Three Pickup Tele..Really A Strat in Tele Clothing?

[tubevibrato]

...just pondering this. Part of the Telecaster charm is the bridge and neck pickup together. I was playing a multi-band gig a while back where I tried out a guy's three-pickup Tele,...I could of swore I was playing a Stratocaster. It was so smooth,(very nice guitar), but didn't quite have the Tele bite I'm used to (had some Strat quack, which is great too). May just have been the type of pickups in it too. Has anyone else observed this?

 

[woodman]

no way, babe. my experience with three three-pickup builds is that what you got is a Tele, cept some added range. don't go by what you hear in a store, think of what work for you and how you can make that happen.

purists will disagree, but think about it. you still got all the classic Tele sounds, but also another spectrum to draw on. the important thing is to get a happy marriage between the two "real" pickups and the middle one.

i've had "quack" configurations that gave the hint of Strat, and wired them out-of-phase for some T-Bone Walker twonk. best luck i've had is to keep them out of the pickup switch and wire the middle pickup hot to the output with its own volume control. that's three pickups, three knobs. works for me, but you'll figure out what's right for you.

hey, i'm a cockeyed optimist!

 

[Mark Davis]

The way a guitar is constructed makes more difference than the amount of pickups it has. Thats why a Strat can never sound exactly like a Tele or a Tele even with 3 pickups can never sound EXACTLY like a Strat.

The Strats bridge system is different and even with a hardtail its different than a Tele. The Telecasters bridge is mostly what makes it sound the way it does.

 

[woodman]

a Strat can never sound exactly like a Tele or a Tele even with 3 pickups can never sound EXACTLY like a Strat.

Mark's right, of course. too many variables across the board. but you can expand your palette if you get adventurous.

 

[tubevibrato]

...cool. Great answers to a Tele territory of which I only ventured in to once. Thanks everyone.

 

[Telewringer]

I saw the light after talking with Joe Manuel who was playing lead guitar for Ricky Skaggs at the time and was using a Tele with a Nashville setup re. a Syemore Duncan Hot Stack in the middle with a five way switch. I had both my Tele's wired up with the same set up and man it is great. Total versatility.
Might notice Steve Wariner uses the same set up, and uses the bridge and middle pick up all the time for his solos. Sounds real nice. Tele twang on the
bridge when you want it, and can also do the Strat thing as well. Might notice Brent Mason is also a user of a simular set up but blends his middle pick up in with an extra volume knob. Nashvile Tele set up. The guitar that can do anything !

 

[JohnnyCrash]

I'm in the middle of this thought process myself...

I started looking for a hardtailed Strat, since I HATE Strats. Then I started to realize WHY I hate them.

I already plunge routed my '98 MIM Telecaster for a middle pickup and wired her up, but I still felt like I may have wanted a Strat...

Strats sound like that because of that floating bridge, NOT JUST because of that quacky middle pickup.

Telecasters sound like they do because of that anchored bridge and bridge pickup.

Throw a quacker in the middle of a Telecaster and you can get real close to a Strat, but you can't make a Strat very close to a Tele by just flipping to the bridge pickup.

The neck pickups are so similar to me I can't hear any difference.

ALSO I've got my Tele wired up to three volumes and no switch - I can do bridge+neck or all three if I want... this gives me more options than either a Tele or a Strat ever could... still trying to figure out how to wire up my 5-way superswitch with four set tone darkening caps...

 

[soltwanger]

yep, i have a nshville and i am inclined to agree with you about it not quite having that tele bite. i cant think why this could be, just i tdoesn't have that special 'something'

i rewired mine so that position 2 (usually neck and middle) is now the bridge and neck, which makes it a little more 'tele'

i still need to replace the bridge pickup on it though. it doesn't twang and sounds waaay too unrefined.

 

[LDM]

The Aussie guitarist Tommy Emmanuel often uses the three p/u configuration on his Teles.. He manages some really sweet 'tele' sounds as well as a range of other textures. His teles are built for him by the Fender Custome Shop folk, but he has them all fitted with bartolini pups (at least, he did when he made the instructional video I own)

 

[TG]

My ever-so-humble opinion, of course...

A telecaster has a tele-shaped body and a hard-tail bridge that incorporates a plate that a single coil pickup is suspended from. Other than that it can have a single coil neck pickup, or a humbucker neck pickup, or 2 single coil neck and bridge pickups. It's still a tele.

A strat is strat shaped and has 3 single coil pickups (or possibly a humbucker or 2 ) and a bridge...either vibrato or hardtail....not in contact with any pickup.

A strat with a hardtail telecaster bridge is a strat-shaped tele.

A tele with 2 humbuckers is a telecaster-shaped gibson.

A tele with 3 pickups and a separate hardtail bridge not touching the bridge pickup (ie, James Burton 'tele' or that thing John Mayer has) is a telecaster shaped strat.

A telecaster with humbuckers and a Floyd Rose trem is an abomination.


I'm thinking of modding one of my teles with 2 strat pickups in the neck and bridge. I'm going to use a 5-way 'super switch' and have it wired like a strat but with the 3rd position the neck and bridge combination. I'll just use the middle pickup on settings 2 and 4.

 

[FrankB]

I'm in the middle of this thought process myself...

I started looking for a hardtailed Strat, since I HATE Strats. Then I started to realize WHY I hate them.

I already plunge routed my '98 MIM Telecaster for a middle pickup and wired her up, but I still felt like I may have wanted a Strat...

Strats sound like that because of that floating bridge, NOT JUST because of that quacky middle pickup.

Telecasters sound like they do because of that anchored bridge and bridge pickup.

Throw a quacker in the middle of a Telecaster and you can get real close to a Strat, but you can't make a Strat very close to a Tele by just flipping to the bridge pickup.

The neck pickups are so similar to me I can't hear any difference.

ALSO I've got my Tele wired up to three volumes and no switch - I can do bridge+neck or all three if I want... this gives me more options than either a Tele or a Strat ever could... still trying to figure out how to wire up my 5-way superswitch with four set tone darkening caps...

Also, The stratocaster is considered a "semi" hollowbody guitar, due to the routing of the pickup cavity and the control area.That gives it alot of it's signature sound.
I once built a stratocaster for a guy that was routed for a Tele neck and bridge pickup and non tremelo bridge ( tele bridge) and a strat pickup in the middle ( he used a lipstick Tube pickup) and it sort of sounded like a tele and strat, interesting guitar from what I remember. But The telecaster bridge pickup and design is very distinctive all on it's own. I remember liking the guitar. When I cut the pickup holes I routed it as a tele but just added the middle pickup as an add on sort of, seperately. and used a strat style pickguard that was cut like a tele at the bridge and when I routed the contorl area, I routed it like a Telecaster and used thr telecaster control plate. LIke I said, interesting guitar indeed

 

[Drak]

Just depends on the switch you use I think.

I get my 5-way switches from StewMac that give you bridge + neck in postion 3 instead of middle pkp alone, so you get your typical Strat sound (neck + middle) AND Tele tone (neck and bridge)

Nice.

 

[Jack Wells]

The stratocaster is considered a "semi" hollowbody guitar, due to the routing of the pickup cavity and the control area.

..............

Oh really ............. then why not call a Tele a semi-hollowbody? It has pickup cavities and a routed contol area?

 

[BootRoots]

I have my nashville wired with a schaller E mega switch. It gives me neck/bridge in the middle. I get all the tele tones and the lovely in-bewteen strat tones. its the best of both worlds. I also have my strats wired this way.

 

[Ivan]

i thought that the neck and middle pickups of a 3 strat pup in tele guitar is very similar to playing a hardtail strat.
The neck pup doesnt sound right though (perhaps the bridge plate is making a difference).

 

[FrankB]

Well, that's what I was told and taught while apprenticing. Maybe it has to do with % of body mass to chambering, ie pu's and cotrols and trem or sound holes? made sense to me when I thought about it. Strats do tend to sound sort of acoustic compared to a traditional telecaster.

 

[0le FUZZY]

...I my own seff haff tried jes about erry combination betwixt a Strat anna TELECASTER and think yew kin git purdy close tew each sound with the udder won.

...I dunn erry thang from hard tail Strat tew Strat routed TELECASTER and all the points in betwixt.

...I usually think I'm purdy sure I kin tell the difference till I hear The first guitar part of this song or won like it.

...I jes don't noe fer sure. I noe whence I dew it I kin hear the difference but then again I noe watt iss watt HEE!HEE!

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[steve hinson]

Reggie Young's black Tele has a Strat PU in the middle...I think he gets dangerously close to a Strat sound when he wants to...it seems to me a 3PUTele gets a fatter Strat sound than a Strat...I'm just sayin'...

 

[JohnnyCrash]

Oh really ............. then why not call a Tele a semi-hollowbody? It has pickup cavities and a routed contol area?

WHY NOT?
Because all three of the Strat pickups "float" on one big sheet of plastic.

A classic Telecaster has the neck pickup screwed into the body, not the pickguard... and the bridge pickup is of course mounted to a steel plate mounted a little more firmly and closely to the body wood (more surface to surface converage on the plate than on the edges of a pickguard).

The poor acoustic properties of a plastic "donut" (screws around the edges free floating in the larger middle area) mounted surface (free to vibrate much like the top of an acoustic) is what transfers to the pickups on a Strat (would you buy a solid plastic topped acoustic?).

The solid tonewood body can resonate to the pickups more effectively on a Telecaster.

Regardless - the biggest complaint about Strats are their weak bridge pickups. One of their most distinct traits is that middle pickup "quack". The neck pickup is generally similar between Teles and Strats.

The most distinct trait about a Telecaster is it's bridge pickup snap and twang.

So, you can effectively get the best out of both guitars by adding a middle pickup to a Telecaster.

The floating bridge, floating pickups, floating everything of a Strat is a big drawback to me.

 

[telel6s]

The poor acoustic properties of a plastic "donut" (screws around the edges free floating in the larger middle area) mounted surface (free to vibrate much like the top of an acoustic) is what transfers to the pickups on a Strat (would you buy a solid plastic topped acoustic?).

The solid tonewood body can resonate to the pickups more effectively on a Telecaster.

So, what if you were to get a Strat pickguard made out of a tonewood such as spruce or rosewood? Do you think that would effect the tone compared to a plastic guard? I have no idea as to the answer, but your comment raised that question in my head-bone.

Related to this, when I route out a middle slot in my CIJ Antigua next weekend (or maybe the one after that), I'm going to screw the Strat middle pu to the body. I'm cutting out the extra hole on the pickguard so there will be no screw holes showing.

Also, there is a post from about 16-18 months ago from the great Terry Downs that goes into how to angle a middle pickup on a Tele so that the angle/space difference between the middle & bridge pickup on a Tele is the same as the angle/space difference between the two pickups on a Strat. (Of course, the link I had to this is now coming up as a 404 - Page not Found error.) The idea being that you can get more quack from the bridge/middle position on a 3-pu Tele that way. I'll let you all know how it works out for me.