Telecaster 72 DELUXE bridge pickup

[greenalex]

Hello folks,
I've played the 72 deluxe for 4 months now and the more I play the more I understand that the bridge pickup sucks. As for me, it's just useless if you use it stand alone. Now the questons.

I don't have billions dollars to buy Custom and to compare what i like the most, so i'm thinking about buying tele72deluxe pickuard with a hole for telecaster-bridge pickup and put the last there. That pickuarg is available here terrapinisland.com

Do you think that the steel bridge plate changes sound a lot? Will it be okay if i just put the tele pickup into the pickguard?

Why i don't want just to sell deluxe and buy custom is the fact that I'm afraid I won't like it. Having deluxe I am able to put EVERYTHING in the bridge including Empire State Building itself, because the routing for Wide Range is VERY big.

On the other hand, my previous guitar was american standard tele and i enjoyed the bridge very much.

[javabirds]

I had this problem and replaced the pups only to discover that it wasn't the pups... The upgrade helped but the reality was that I could never bond with that guitar so I sold it and bought something that hit me right off.

[boris bubbanov]

Alex, I think it is a pretty serious gamble.

A lot of what makes a Tele bridge pickup is the saddles and the rest of the plate. You put a non Tele style bridge on there, no way you'll get the same result that a usual AV style Tele gets you.

Now, you could make a crude ring, that fits around the pickup but under the pickguard, something like this ring:



And you could maybe call Marc Rutters and see if he can make you a GE Smith style half bridge that uses '72 Deluxe reference points not AV52 reference points, but the amount of struggle as you can imagine is getting up there. Changing the pickguard and pickup alone, might sound cool, but until it is tried we won't know if it is what you need.

By the way, the "Bubba Mod" bridge shown may have 3 brass saddles, but it does not really sound like a G E Smith bridge. Too massive, and the string through points are so wrong, the break angle so unhappy.



Completely redoing it works wonders, but are you willing to work this hard or might you rather trade for a '72 Custom?

[67TeleNut]

Adjust your pole pieces up!

[greenalex]

Originally Posted by boris bubbanov

Completely redoing it works wonders, but are you willing to work this hard or might you rather trade for a '72 Custom?

Thanks a lot!

To tell the truth I love the feel of 72 deluxe, it seems like it was made for me. So I don't really want to sell it.

What I'm going to do is buy a pair of lollar regals. Those changes might help a lot. If they don't, I'll place Gibson p-94 pup in the bridge.

If nothing helps, I'd go for 72 custom. There's no other way.