Baritone pickups ?

[Meteorman]

Have bult a couple dozen or more telecasters, and recently started winding my own pickups for them with reasonable success.
Now I have 2 requests for baritone guitars (28-5/8 scale), and I hafta admit I'm not too familiar with baritones.
Is there a general rule of thumb for pickups for baritones ?
Or are they basically the same rules as for any telecaster (which is to say, no rules - get whatever you like for what you play).
Any specs to avoid or adhere to for single-coil baritone pickups ?
thanks in advance
/mike

 

[Edgar Allan Presley]

In my limited experience, hot pickups can sound extra muddy in baritones. That can be good or bad depending on what sound you want, between that low Duane Eddy twang and a sludgy wall-of-doom.

 

[TwangToInfinity]

low k strong magnets i like

 

[Rob DiStefano]

The original 1950 Telecaster neck pick was added by Leo to make his Spanish electric guitar kinda sorta replicate the dog house double bass that the country bands in his "neighborhood" (Fresno, Oildale, Bakersfield, etc) were lugging around. Thus making his one guitar capable of lead, rhythm and a kinda-sorta quasi bass. This original neck pickup had a heavy brass cover that was heavily chrome plated - all to kill treble - along with a cap or two to yet further squash treble, depending on the circuit and the pickup switch position. Though there was no really viable Fender bass amp to arrive until years later. So, I think that a 1950 replica Fender neck pickup - with heavy brass and chrome cover - would make at least a decent baritone bass pickup for a modern Tele baritone guitar.

 

[wulfenganck]

I own a Gretsch G5260 Baritone in low A to a standard tuning - excellent guitar with mini-humbuckers. They sound nice, but NOT the typical filtertron chime. But that's probably also due to the 14 to 68 gauge strings.
They also have a rather low output. But then: I'm not into high-output pickups, I feel those are mainly good for distortion, but lack something in cleansounds.
There seems to be a rather large part of players using baritones for modern heavy stuff downtuning. Those will probably avoid a singlecoil or other lower output pickup.
But if you (or your clients) opt for a "general workhorse" guitar: I don't see the need for a specific baritone pickup. What you feel suitable for a standard Tele should also do for a baritone.
I feel it's more about the amp and its headroom and the cab-design. Are those able to handle a baritone?

 

[RomanS]

For a baritone you want underwound, bright pickups that don't have a lot of bass - the best-sounding baritones are still those Danelectros with lipstick pickups, so you want something similar sounding for your Tele!

 

[jkingma]

For a baritone you want underwound, bright pickups that don't have a lot of bass - the best-sounding baritones are still those Danelectros with lipstick pickups, so you want something similar sounding for your Tele!

I agree.

Dano used the same pickups in all their instruments... guitars, basses, baritones, and all the funky stuff too.

 

[Ben Harmless]

I own a Squier VM Jazzmaster Baritone (30 inch) which has become one of my favorite instruments of all time. It has fairly straightforward Jazzmaster pickups (no weird P90 construction or anything) which owners of this guitar seem to generally keep in place because they're pretty good. Much like the others here, I think anything with more output would quickly make my low B just start turning to flub and lose the benefit of the baritone over say, a bass guitar. If one DID need a higher output, I'd say that it would need to lean in the direction of very restrained low-end response in order to stay articulate.

 

[Rebelchild40]

Have bult a couple dozen or more telecasters, and recently started winding my own pickups for them with reasonable success.
Now I have 2 requests for baritone guitars (28-5/8 scale), and I hafta admit I'm not too familiar with baritones.
Is there a general rule of thumb for pickups for baritones ?
Or are they basically the same rules as for any telecaster (which is to say, no rules - get whatever you like for what you play).
Any specs to avoid or adhere to for single-coil baritone pickups ?
thanks in advance
/mike

NY mini's☆ (or any quality Mini Humbucker)

 

[Dan German]

I put a Bootstrap Skookum 90 Mean in the bridge of my single-pickup Franken-Bari (29.75” scale A-A). I have nothing to compare it to, but I really love how it sounds in a baritone.

 

[Killing Floor]

I had that question and Lindy Fralin recommended stock Tele pickups. They sound great. The right amount of twang and punch. Granted mine is 27” and is a Fender bari length neck B-B.

 

[mad dog]

I'm with RomanS on this. Not too hot single coils - pretty classic tele p/us - work fine. Lipsticks are the best, especially with the series middle position sound, though I'm not sure how you'd put them on a tele. I also like low wind P90s a great deal for baritone sound.

 

[Antigua Tele]

I have three Squier baritones, and Fender / Squier kind of screwed up the pickups. The VM Jazzmaster had a high inductance "Duncan Designed" bridge, and the Squier baritone Cabronita Tele had P-90s which are high inductance by nature. For the barritone Tele I replaced the P-90's with AlNiCo pole P-90's, which cut the inductance from around 8 henries down to 4, and I replaced the Duncan Designed JM pickups with Fender Pure Vintage JM pickups, and both mods improved the sound a lot. As others have said, less mud and more harmonics.