Placing Pickups On Guitar
If you're anything like me, you started out with a basic beginner's guitar, and over time you realized that you were ready for something better. I had a Squier Telecaster(standard series) and I was ready for a change. I was set on a Les Paul of some sort, possibly a used LP Standard. I read tons of reviews, then I started reading some of the Epi Les Pauls(the nicer ones, $400-500). Long story short, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to afford even the cheaper Epi guitar of my choice, and even if I could save up the money, it would have to go towards getting a vehicle, when I turn 16 in 7 months. After some time on Google reading articles mentioning the good things that can come out of getting rid of the stock pickups on inexpensive guitars, I was set on trying to do this myself. I had never considered it before, I always thought that the insides of guitars were something only an elite group of individuals were allowed to mess with.
Virgil Arlo Pickups are used by some of the Best Guitar Players around. Many players consider these Pickups with Legendary Tone to be on par the finest Vintage Pickups. If you are looking to return a vintage guitar to its former glory or give a modern guitar that timeless Vintage Tone, then you have arrived at the right spot.
After finishing this pickup swap, I learned a ton about my guitar without messing ANYTHING up. And now I have a great sounding guitar, too. If you're finally becoming good at guitar, or even if you have been playing for a while and want a change, swapping out the pickups is one of the best things you can do without shelling out hundreds for a new guitar. Disclaimer- I think that following this tutorial is pretty simple. You should be able to swap out your pickups with minimum to no hassle, but in case you screw up, don't blame me for it. If you do mess something up, I'll do my best to help you though. Also, this tutorial is geared towards changing the bridge pickup to a SD Little '59 on a Telecaster, but the same technique should be able to be applied to other guitars as well.
Choosing a pickup is important.They're not cheap. Expect to spend $70-130(USD) on a good pickup.It'll change the way your guitar sounds. Look for video reviews with good quality audio to help determine what you need. Seymour Duncan also provides audio samples for their pickups.
Make sure you like the sound before you buy it. Don't go off of text reviews alone(although you should read those too). Everyone's opinion is different. I chose the Little '59 because I wanted a humbucker(vague, I know.), and there were good reviews on it. Also, I was pleased with the way it sounds. I recommend you buy your pickup new, and from a place that you trust. I am getting more and more unsatisfied with Musician's Friend(everything I order is backordered.) so after being informed that my pickup was going to be in stock three weeks from when I wanted it, I canceled the order, bought the same pickup at Guitar Center(online) and it came in by the end of the week.
Also, make sure you know where the pickup is supposed to go(not just what type of guitar it is supposed to go in). Don't screw up and buy a neck pickup and try to put it in the bridge. That is, of course, if your guitar doesn't have interchangeable pickups. Technically you only need your hands, soldering stuff, and a screwdriver to add or remove a pickup.
One of my favorite projects is pickup installation. There’ssomething very satisfying about taking a pile of wires, coils,and potentiometers and turning them into an awesome tonemachine. Recently, I had the opportunity to install a set of vintagehumbuckers designed by the late, great Seth Lover. His pickups areconsidered to be the Holy Grail of tone. Out of thousands of pickupson the market, few can compare to those created by Seth Lover.strongProject OverviewThe guitar I was hired to retrofitwas a reissue Fender ’72 TeleThinline. My job was to removethe two ’72 reissue Wide Rangehumbuckers and replace themwith two original Seth LoverWide Range pickups that camefrom a ’72 Telecaster Deluxe theclient owned in the mid-’70s.The guitar is long gone, butamazingly he’d held onto thepickups along with their harness.For almost 40 years, they’dbeen stored in a box and hauledback and forth across thecountry.
The client didn’t evenknow if they still worked, buthe wanted me to put them inhis modern Thinline. The swapsounded simple enough, butevery project has its challenges,and you never know what lurksbeneath the control plate untilyou get in there. We’re aboutto find out what can—anddid—happen.Who Is Seth Lover?Before we dive into the details ofpickup replacement, it’s worthtaking a moment to get somebackground on Seth Lover. Heinvented the original PAF (PatentApplied For) humbucker in1955, while working for Gibson(Lover’s tenure spanned 1952-1967).
Replacing Pickups On A Guitar
The PAF humbucker wasthe first successful attempt atcreating a hum-canceling pickup,and it revolutionized the electricguitar industry. Lover’s inventionvirtually eliminated the 60-cyclehum associated with single-coilpickups, and it allowed guitariststo play louder and with moredynamics. It also introduced anew sound to the electric guitarpalette—a fatter, rounder tonethat worked equally well for mellowjazz and cranked rock ’n’ roll.Lover began working for Fenderin 1967, and stayed with thecompany until he retired in 1975.In 1972, Seth invented the WideRange humbucker for Fender. The Original WideRange vs. The ReissueAs I discovered, you can’t judge apickup by its cover. The originaland reissue pickups look nearlyidentical, but they couldn’t bemore different.
In lieu of atypical humbucker’s slugs andadjustable pole pieces, the original’72 Wide Range (WR) pickuphas “cunife” (copper/nickel/ferrite) threaded rod magnets.Additionally, it has overwoundcoils (consisting of about 6,800wraps of copper wire) and cranksout approximately 10.6k Ω ofDC resistance. In other words,it’s a loud and bright powerhouseof a pickup. How to fix peaking audio in audacity. These Seth Lover Wide Range (WR) humbuckers came from a 1972 FenderTelecaster Deluxe. The pickups are unpotted and the original harness has 1Meg Ω pots for its two Volume and two Tone controls.The ’72 reissue WR pickuphas an alnico (aluminum/nickel/cobalt) magnetized bar placedat the bottom of the pickup,non-magnetic slugs and polepieces, and measures at about8k Ω of DC resistance.
Replacing Pickups On Guitar Lesson
It’s alsopotted—that is, sealed with waxto fill all the voids inside thecoils. The reissue is basically adarker, modern humbucker in avintage casing.Both are great pickups,but there is no substitute forthe original. Before installing any pickups—especially used or vintage units—use a multimeterto confirm they’re working and measure their DC resistance. This vintageWR bridge pickup has a DC resistance of 10.34k Ω. Testingalso revealed that the vintage neck WR humbucker was almost dead.Test Before You Solder!Before attacking the electronicswith my soldering iron,I needed to test the pickupsto know what I was workingwith.
This is where thingsgot interesting. I got out mymultimeter to test the originalpickups to make sure theywere still functional. The WRneck pickup was practicallydead—this made my heartsink! (My client wasn’t toohappy either.) Fortunately, thevintage bridge pickup was perfect.At this point, we decidedto leave the WR reissue pickupin the neck position and installthe original ’72 pickup in thebridge position. Though wecouldn’t use it for this project,the client will get the vintageWR neck pickup rewound byan expert.Vintage and ModernDesigns CollideOf course, combining vintageand reissue WR pickups introduceda few new challenges.The first question was, wouldwe use the 1 Meg Ω pots fromthe original ’72 harness or gowith the 250k Ω pots from thereissue Tele?
The 250k pots producea warmer tone; 1 Meg Ωpots make pickups sound muchbrighter. After some debate, wedecided to use the 250k pots. To remove a pickup lead wire, touch the soldering tip to the connection, letthe solder melt, and quickly pull out the wire. Be careful not to touch otherwires with the iron and remove its tip immediately once the wire comes free.The risk inusing a soldering iron for thistask is you may overheat thepot and ruin it. To avoid that,I grabbed a small pair of flushcutdykes and gently crimpedoff the glob.
Guitar Pickups For Sale
With it removed,I was able to solder the groundand secondary lead wires withoutthe risk of damaging thepot or having to use too muchsolder. Using too much soldercan lead to a “cold weld” andcreate a poor connection forthe wire. After mounting and soldering the replacement pickup, test your workbefore installing the pickguard on the guitar. Gently tap each pickup asyou move through the switch selections to assure that everything is wiredcorrectly, and roll your Volume and Tone pot back and forth to make surethey’re operating, too.It turns out the pickupswere out-of-phase with eachother. This goes back to howdifferently these two pickupswere designed and constructed.Remember, the reissue WR pickupis just a basic humbucker,whereas the original ’72 WR wasa completely different animal. Inthe process of combining thesehumbuckers, we discoveredthey’re wired oppositely fromeach other. My solution was toreverse the start (primary lead)and the finish (secondary lead)of the reissue pickup.
Once Iswapped its leads around, thereissue pickup sounded greatwith its vintage forebear, andswitched together they yielded abeautiful, bold chime. With the vintage WR humbucker installed and wired up, it’s time to reassembleand test the Tele.Fine-Tuning the ToneOnce we’d crossed that phasehurdle, I was almost finishedwith this crazy project. The lastpart of any pickup-replacementprocess is to adjust the heightof the pickups to balance theirindividual output levels.Normally, when I adjust theheight of the neck and bridgepickups, I set the bridge pickupa little closer to the strings thanits sibling.
If you don’t do this,the neck pickup can soundmuch louder than the bridge.However, because the vintage’72 bridge unit is hotter thanthe reissue neck pickup, I knewI had to compensate for this.The solution was to match theheight on both pickups—anunusual but effective move. Once the guitar is strung up, it’s time to measure pickup height in order to balance the volume between the neckand bridge units. Fret the two E strings at the highest position, and then measure the gap between the bottom ofeach E string and the top of its pole piece.The way I measure pickupheight is simple. I hold downthe two E strings at the last fret,and measure the distance witha small ruler from the bottomof the string to the top of theE pole pieces in the pickup. Areasonable distance from stringto pole piece is approximately 3/32' on the treble side and4/32' on the bass side. Fromthere, I adjust the individualpole pieces to compensatefor string volume on the fourstrings.
To achieve an equalvolume for each string, I setthe B and G poles a little lowerand move the D and A poles alittle closer to the strings. Thisis because the plain strings tendto be louder than the woundstrings. It’s a trial-and-error process,but well worth the effort.Incidentally, if you’re ever luckyenough to find an original WRhumbucker, be very careful whenadjusting its threaded magnets.The cunife material is very softand can break easily. If the polepieces are difficult to turn, stop.The last thing you want to do isbreak one of these irreplaceablepoles. Remember, these are magnetsand without them, the pickupis useless.
In fact, for this project Irecommended that we not touchthe vintage poles, and my clientagreed to keep them at the heighthe’d set four decades ago. Mission accomplished! Though it’s hard to see in a photo, the two Wide Range pickups look different. Not only is the vintage bridge pickup’s cover wornfrom gigging, but on the modern edition the embossed Fender logo is pressed much deeper into the metal.
The lettering is also much finer on the originalcover, and this will help you identify a real ’72, if you ever encounter one. Photo by Ariel EllisSonic SuccessAt first, my client was dismayedthat the vintage neck pickupwas dead.