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Pickup Mismatch


gripper

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I am elated with the success of my first build :D and now want to finish the one I started about a year ago. It is a Tele with a SD rail at the bridge and a three-way selector switch. My only problem with it is that I put a Fender noiseless at the neck and the difference between the two pickups is WAY too great. Brian's site has three offerings that should solve the output problem but I don't know which one to go with. I just play standard 80's classic rock type stuff. No metal.

There is the MNP, the SNP, and the DP172. Mostly, I want to get the two pickups to play well together without a lot of volume control adjusting to go from bridge to mix to neck. The SD rail is simply wired as a ser/par through a push-pull before the 3-way and the rest of the wiring/switching is dead-standard Tele. Any and all opinions are welcome but I hope Brian sees this. Thank you guys. You rock! :D

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a quick thing to try is lowering the bridge pickup and raising the neck pickup. That should equal them out a little bit. If that doesnt work you might beable to wire in a resistoron the hot lead of the pickup, but some of the more electronic savy ppl like ansil may have some better ideas.

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Adjusting the pickup heights can help balance the pickups to a point, but can't really overcome a big mis-match. The Duncan Rails is a high output mama jama, so you need something more serious in the neck than a Fender Noiseless which has a more "vintage" output.

Something like a Duncan Hot, or Quarter Pounder might be the direction to go. The high output of the Rails would even balance with many humbuckers if you wanted to go that route.

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I have a quarter-pounder on my Jackson bridge and am not very impressed. It has output but no real sound of its own. I think I just need a higher-output neck pickup with some "twang" left in it for this guitar. The UniversalJems SNP, HNP, MNP and DP172 are the ones I think I need to use to match output. Maybe not. That is why I am asking the folks who know. I kinda hoped the guy from Jems would look at my question and let me know. I have been at this guitar for a year or better so I am not in any hurry. This forum is like a 2-week break at school! So cool and so needed! You guys rock! :D

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Hot Neck = Hot Rhythm for Tele

The Duncan Hot Rhythm for Tele would also go well with the hot rails.

QP's tone has never been my favorite either.

Duncan recommends the Hot Neck that I mentioned in my previous post to go with the Rails bridge.

Good luck with it!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Bringing up a subject from a couple of weeks ago, the ProShop at SD (did you know that there is a Seymour and he plays guitar?!!) sent me a 5-2 RWRP neck pickup and it absolutely ROCKS!! :D:DB)

I am now going to put a 3-way switch in that lets me select three VOLUME settings with a tone-bypass on the highest switch setting. The guitar is dead quiet in pickup-blend and needs to be a little easier to switch from high to low volume settings. How many control knobs can you stuff onto a Tele control plate? I might think about putting the three volume pots on the butt of the guitar or making a fixed ratio-type resistor network inside the control cavity(like there is a whole lot of room left) B) but that would take a lot of trial and error stuff.

Any and all ideas are more than welcome. SD rocks! :D

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