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)

Fender Stratocaster "None More Black"

I had come to a point where I had basically a bunch of cheap guitars cover most bases: A Telecaster, an Acoustic and a Bass (and of course my Jem but that's not a cheapy), and I was starting to think about a NICE Stratocaster to round out the 'collection' so to speak. Not a Mexican Made one, but a real quality American Stratocaster.

As usual I start looking in catalogs and online looking for something to catch my eye. Obviously I'm looking for a Black Strat with Maple neck again, but then one holiday season (I believe it was around 2005?) I noticed an ad for two 'special run' Stratocasters.. Apparantly a "Fender Special Run" or "FSR" for short is a batch of guitars made in 'limited' numbers - usually made for a large vendor - with a combination of parts you normally wouldn't find on standard retail models. While unique in a sense, this does not make them Custom-Shop guitars, and while numerically they may be made in small numbers (e.g. 300) it does NOT seem to make them 'collectable' to most people. Perhaps in a few decades they will be - who knows.

Anyway - this special edition had 2 different guitars: a 'Bad Boy Blue' and 'None More Black'.

The BBB as the name implies was Blue with 3 Single Coils, while the None More Black was All black with a Humbucker in the bridge. Both had black pickguards and a beautiful black dot-less ebony fretboard.

"Bad Boy Blue"

"None More Black"

I actually was torn between the two, because while I loved the all black guitar I was actually wanting a typical Stratocaster 3x Single Coil setup instead of a HSS (Humbucker/Single/Single) and the blue WAS really sharp looking. Both had S1 wiring giving you tons of switching options. After some decent consideration I opted for the None-More-Black Model.

According to the specs it has:

Features

• Alder body
• Maple neck
• Ebony fingerboard 
• Roller Nut
• 9-1/2" radius
• Medium-jumbo frets
• No dot markers on fingerboard
• Chrome locking tuners
• Chrome hardware
• Black plastic parts
• Black single-ply pickguard
• 2 Samarium Cobalt Noiseless single-coil pickups
• Bridge humbucker
• S-1 switching
• Black Tolex case
• Black vintage leather strap

What is interesting is that in my search for some decent stock pictures, I noticed a lot of 'knock-off' (if you can call'm that) Strats that claim they are the 'none more black' model, but are missing S1 Switching, don't have the chrome knobs (black plastic instead), ebony fretboard (rosewood instead), or Roller Nut (regular nut) etc etc.. not sure what the deal is with those, but the picture above is the correct image. (Even the link above to Music 123 shows the wrong image! It's 'almost' correct, but has the plastic control knobs instead of the chrome).  I must say though that I do agree with the sentiment some people online have put forth, where if it's supposedly "none-more-black" - as in: Can't get any blacker - , how come the knobs, tuners, bridge etc are all chrome still? ;) (but really that doesn't bother me - this guitar looks GREAT!) However for the 'Official' FSR None-More-Black as sold by whoever it was (was it Sam Ash? Or Musicians Friend?) those are all chrome and look exactly like the following pictures (not mine, but exact model)
(Apparently a lot of forums came up with their own definition of 'None-More-Black' - including black knobs/tuners etc - which is probably where part of the confusion comes from).

The guitar feels & plays fantastic - Everything feels & sounds super smooth - it's actually borderline 'too nice' where I don't want to use it since I am afraid of damaging it. However, every time I pick it up it's hard to put down. Even with the Humbucker in the bridge position, the typical '2 & 4' positions have that fantastic strat sound ('quack') and the neck pickup has that beautiful bell-like quality to it. There's just something about a good Strat that puts a smile on my face!

though naturally... I'm still itching for a 3 Single Coil, Black, Maple Neck Stratocaster ;)