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4 Way Tele with Humbucker Neck
Have any of you guys wired up a 4 way set up in a Tele with a Humbucker in the neck? Just curious if you were happy with the result. I have a customer that is considering it and I wanted to research it. It seems like it would be a cool switching scheme for it, but I wasn’t sure. The pickup does have a cover, so I could add the 3rd wire to the cover as you would during normal pickup set up. Let me know.
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5 Replies
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You know…the purpose of the 4 way is to put the single coil bridge and single coil neck in series. But you’re wanting to put a humbucker in series with the single coil bridge (three coils). I don’t know that it makes sense to do it, honestly. All i can say is try it, but I would do a three way with a neck bucker, personally.
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Thanks for the reply. I think we are going to go with a 3 knob set up ala Brent Mason wiring where he can blend the middle position between the 2. Possibly add a push pull on the tone for either series /parallel or split coil from it. I had the same reservations, but was curious how the 3 coil set up would sound. I was hoping someone had tried it before and had some feedback. Guess not.
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There’s no reason you couldn’t do it. Only you and your customer can find the reasons you shouldn’t do it. 😄
You can get all three coils working in series if you want (you can have two humbuckers/four coils in series too if you want). I have a feeling your other thoughts probably give you some better options for most people though.
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If you decide to do a split coil setup (shorting the first coil in the series to ground), use a 1k5 resistor between the coil shunt and ground. That gives it a much better overall tone. In guitars that have thin and weak split modes a 1k5 neck and 2k7 bridge are usually pretty nice values.
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I am super happy with the split coil sounds on a Mustang I made with the Duncan Jazz/JB humbuckers. Maybe I’m an idiot, I think the split bridge sound sounds pretty Fendery/Tele like. I’ll stick to my opinion. I’m mostly a neck humbucker jazz player though so…
I have a ton of switching options on that guitar with a Freeway Switch and a push pull pot for phase.
But you could do a regular humbucker sized Jazz pickup in that tele plus a Duncan tele bridge sized Humbucker…looks like they don’t have a JB but they have this one:
https://www.seymourduncan.com/single-product/little-59-teleYou’d have a lot of options, split coiling the bridge and/or neck etc. Personally I think having both the splits and humbucker sounds are a lot more useful than the series/parallel thing.
Push pull pot could give you phase switching if the guy is into that.
seymourduncan.com
Little ’59™ Tele Pickup | Seymour Duncan
Full sounding, medium output humbucker P.A.F. pickup tone that drops into the bridge position of your Telecaster.
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