Lipstick pickup for Tele?

[FenderFan05]

Hi there TDPRI, was wondering if there was any Lipstick pickups available in a Tele neck pickup size, preferably on a budget if possible! I know you could rout out a body/adjust a pickguard to accommodate a standard/strat sized lipstick pickup. But I'm trying to avoid having to make any irreversible changes to my Tele. Thanks in advance!

 

[Peegoo]

@FenderFan05

GFS (Guitar Fetish) used to sell a lipstick to fit a Tele bridge. They sounded good, and the metal case meant super quiet operation. Lemme see...

Yep, they still have 'em. Scroll down halfway and you'll see they offer 'em in chrome, black, and gold. I'm pretty certain they're made by Artec.

Fits Tele®

^^^^^^ CLICK HERE


..

 

[FenderFan05]

@FenderFan05

GFS (Guitar Fetish) used to sell a lipstick to fit a Tele bridge. They sounded good, and the metal case meant super quiet operation. Lemme see...

Yep, they still have 'em. Scroll down halfway and you'll see they offer 'em in chrome, black, and gold. I'm pretty certain they're made by Artec.

Fits Tele®

^^^^^^ CLICK HERE


..

I'm looking for a neck pickup, thank you though

 

[Peegoo]

I'm looking for a neck pickup, thank you though

I don't know of any maker that does a true lipstick for the neck position. There may be some out there, but probably from a high-end maker. It certainly would be possible to gut a standard Tele neck pickup, wrap an alnico bar with coil wire, and install it in the chrome cover. And it would probably sound like a proper lipstick too.

There has been a trend over the last five years or so for some players so call a Tele neck pickup a "lipstick," I think because of the chrome cover. But a lipstick it ain't.

 

[Jon S.]

I'll admit I don't understand the attraction of a lipstick pickup in the neck slot of a Tele. But if you are set on it, my recommendation would be to go for a double lipstick humbucker like the ones on a Danelectro Hodad (this is a stock pic but mine is the same).

 

[Boreas]

Capt. Obvious says mounting is going to depend on the body you are using. If the Tele is routed for WRHBs or a neck HB, it is going to alter the calculus. I assume you are talking about a standard body, or do you even have a body yet?

The other consideration if you are mointing in a "standard" Tele configuration is how the lipstick will balance with a standard bridge. It may be like playing two differrent guitars, depending on the tone of the lipstick puckup.

 

[Boreas]

Another thought about your situation - before you carve up a perfectly good guitar and pickguard, you may want to query others who have gone before you.

It doesn't seem to be a common modification. Why is that? Perhaps people find a lipstick pickup doesn't balance well with a standard Tele bridge. I love to tinker, but I don't like to alter stock bodies any more than I have to. You can't undo an alteration to an OEM body.

I have often thought about the same or similar mods and decided if I ever did it, I would replace both neck and bridge pickups with lipstick or gold foils.

 

[Jon S.]

It doesn't seem to be a common modification. Why is that? Perhaps people find a lipstick pickup doesn't balance well with a standard Tele bridge.

More than perhaps. It's why, in my post above, I recommend, should the OP go this route, installing a Danelectro Hodad-like double lipstick humbucker. It's a glorious tone full tilt plus, on my Hodad, one of the push-pull pots splits it. So, you get the best of both worlds.

 

[Jon S.]

Here's another dual lipstick humbuckers guitar, this one by Tone Revival Guitars in Givatayim, Israel. On my visit to the shop in '23, I played one of them (it's what influenced me to buy my Hodad).

 

[Boreas]

More than perhaps. It's why, in my post above, I recommend, should the OP go this route, installing a Danelectro Hodad-like double lipstick humbucker. It's a glorious tone full tilt plus, on my Hodad, one of the push-pull pots splits it. So, you get the best of both worlds.

But, have you tried that pickup coupled with a standard bridge pickup? That was what I was getting at - not the tone of the pickup itself, but how it PAIRS with different pickup designs with different tones.

 

[RomanS]

Maybe get a Tele pickguard for a Strat neck pickup, and a body with a humbucker route?

That said, like others have mentioned, using a lipstick pickup by itself, or in combination with a Tele bridge pickup, doesn't make a lot of sense - the "magic" of lipstick pickups on Danelectro guitars happens in the middle position, where, unlike most other guitars, the bridge and neck pickups are wired in series (rather than in parallel) - even on Danelectros, lipsticks by themselves sound a bit thin and bland...

 

[Jon S.]

But, have you tried that pickup coupled with a standard bridge pickup? That was what I was getting at - not the tone of the pickup itself, but how it PAIRS with different pickup designs with different tones.

If you’re willing to sacrifice neck alone tone and bridge-neck pickups balance for an esoteric paired tone that you love the most, then, yes, I understand your choice.

 

[Boreas]

If you’re willing to sacrifice neck alone tone and bridge-neck pickups balance for an esoteric paired tone that you love the most, then, yes, I understand your choice.

I am simply asking if you have tried pairing a lipstick with other types of pickups? And if so, which ones? That seems to be what the OP intends to do. Your nice pix show lipsticks only.

 

[Guerilla Electro]

real lipsticks are much longer than strat or tele pickup they don't fit in a strat pickguard , that's why strat sized lipsticks were created , you can make them fit in a tele neck cavity , but you need to scrape a bit of pickguard material .

you can find them on ebay for 15-20$ ,no need to buy Seymour Duncan or boutique brand : lipstick pickups are cheap pickups they are all made the same way

 

[Zepfan]

There's two companies that make real lipstick pickups.
Danelectro
Seymour Duncan

Get the Strat mount lipstick pickup for the neck position of a Tele.

 

[FenderFan05]

real lipsticks are much longer than strat or tele pickup they don't fit in a strat pickguard , that's why strat sized lipsticks were created , you can make them fit in a tele neck cavity , but you need to scrape a bit of pickguard material .

you can find them on ebay for 15-20$ ,no need to buy Seymour Duncan or boutique brand : lipstick pickups are cheap pickups they are all made the same way

Only reason I don't want to use a strat sized pickup is because my Tele's body and the pickguard are both only routed for a tele sized pickup. I didn't want to have to rerout PU cavity.

 

[Guerilla Electro]

I 'm not sure if it fits in the tele neck p.u cavity (mine was a humbcker cavity ) but it does not fit the pickguard , but you just need to scrape 1 mm
Artec makes some really inexpensive ones that are pretty decent , there is a wide DC range : you can find some 3K to 11k

 

[FenderFan05]

Would this dremel be suitable for shaving the extra space needed for the PU to fit in the body?

https://www.amazon.com/HARDELL-Accessories-Multi-Purpose-Polishing-Engraving/dp/B08VHYX96W?sr=8-6

 

[dsutton24]

I did one years ago, sorry Photobucket ate the photos:

Lipstick Pickups the Easy Way

Watching a rig rundown video not long ago, the artist (I don't remember who) said, "Everyone needs an arctic white guitar with lipstick pickups." That made me very sad. I don't have a guitar with lipsticks, let alone an arctic white one. As it often happens, along came an arctic white MIM...

www.tdpri.com

The short version is that I used the Seymour Duncan Strat sized lipstick pickups mounted in a Telecaster pickguard that was made to fit Strat pickups. The bridge pickup was removed from its base and it mounted easily to a Telecaster bridge pickup fiber baseplate.

 

[bendercaster]

Maybe get a Tele pickguard for a Strat neck pickup, and a body with a humbucker route?

That said, like others have mentioned, using a lipstick pickup by itself, or in combination with a Tele bridge pickup, doesn't make a lot of sense - the "magic" of lipstick pickups on Danelectro guitars happens in the middle position, where, unlike most other guitars, the bridge and neck pickups are wired in series (rather than in parallel) - even on Danelectros, lipsticks by themselves sound a bit thin and bland...

This. Does anyone like the Lipstick neck pickup by itself? (I know. Different strokes. There are probably some people that like and use it.) The bridge has that thin, twangy thing going for it, but in every Danelectro I've ever played, the neck pickup is pretty boomy. For me, the magic is in that middle position where you can blend it with bridge in series.

If your tele is only routed for a traditional telecaster pickup and you don't want to modify it, I don't think you'll find anything. I don't know if there are any tele sized blade pickups, but that might get you close? As I understand it a lipstick pickup is just a bar magnet wrapped in copper wire and shoved in a tube, so other than the extra shielding offered by the tube, a blade seems like it might get you close. (Edit: nevermind - the blade in a blade pickup is usually a ferrous blade not a magnet.)

As an aside, I do have one of those GFS lipstick pickups in my tele bridge though and it's pretty rad. Definitely low output, but I like it.

And my final piece of advice, because I see he has already commented a few times, is that if @Peegoo says otherwise, believe him over me. Don't sleep on his advice. He is the oracle and has saved me from destroying and helped me fix numerous guitars, probably without even knowing it.