Effect of adding a middle pickup

[GuitarJonz]

You know those wacky Esquire-conversion guys (ducking) who claim that the tele bridge pickup sounded much better after they removed the neck pickup, due to the neck pup's magnetic field? (Not saying it ain't true, never done it). Well how about adding a middle strat pup to a tele, has anyone noticed that their 3 standard tele switch positions (assuming megaswitch for neck/br combo) sounded different...better or worse, after adding a middle strat pup? If the mag. field theory is true (ala Esquire), then I'd expect that adding a middle pup would affect the sound also. I'm surprised that nobody here has ever hooked up their tele to a scope and recorded these differences in sound after removing the neck pup, or adding a middle pup. Sounds like an experiment for a mad teleologist in the lab...TDowns??

[woodman]

i'm no Terry Downs, but i've been playing 3-pickup Teles for 30 years, some of them pretty Frankenstein. i've wired them both in and out of phase, on a switch, on a hotwired blend control of their own and any other wacked-out way i could dream up. the key to the best tone for me has been to keep the middle p/u WAY down, like just a tad above the pickguard. keeps it from dragging on the strings and gives the main pickups the dominant voice. to me, the middle pickup's kinda cheezy-sounding by itself, but it sparkles when blended with a good-sounding neck or bridge pickup -- in or out of phase.

[tdowns]

Originally Posted by woodman1

. to me, the middle pickup's kinda cheezy-sounding by itself, but it sparkles when blended with a good-sounding neck or bridge pickup -- in or out of phase.

I couldn't agree more woodman1.

GuitarJonz,
Great post. I have mentioned before in posts that I always prefer to set the height of my pickups in a 3 pickup Tele lower than 2 pickup Tele's. I usually start out with a pickup height of 1/8" (distance from the string to the pickup pole piece with the string fretted on the last fret), and go from there.

However, I think sustain due to low magnetic damping is over-rated. Most of us use compression, that does more to "even out" the volume variations and increase the perceived "sustain thru-the-bend".

The Tele neck pickup is located in a bad place for playing open strings, as it damps the 3/4 lambda potential anti node point. Since many other notes are played in many other places, I'm not sure how much the Esquire "low magnetic" damping is really worth for notes other than open.

Pickups very close the strings are a problem tho....
The magnetic attraction force (that results in damping) to he string from the pole piece permanent magnet falls off by the logarithm of the distance. It is strong near in, but falls off big time in range, like being equivalent to a mile out at 1/2".

IMHO, if you are a compressor player, set the pickups to get the sound you want (but not close), and forget about the magnetic damping. If you are all about non-compressed dynamics, then post here and let us know.

Brent Mason gets a good tone the last time I heard...
He plays with a 3 pickup Tele
...and uses a compressor on most stuff as I understand.

I love Esquires too....

Just my 2 cents....