Nashville Tele Pickup Upgrade? Any insight will be helpful

[BigHoss]

I have a new Nashville Tele and I hate the middle Strat pickup. I want to upgrade it to the new Fender SCN. I see the nmiddle & bridge pickups sold seperately on Ebay, so which pickup should I buy, the middle position or the neck position. Which one would sound better placed in the Nashville middle position? Would it sound funny if I placed a SCN bridge pickup in the middle position? Some guy told me it would give me higher output then the regualr set up, is he full of it? Would I be wasting my time experimenting? Should I just drop the guitar and just play the banjo so I stop tinkering with my guitars and posting dumb questions on this site?

[GuitarJonz]

I believe that the stock Nashville middle pickup is reverse wound in relation to the neck and bridge pups, so you get hum-free operation in the #2 and #4 notch positions. If you install a noiseless pup in the middle, I believe you will lose the hum-free operation in positions #2 and #4, and will only have hum-free in the #3 middle position. I prefer #2 and #4 to be hum-free, YMMV. Otherwise, I bet it would work just fine, just tweak the pickup heights to taste.

[bri]

and I can tell you that the middle pup is really powerful with great tone and output. The bridge pup is really twangy and Tele-like and for my money would not be suitable in the mid position. My personal opinion would be to use the middle pup in the middle position.
Brian

[Nevada Smith]

Big Hoss,
I asked a similar question about some type of middle pick-up for a tele, but really nobody responded. GOOD LUCK!

[Billy Lee]

I was just working on a friends MIA Nashville tele with a B-bender. He wanted somehting a bit "quieter" for recording purposes, so we ended up with a "Quarter Pounder" in the bridge, a "Fender Lace" in the middle, and a "Vintage Noiseless" in the neck position. There is a difference as far as balance, and raising/lowering the pups don't change the "volume balance" enough. Another thing....the tone is different, and I'm not sure I'm sold on it....Hey, it was what HE wanted....not my choice.

What DON'T you like about the middle pup?

[Mike D.]

I have a Nashville Deluxe that I have changed the pickups on a few times. I actually ended up reinstalling the Tex Mex middle pickup. The neck and bridge are now a SD Hot Vintage Neck and a SD Vintage '54 bridge. I found that in this combination the Tex Mex gave me what I was looking for and was the best match to the other pickups.

I would really careful in mixing noiseless and regular pickups. Particularly if they are from different manufacturers. You may find that the ploarity of the pickups is different and the output levels don't match. My advice would be to stick to all noiseless (stacked humbucker) or all traditional. YMMV. Good luck.

[Doug R]

I've been modding my Nashville for over 5-years now. Messing with the pickups and wiring is like opening a whole can of worms. Not only is there polarity to match, but also phasing to get right.
I tried to make my Nashville sound more like a classic Tele. I have gone to an old-style Fender bridge plate with 3 brass barrels and '52 reisue pups. Actually the weird Str@@t pickup is the only part I haven't changed. But the rewiring was a real headache. I kept getting buzz, humm, and/or out-of-phase sounds. Not every replacement part has the same grounding or phasing. It's finally all working now, and much better than stock, but it was a real challange and took a lot of advice from people here to get it straight.
My advice: Unless you really know about that stuff, have a pro do the changes.