Interesting Pickup Challenge...

Hey guys. I'm sure there's a million threads kind of like this one but I will start wading through them after I'm done posting. (Because I'm that guy.)

I've got a partscaster that I got real cheap from some guy on eBay. It's an American Standard body, Highway One neck, in an olympic pearl finish. He routed out the bridge to fit a humbucker and as a result, I can't go back to a single coil bridge. Currently, the guitar has two DiMarzio Strat pickups in the neck and middle positions, and a Seymour Duncan humbucker of some kind in the bridge. How they're wired, I'm not sure. I'm not crazy about the Strat pickups, because it's not a Strat. If I wanted quacky bluesy sounds, I would have bought a Strat, you know?

So here's my question: How do you think I should reconfigure my pickups/wiring? I'm open to any ideas at all really...but I'm on a pretty tight budget so mostly I'm looking at buying GFS pickups or comparable. Also I'm a beginner at wiring, so...

Any feedback or discussion is appreciated! Thanks!

Are you sure you can't put a single coil bridge back on it? Why not, is the humbucker bridge larger than the normal bridge, or are the screw holes different?

Yeah, the bridge is bigger than a typical Tele bridge and when I tried to switch it back (he sold me the bridge with it) there was about a quarter inch of hole on one (or maybe both?) sides. Major bummer. Don't think the rout was supposed to be that big. There may be a bridge out there that would work, but not the one I have.

I'm not too broken up about it though...I'm not really attached to the vintage, traditional Tele sound or look or anything...I'm open to trying P90s, rails, anything really...just looking to hear if anyone's got some cool ideas or if there's an overwhelming favorite config. Thanks.

Think the bridge is this one. (http://www.warmoth.com/hardware/bridges/pdf/Gotoh_Tele_Humbucker_Diagram.pdf) Looks like it's about 1cm wider than the standard Tele bridge (http://www.warmoth.com/hardware/bridges/pdf/Gotoh_Standard_Tele_Diagram.pdf).

I see. I just found a thread called Modern Player Telecaster Bridge Upgrade (http://www.tdpri.com/forum/telecaster-discussion-forum/334607-modern-player-telecaster-bridge-upgrade.html) where the OP has a similar problem to yours. There are also some suggestions there that may be interesting to you.

GFS Mean 90

GFS Mean 90

I saw those...have you tried them before? I've only found a couple of videos on Youtube of them, but I like them so far and I like the sound of P90s on Teles in general.

Total noob moment now...do P90s wire up like a normal single coil? So on my 5-way switch it would be B—B&M—M—M&N—N?

You can wire any humbucker the same way as a single coil (the basic plus/minus, optionally with separate ground). But with many humbuckers you have more wires, so you can "go advanced" if you want to, or keep it simple if you prefer that.

Anyone tried Railhammer pickups? Looks interesting enough...I probably would have a hard time convincing my wife to let me get one but they have a really clear quality about them in these demos.

http://www.railhammer.com/sound_samples.html

The Barden and Glendale vintage style bridges, for American Standard layouts might also be wide enough to solve the problem. Give their dimensions a look.

besides you, the player, the raw naked tone of yer electric guitar is in the pickups and passive circuit that they feed.

so, what kinda tone yer after? if tele, buy a tele pickguard (an UNcovered strat pup will fit into a tele pickguard neck position - if yer concerned about seeing the strat pup's coil wires, cover it with any kinda tape), remove the middle pup, keep the strat neck pup (that's a great choice for a tele neck pup position), buy a 3-way switch, replace the humbucker with a decent alnico p94 (if on a budget, the gfs mean 90 - which is a p94 - is pretty killer).

the only issues might be pup polarity and wind direction -

if the pups use individual unshielded hot/ground leads, reversing one pup fixes the coil wind direction problem.

fixing polarity can be sticky (i just remagnetize the coil as need be), but i'd guess if you have a pair of strat pups, one will be rwrp to the other, so just see which pup will allow parallel (noisefree) humbucking mode when both pups are selected.

umm, you do know how to solder, right? :cool:

....

I would go half bridge( like a GE Smith) and mount a P-90 on that thing.

What about the Dream 90s? Has anyone tried those? @Rob: Yeah, I think I'm looking for a sound that's hotter/less smooth maybe than the Strat pups I got...well the middle one is okay but the neck one is just too...out of character for me and the guitar. Too Strat-y, but not enough to be like "whoa that Tele sounds like a Strat." You know?

Here's what I'm thinking right now based on comments and some research.

Bridge: Mean 90
Middle: Strat
Neck: Dream 90? Or another Mean 90.

Or maybe switch the Dream and Mean depending on how the Dream 90 is? According to GFS it's more "modern sounding and overdrive an amp with a decided CRUNCH" so maybe that one would be better in the bridge for that classic biting rock tone?

Oh and yes I know how to solder...and I can't do the half bridge thing because the rout looks like it was done while really drunk. :-\ Looks like the router kind of got away from him. Not very nice looking.