New Twang King set fitted to my American Deluxe Telecaster

Ditched the N3 noiseless pick ups in my Am DLX tele, and fitted a Twang King set along with an Emerson 4 way control kit. Also lined the cavities and the rear of pickguard with aluminium foil and grounded it all. The upgrade went well a few little problems....OAK Grigsby bottom contact pin was shorting against the foil...had to bend it in a bit and slip in a bit of card to insulate it...worked well, then couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get the bridge pick up to turn on....found that i needed to elongate the slot in the control plate for the switch as it couldn’t throw into position 4. Once that was filed out 1mm more it was all good to go. The guitar now sounds like a whole different animal. The Twang Kings are in the same ball park as the Twisted tele and Broadcaster set in my Am STD tele very very similar. The twang king bridge is very close to the fender Broadcaster ...not much in it really, I would say I like it more. The twang king neck is stratty just like the Twisted tele but with a little less bass and a slightly lower output. Very happy with the Twang King set. Much much better than those N3s that came with the guitar. A couple of low points... On dismantling the guitar the string bushings all fell out bar one and there was no ground wire fitted for the bridge.. The guitar with all its grounding now is much quieter than it ever was even with the N3s. The grounding but was a pain but well worth it.

 

Sadly it had no shielded paint...and it didn’t even have a ground wire going to the bridge either..but the channel for a bridge wire was there at least.

 

I wondered the same thing..and RK was a hero of mine in the 80s.

 

The Emerson 4 way kit had a 0.47 paper in oil cap fitted. The twang king set on the 1st position of the 4 way switch with both pick ups running sounds pretty decent. Pretty close to a humbucker.

 

Yes I played my AmStd and the AmDlx back to back for over an hour and tonally there was not much in it. Just a tad less bass from the twang king neck than the Twisted Tele neck in my Std. I still need to play the twang Kings thro my Marshall cranked a bit and will when I get the chance. I tried it on a lower volume setting and it sounded good. On my fender hot rod mk ii it sounded perfect...even better with my ep booster on (that little booster goes well with that amp and really fattens up single coil pick ups) I think the twang king bridge is really good....there may well be better out there but I’m happy enough with it. The right amount of clarity and power. I had it down to 3 sets...the twang Kings, Twisted Tele Set and Texas Special Set. The blurb from fender said the twisted tele bridge had a dash of Stratocaster in it....well on the neck that’s fine but I definitely didn’t want a stratty bridge. The Texas specials sounded like they could be too dark. Heck even at one point I was considering a set of Toneriders Hot Classics....they seem to have a big fan base round here. I’m not a price snob and if they sound good who cares...!!

 

Very bell like yes. I never even heard of Twang Kings until I discovered this forum.