Telecaster Pickup upgrades

Note that this was already a few years ago (~ 2007) : I had been having fun with my telecaster for a while and had meanwhile gotten my hands on the "None More Black" Stratocaster. Since that had great sparkling cleans I figured why not turn the telecaster into something a little 'hotter'.. More like a Hot-Rod Blues Guitar?

Obviously this meant changing out the pickups for 'something else'. I browsed the Fender Site , DiMarzio (since those pickups were in my Jem 10th) and Seymour Duncan to get a sense for what was out there. I really liked how on the Seymour Duncan site they had all their pickups rated so it would be easier to compare, not to mention the fact they provided sound samples of most of them!

Starting with the neck Pickup I already knew I wanted a 'bigger' pickup than the standard Tele Neck Pickup and was torn between either a P-90 style Pickup, a Full blown Humbucker or a Mini Humbucker. I've always been intrigued by the P-90s and like their sound a lot. A Humbucker would be nice in the neck too, but since I wanted to keep the slanted rear pickup , visually it just did not appeal to me. The Mini-Humbucker looked very promising too - all the good things of a humbucker, but in a smaller package.

After more digging I found a picture of a '52 Hot-Rod Telecaster which had a mini-Humbucker in the neck position and I thought it looked amazing.

This also settled for me that I really wanted to switch to a black pick-guard since I needed a new one anyway to fit the Mini Humbucker. 

Seymour Duncan lists 3 Mini Humbuckers

1. Vintage Mini-Humbucker SM-1 - Vintage-correct replica of classic Firebird® pickup. Great for jazz, blues, rockabilly, classic rock and heavy rock.
2. Custom Mini-Humbucker SM-2 - High output mini-humbucker. Great for heavy blues, classic rock, hard rock and metal.
3. Seymourized Mini-Humbucker SM-3 - Hotter-than-vintage mini-humbucker. Great for blues, classic rock, southern rock, jam and hard rock.

After listening to all 3 pickups over and over again I finally decided to go with the:

SM-2N - Custom Mini-Humbucker (Neck Position)

Application
High output mini-humbucker. Great for heavy blues, classic rock, hard rock and metal.
Description
The ceramic bar magnet and hot coil windings give this pickup a more aggressive upper-mid detail than the SM-3, which makes it great for slide and higher output music styles. Comes with four-conductor hookup cable.
Complete setup
Available for both neck and bridge positions. The bridge version is high output. The neck version is compensated for tonal balance. Often, an SM-2b Custom is used in the bridge with an SM-1n Vintage in the neck for versatility.
Guitars
For balanced and warm instruments. Works especially well with mahogany bodies and rosewood fingerboards.


The blurb about going well with rosewood fingerboards aside (I love me my maple) this sounded like the one for me. Next, the hunt was on for a telecaster bridge pickup to go with it. Obviously it would have to somewhat match this newer high-output Neck Pickup I had already picked out. I figured I might as well stay with Seymour Duncan Pickups so I headed over to their Telecaster pickup section to see what they had.


After looking at, and listening to practically ALL of the pickups they had in that section I had it narrowed down to either a

• Hot Lead Stack - STK-T2b
• Hot Rails - STHR-1b
• Little '59 - ST59-1b
• Quarter Pound - STL-3

They all sounded good to me so I just let lady luck decide what I should get. I was going to order from Warmoth and simply see what they had in stock. That decision made it easy as they had only the Hot Lead Stack

STKT2B - Hot Stack for Tele

Application
Boosted output humbucker. Great for country pop, blues, classic rock and heavy rock.
Description
The added windings and the alnico 5 magnet make this a pickup extra powerful. You get a hotter, muscular, twangy sound with more emphasis on the midrange and greater sustain. Comes in black with four-conductor hookup cable.
Complete setup
Available in lead (bridge) position only. We recommend the STK-T1n Vintage Rhythm Stack® for the neck position for versatility and hum canceling.
Guitars
For all well-balanced instruments. Works equally well with maple and rosewood fingerboards.

 In combination with these pickups I ordered a 3-layer (Black/White/Black) pickguard from Warmoth, already cut for the mini Humbucker , and some new pots including a 'Push-Push' Pot to allow for an extra switching combination. The nice thing about these is that you don't need to 'pull up' on the knob to toggle it, you can just tap it once to switch it on, tap it again and it's off. I wired is so that when in the Middle Position the Neck & Bridge pickup can be combined in either series or parallel.

Currently though I am contemplating changing that over to have the switch work only the bridge pickup and switch it into Single-Coil "Boost" mode as a lead-enhancer. We'll see though. In the end I think it turned out great and the guitar definitely has more 'oomph' to it and lost some of its 'clean sparkle' but that's exactly what I was looking for.

Before the upgrades

After Pickup Upgrades (but also after a recent Neck transplant)