Does anyone like humbuckers on Telecasters?

[rze99]

Yes.

When they are in the neck position paired with a single coil, I remove them from the tone pot to keep them bright.

Fender '50s Hot Rod build
build with Pete Thorn Thornbuckers
Cabronita style build
Fender Taxman Tele modified

 

[CCK1]

Yes

 

[Fiesta Red]

Yep.
Albert Collins and Micawber and 70’s Telecaster Deluxes and 70’s Telecaster Customs and 70’s Telecaster Thinlines and Andy Summers and those Hot Rod models with the Seymour Duncan mini-bucker and…

Yeah, I like losta Teles with humbuckers.

 

[redhouse_ca]

Like? Love 'em.
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Great looking gauitars.

 

[teletimetx]

Yep.

 

[msalama]

Great looking guitars.

Thanks mate! Yeah, they're both excellent axes, although the Mexi would benefit from a set of original WRHBs. But the prices are just too crazy, a pair would cost more than the guitar itself

 

[redhouse_ca]

X

Thanks mate! Yeah, they're both excellent axes, although the Mexi would benefit from a set of original WRHBs. But the prices are just too crazy, a pair would cost more than the guitar itself

i always wanted one and I keep saying to myself I'll get one but I never really found the right guitar. Thinking about this now I think the play (for me, anyhow) is to start looking at single coil teles at a price I can afford but eye them up for the purposes of putting a himbucker in it. I have one tele I'd love to add one to but it's just so perfect for me as is that I think the guitar gods will punish me if I tamper with perfection. Anyhow, indeed nice kit you got there. I told myself more guitars in 2023 but I think I might make just this one little exception.

 

[redhouse_ca]

Yes.

When they are in the neck position paired with a single coil, I remove them from the tone pot to keep them bright.

Fender '50s Hot Rod build
build with Pete Thorn Thornbuckers
Cabronita style build
Fender Taxman Tele modified

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Jeez that's an incredible collection. I like the idea of divorcing the humbucker tone from the bridge p/u but I am a big time neck tone adjuster so id probable use a push pull and have separate tone controls (for said un-owned fantasy future humbucker tele). Did you add all these or did you buy any with a stock humbucker? What's your favorite(s) humbucker and why? Any bum experiences? Sorry for all the questions and sorry OP if I am getting off track, but this is super cool stuff to learn about.

 

[redhouse_ca]

My '74 Fender Telecaster Deluxe with WRHBs. Does better clean and cruch sound than my LP Standard and better dirty sounds than my Telecaster. I can get a lot of different sounds out of it (from funk, blues, to punk and rock) and it always sounds really nice. Plus it oozes with mojo. I love it, lately it has become my #1 (it is always at the top or very close to it) .

View attachment 1069827

Nice. How did they wire those in '74? Do you happen to know what (if any) filtering tone caps or resisters were stock? I'll look it up but maybe others may be interested for posterity.

 

[redhouse_ca]

My FCS "Keef" '53 Journeyman with Seymour Duncan '59 Humbucker and FCS '70s Custom with Wide Range CuNiFe.

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Beautiful.

 

[redhouse_ca]

Yes, but not in the neck position.

Curiously, why not?

 

[redhouse_ca]

Yes...since you asked. 1969 Thinline

Nice. What is the humbucker in that?

 

[redhouse_ca]

Nic

View attachment 1070270
The Kingfish Tele Deluxe is the first I've ever owned with Humbuckers. I don't think of it as a tele and it's not an LP replacement, but it can get down and dirty and it can clean up and sing.

Something like this w/ a rw/rp Fralin Strat Vint Hot No & Don Mare brdg pup…?
Don’t have a 4-way, but sounds so very do-able

View attachment 1070228

beautiful. What is the guitar? Sorry if I should know by look but I don't and it's dark fine looking.

 

[redhouse_ca]

damn dude, you should design for Fender

Can I come over?

 

[Tele-friend]

Nice. How did they wire those in '74? Do you happen to know what (if any) filtering tone caps or resisters were stock? I'll look it up but maybe others may be interested for posterity.

Sorry, cant really help you with your questions. I only know that these guitars originally came with 1 meg pots and supposedly that is an important ingredient in what gives the Wide Range pickups (WRHB) their distinctive sound.
I think they bring the best of both world - single coil and humbucker - and to me WRHBs really sit somewhere between these two types of pickups. They are more powerful than single coils, they are hum cancelling, yet the mid frequencies seem to be "controlled" in a way, that the pickups sound more articulate than PAF humbuckers.

 

[Jared Purdy]

I will admit that the humbucker is one of the most significant inventions in the history of guitar electronics. Whereas Gibson's P90 pickups, as well as many Fender guitars, had single coil pickups that caused a lot of hum and increasingly unwanted feedback, in 1957, Seth Lover created the humbucker, which would buck (IE cancel) is hum and buzzing of single coil pickups. The PAF pickup (as it was called) stood for patent applied for, and the patent was finally awarded in the early sixties.

Soon after, several other companies, including DiMarzio, Seymour Duncan, EMG, Fishman and Fender followed Gibson's lead. I don't generally like humbuckers on Strats, however, a lot of great superstrats from the Eighties have a humbucking pickup in the bridge position. I do however, think that the humbucking pickup in the neck of a Telecaster is pretty good, and is the closest thing to making a Telecaster sound realistically like a Gibson. There are lots of good Telecasters that have had humbuckers--Terry Kath's battered 1966 Fender Telecaster he used on all the vintage Chicago recordings had a Gibson SG humbucker in the neck of his Telecaster, which allegedly was the neck pickup of one of many Gibson SGs Terry used.

Andy Summers and Robbie Robertson were also known to play humbucking Telecasters. I don't think the bridge of a Telecaster should be humbucking, but I do like the Telecaster Deluxe and Telecaster thinline, so I guess humbuckers are okay on those Telecaster bridges.

Keith Richards also has a lot of modified Telecasters. His first one, Micawber, has a brass replacement bridge to accomodate 5 strings, with the humbucker in neck position and the nut cut, not evenly over the fingerboard, but with the first string modded to move over a little. Richards uses this Tele to play Brown Sugar and Honky Tonk Woman.

Richards also has another Telecaster, Malcolm, which is also modified with a cut nut and humbucker in neck position, but this one stays capoed at the 4th fret and is tuned in B. Richards uses this Telecaster to play Tumbling Dice and Jumpin Jack Flash.

Nancy Wilson, the lead guitarist and singer in Heart, also has a heavily modified Lake Placid Blue 1963 Fender Telecaster, with a PAF humbucker in the Telecaster neck position, that Nancy has been using since the late Seventies. Whether the Telecaster already had the humbucker in it before Nancy acquired it, however, is unknown.

But if you guys have any humbucking Telecasters plase post it here.

Thanks for the history lesson! I use to have a 52' Hot Rod that has a Seymour Duncan mini-HB in the neck position. I loved that guitar, but with the Strat and the LP getting more use, I opted to sell it, something that I still regret. I may buy another one some day. So ya, I actually prefer it over a standard Tele.

 

[Bruxist]

Curiously, why not?

I just always seem to prefer a single coil in the neck position. I should probably clarify that it is not that I don't like a humbucker in the neck position, just that I like a single coil there better, be it a tele neck pickup, strat pickup, or P-90.

 

[redhouse_ca]

Sorry, cant really help you with your questions. I only know that these guitars originally came with 1 meg pots and supposedly that is an important ingredient in what gives the Wide Range pickups (WRHB) their distinctive sound.
I think they bring the best of both world - single coil and humbucker - and to me WRHBs really sit somewhere between these two types of pickups. They are more powerful than single coils, they are hum cancelling, yet the mid frequencies seem to be "controlled" in a way, that the pickups sound more articulate than PAF humbuckers.

Thanks, still good info. This darn thread has kicked off a renewed obsession to get one of these, build or buy. All this info is really helpful (or harmful, however you wanna look at an obsession like this).

 

[Cosmothecat]

Hi.

Why, yes.

TV Jones Classic.


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Pax/
Dean

I've had this idea for a long time. This is inspirational! \m/

 

[Ringo]

Player Tele with Dimarzio mini humbucker neck pickup and Chopper T bridge pickup, great clean and gain tones and it's dead quiet.