

One reason I ask, is that I actually have two different neck pickups, but they both have 42 wire (twisted tele and a fezzter oildale). Makes me wonder if I'm missing something...

One reason I ask, is that I actually have two different neck pickups, but they both have 42 wire (twisted tele and a fezzter oildale). Makes me wonder if I'm missing something...

you are. get yourself a low DC's 43, like the don mare bakelite or fender nocaster, and you'll get to experience both sounds.

Finer wire, if wound properly, will result in a smaller, denser coil with greater voltage output and less susceptibility to noise. The increased resistance can help get rid of edginess (reduces the sharpness of the resonance resulting from cable capacitance and pickup inductance), especially helpful with bridge pickups. One benefit of having increased voltage output (do to coil density) is that you need less winds to preserve output, which in turn decreases inductance, delivers better highend to the amp, and gives you greater versatility. It's not quite that simple, but there are benefits to using finer wire. The change from 42 to 43 isn't too dramatic. Bill Lawrence has been using 46 for his microcoils. Historically, Rickenbacker used 54 gauge for a time, but they couldn't sustain the increased cost especially as the market wasn't demanding it.

You can hear wire gauge as a quality. The bigger the wires diameter the airier it is.

So, where would be a good place to look without getting too expensive?

take that damn tone sucking cover off. :mrgreen:

take that damn tone sucking cover off. :mrgreen:

...I seem to remember having had this discussion somewhere once before...:mrgreen:
But seriously, how much of an effect can a thin nickel silver cover have? And some say that the heavier brass cover is even part of the sound!

even a thin veil of aluminum is enuf of a ground shield to supress treble.

even a thin veil of aluminum is enuf of a ground shield to supress treble.

Does that mean you don't shield your guitars, or does this effect only apply if it's immediately around the coil?

The cover's primary purpose is to smooth out high frequencies and reduce interference, which is why it is grounded. I am pretty sure that Bill Lawrence's Keystone neck PUs use a chromed plastic cover purely for cosmetics if you want the traditional look w/o the high end attenuation. I use a GFS Fatbody in the neck of my CV50 and it is quite Stratty sounding as well as dead quiet. It has more bite than a PU with the cover, but my tone control fixes that.

Does that mean you don't shield your guitars, or does this effect only apply if it's immediately around the coil?

i don't bother "shielding" guitars (cavities, pickguards, pickups). the results are minimal for bucking the humbuzz and there will be some change to tone. it's the top of a transducer coil that's the antenna for humbuzz. you can prove that in a 60 cycle test - watch the buzz drop as the top of the pickup(s) are manuevered at 90 degrees to the noise source (floro lamp is a good test).

to kill humbuzz, there's shielding (some type of ground surrounding part or all of the transducer coil), passive signal flipping (dummy coil), noise gates and electronic filtering (ns-2, hum debugger, etc). all of these things are gonna mess with tone to some degree, there's no free single coil lunch.

my first line of buzz defense is a dummy coil - they're super cheap and easy to install in a strat or tele, and they do work to HELP quiet things down, and yes they do suck tone. of all the "noise removing" pedals, i like the ehx hum-debugger best. it's not perfect, but it makes studio and stage events extremely bearable.

i do admit to liking the look of a nickel covered tele neck pup - it's just part and parcel with the history of teles. but removing that cover, and redsigning the tele neck pup (or better yet, using a good strat neck pup), is function over form for me. ymmv. :cool:

So,I like jazzy tone on my neck pickup so which wire helps that?

So,I like jazzy tone on my neck pickup so which wire helps that?

wire 43, brass cover. don mare's donOcaster or fender's older OV52 neck pup would be just what you're after. for reasons unknown to me, fender recently switch the OV52 neck pickup cover from brass to nickel-silver - they already have the nocaster neck for that sound so now they have two near-identical offerings and NOTHING with the classic, early 50's recipe.:confused: