Brad Paisley secret agent - esquire pickup

How the heck do you mount it below the pickguard? I realize the body is routed for a neck pickup already, but how is the correct height achieved?

 

I put some foam under it so it would ride up against the pickguard. Pretty simple.

It just barely fits in the '50s route, so doesn't move around. I had to file off a bit of the base material on one side (similar to slab of gray epoxy) to get it in.

 

You wrote: "Tele Position Two -- neck + bridge -- did not blend or balance."

What did you mean by that? I'm considering putting one of these in one of my Copper Road Worn Telecasters.

On that topic I've already removed the neck pickup, and don't notice any difference in tone by removing magnetic string pull from the neck pickup.

Frivolous as it will seem to some, I'm still interested just to make a Tele that looks like an Esquire.

 

Cool, thanks for that. I received a similar reply from Seymour Duncan support, sounds easy and straightforward:


Hi,

We provide two pieces of foam with the Secret Agent. You'll place the most height appropriate piece of foam under the pickup. . There is no height adjustment.
The top of the pickup will be held by pressure against the back of the pickguard.

Thanks


Dennis Russell
Customer Service and Technical Support
Seymour Duncan

 

Regarding position 2 (tele neck and bridge pickups combined), I did not get the tone I prefer in that position -- that tone is my default reference when adjusting pickup height on a tele.

By no means am I suggesting that this combination can't work, just that it did not work with my particular '58 bridge pickup. Might sound fine with another pickup. YMMV

 

I'm curious if this would work with a
Tele with a stetsbar . Which requires
A shim under the neck to raise the angle. I mean there is no height adj.
So would it be high enough??
I like the tone of it. I wonder if there
Is a way to add this to a 4 position switch.. generally the cover ground wire
Is snipped. I didnt see anyway to do this
On this pup.???

Also this is only meant to fool folks like
us in the audience .. your typical fan
won't get it.

 

I was thinking it seemed like a cool way to sneak the middle position Tele sound into an Esquire, take or leave the neck alone position if it bothers the Esquire purists. But now I read that it doesn't balance well? Perhaps with certain bridge pickups it does better.

 

Let us know. This is filmed in Gaviota CA. 10 miles from my place. Brad also lives here, and Seymour down the street. Cool people too!

I am having an Esquire made by Sammy Sanchez of LA fame. I might try the 130$ fun?

 

Oh, I've seen a whole lot of players that IMO could make this sound bad.

My suggests instead are One, clean up your guitar tone and Two, practice more. Then buy this gimmick guitar as a reward for your hard work. :^)

 

And here I've been using CA 154 all these years, instead of US 101 - and missing out on all the cool!

Good luck with your custom Esquire!

 

Sorry - i forgot to look at TDPRI for a while.

I'm still wondering if this inability to get BRIDGE+NECK to work acceptably is the result of levels, or mismatch of polarity and wind direction?

I suppose I should figure out the polarity and direction on my bridge pickup, then contact Duncan to be sure to get a compatible pair. Or, just order the pickup, keep fingers crossed and give it a try. Ideally, I'd like to have RWRP for noise reduction in this position.

 

On mine, which has a 4 ply vinyl pickguard, once I lowered the bridge pickup to the correct height, I was able to get a balance between pick up volumes in the 3 switch settings. Very usable. And If I want to solo on the hidden neck PU, I kick in an echoplex preamp boost pedal. I'm happy with the secret agent. Performs for me.

 

I guess I've been playing Esquires so long ( 50 yrs. ) I can't see any reason to mess with something like this ... to each his own .

 

I received a PM asking how I wired the Secret Agent as described in my earlier post. Here is a diagram:



I added the 100k resister to tame some of the high end in the neck position (it is not connected to tone control). This may not be necessary, or may not be the optimal value for every Esquire.

 

@Lochry are you just using regular Tele wiring with a three position switch, 250k pots and you’ve added the 100k resistor in-line between the switch and pickup?

 

250k pots -- yes.

Note changes to regular wiring:

-- Bridge and Neck Pickups both connected on the "Left" side.
-- Tone connected to Lug 1 (common lug) of the "Right" side.
-- No connection between Lugs 3 and 4 on the "Right" side.
-- 100k resister from Lug 3 ("Left" side) to ground.

I recently added a 250k pot with an on/off bypass feature that allows me to bypass tone pot entirely as in original Esquire wiring.

 

Thanks for the reply @Lochry!

I'm thinking of using standard Tele wiring but with a 4-way switch and having the fourth position for the tone bypass. But I just can't work out whether that fourth position needs a capacitor or a resistor (never wired anything like this before).