Anxiously Awaiting On Everything Eternal…

1999 Fender Telecaster

My adopted guitar. This girl actually belongs to my friend, but at his permission I have performed so many upgrades to it that it might as well be mine. It's a standard issue made in Mexico Fender Telecaster bought from Guitar Center in 1999. There's so much to be loved about this guitar. It has a special place in my heart and my memories--as it served as my main axe for all of my early musical career.

This girl has also served as my experimental foray into Guitar tinkering. I rewired this guitar at least three times until I finally settled on a scheme that worked well enough to suit me. Well, two schemes really. I have two prewired control plates to swap out based on the configuration I'm going for.

I love the simplicity of the Telecaster. Two pickups, one volume, one tone, and a three way switch. You cannot get any simpler and retain a versatile set of sounds. As the quintessential axe of country players, many people have grown to appreciate the twang and cluck of the Telecaster. Blues players love the smooth neck tones. Praise and worship players appreciate the airy parallel tones of the middle position. Even Jimmy Page--Gibson's poster child--has some love for the Telecaster; the legendary "Stairway to Heaven" was actually recorded with one.

Pickups

I have some options here. Originally, I replaced the bridge pickup with a Lollar Telecaster special. That was a very good move. Then, I got the bright idea that I wanted to be different unique and install a Lollar P-90 in the neck position. Lucky for me, all made in Mexico Telecasters have a swimming pool route so the P-90 dropped right in without having to do any extraneous modifications to the body cavity. I had some issues initially dialing in the P-90 due to the dark nature of the pickup in the neck position, but after fiddling with potentiometer values, pole pieces, and wiring schemes I finally discovered something pleasing.

Recently, as of January 2010, I have felt a calling to return to my Telecaster roots. I have since installed a matching Lollar Telecaster special at the neck position and returned to a more standard Telecaster wiring schema, and I am extremely pleased with the results!

Hardware

The stock hardware for made in Mexico Telecasters is subpar at best. Luckily for me my favorite fellows over at Callaham guitars build several replacement pieces for the Tele player. I have installed a Callaham vintage Telecaster bridge, including mounting the additional stabilizing screws, and use stainless steel vintage compensated saddles. The bridge dramatically increased the sustain of the guitar and brightened it up ever so slightly. One would think that an alder body with a maple fretboard has no need to be any brighter, but I was pleasantly surprised by the results. Additionally, the nut on this guitar has been replaced with a bone substitute which netted a little more tuning stability. Tuning stability has remarkably not been a problem on the guitar stock, but every little bit counts when you're looking to build your dream guitar.

Electronics

I wanted some options for different pickup schemes for this guitar, so ideally I needed a way to swap between the wiring configurations for each pickup set. The answer was to prewire two control plates and change them based on the pickup configuration I wish to use.

When I'm itching for some P-90 action at the neck, the control plate is wired with a 500k volume potentiometer and a 250k tone potentiometer. Since a P-90 can become very dark very quickly, the control plate is wired such that the bridge pickup is the only pickup that sees the tone potentiometer. This provides a brighter, more full on sound from the P-90 in parallel configurations, and it allows me to dial in the amount of twang that I want in the overall sound by limiting the brightness of the neck pickup only through the tone control.

When I run a standard Telecaster pickup combination, the wiring is vintage standard but with a 0.22uF tone capacitor and a slight twist. I have a small, mini-toggle switch installed between the volume and tone potentiometers that serves as a series kill switch. When I flip that switch, the neck and bridge pickups are put into series and the three way selector switch is bypassed. This is especially useful for applications where I need some "oomph" since the two Telecaster pickups in series yield a humbucker! This is the most useful versatile set of Telecaster tones that I have discovered thus far without getting into out-of-phase tones--which I currently have no use for.

A quick word on the series tone: it's incredibly thick and can get really muddy really quickly. One trick I have learned towards getting a usable series tone is that you can use a capacitor as the jumper between the hot of pickup 1 to the negative lead of pickup 2 to tame it down. Currently I'm using a 0.22uF and I am very pleased with the results!

Sounds

Coming soon!