Telecaster Woes

[jduv]

Hi guys!

I recently added a Lollar p90 (5% underwound) at the neck and a Lollar Tele special to the bridge on my Telecaster. Unfortunately, it yucky on position 1 (neck). I was wondering what tips you guys have for setting up a P-90. Like where the pole pieces should be or the height of the pickup.

Right now the P-90 seems to be nothing but bass with the volume all the way up. I tried lowering the poles on the bass strings and it really didn't help much. Maybe I should lower them more?

All this is tested through my Orange AD-30--which is already a little dark. I would like to play it through my friends matchless and my new Goodsell Super 17 when I pick it next week and see if it still sounds muddy.

I'd love to get Tom Morello tones from this thing on bridge and some decent blues tones from the neck.

Suggestions welcome =D. Thanks so much!

[Kyle vs. Guitar]

What kind of Tele do you have? Some have that awful fifties wiring where the neck position sounds incredibly muddy. Maybe that has something to do with it.

[Dana Olsen]

Hey JDUV -

Try using an alligator clip jumper to jump direct from the output of the pickup to the output jack. If the tone brightens up considerably and the output goes up, you're wiring ain't quite right.

It's well worth the few minutes it takes to do this simple check.

Hope this helps, Dana O.

[DonM]

call Jason,

let him have a chance to help you .

dm

[Ed Alvarado]

Originally Posted by Dana Olsen

Hey JDUV -

Try using an alligator clip jumper to jump direct from the output of the pickup to the output jack. If the tone brightens up considerably and the output goes up, you're wiring ain't quite right.

It's well worth the few minutes it takes to do this simple check.

Hope this helps, Dana O.

+1...

[jduv]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will definately try the alligator clip trick. I think the problem might lie with my wiring.

So its a Mexican Tele. I guess I was lucky enough for it to have a routed body that actually fits a P90. I can't say how excited I was when I got my Lollars and the P-90 fit perfectly into the route at the neck. I figured I was going to have to route it.

As to wiring, I used this diagram from www.stewmac.com. I don't think it's the fifties wiring, and the difference between the wiring diagram I used and Jason's is at the switch. I wouldn't imagine that would cause a muddier pickup.

for more clarity, i thought that you were supposed to raise the pole pieces. i'd try lowering the pickup and raising the pole pieces. this is the way it works on PAF-style pickups anyway.

This is really what I need clarification on. Raising the pole pieces decreases output? Can someone confirm this? =D

call Jason,

let him have a chance to help you .

dm

I'll do that after I exhaust my resources here. I'd rather not burden a businessman with another customer care call. I realize he is willing to help, but if I can fix the problem myself then I save him money. My way of saying thanks for amazing affordable pickups.

Thanks a ton TGP. You all rock!

[r9player]

How do your strings line up with the pole pieces btw?
I usually 'tilt' my pick ups to either favor either bassy or treble sounds not sure if that is possible on a P-90 since they screw in very differently. If you have to adjust pole pieces, most pick ups have 'sweet' spots and I would check with Jason what those might be.

[59 Deluxe]

if the value of the volume pot is 250k, you might want to look at a 250k resistor in series with the p90 in order for the p90 to "see" a 500k pot. p90s are usually used with 500k pots which usually means more highs.

i don't have a shematic for this but i think there have been other threads on this.

[fazendeiro]

I've encountered the same problem with a P-90 in the neck of a Tele.

I've had some success bypassing the tone pot (as suggested above), it really clears up the P-90's tone, and gives it a little rawer edge, which I like. Many people don't want this, they want a darker, jazzy tone.

But balancing the output with a standard Tele bridge pickup is difficult, if not impossible. Keep fiddling with it.

[jduv]

Thanks again for the excellent suggestions. I'll ask Jason what the sweet spot is for this P-90.

FWIW: I wired the tele together using 500k pots for both the tone and volume. This resulted in the bridge being a little brighter than I wanted.

if the value of the volume pot is 250k, you might want to look at a 250k resistor in series with the p90 in order for the p90 to "see" a 500k pot. p90s are usually used with 500k pots which usually means more highs.

That is a brilliant suggestion. I'm thinking I could use this idea to kill two birds with one stone by mellowing out my bridge pup and still getting the P-90 tone I'm looking for on the neck. I'm not sure where the resistor would fit into the circuit so that it only affects the P-90, however. Any suggestions on where to wire it?

[jduv]

Hey sorry about the double post, but I just adjusted the pole pieces on the bass strings and that helped quite a bit. It's no longer unbearably bassy, so chalk that up to me just being ignorant =D. It's still a little darker than I want, and not punchy enough yet. The bridge isn't punchy enough either, but I suspect I can fix that by fiddling with the height.

I'm going to ponder all your suggestions and see if I can come up with a solution to my problems, be it a simple messing with pickup heights etc or a rewire. Overall, these pickups are absolutely amazing once you learn how to fiddle with them! I'm thoroughly impressed.

Thanks again TGP. This is clearly the best resource on the net for this kind of stuff!

[59 Deluxe]

regarding the 250k/500k pot issue, you might want to do a search. i know the issue has been discussed before, or post something about it in guitar and bass technical info section.

[walterw]

Originally Posted by 59 Deluxe

if the value of the volume pot is 250k, you might want to look at a 250k resistor in series with the p90 in order for the p90 to "see" a 500k pot. p90s are usually used with 500k pots which usually means more highs.

i don't have a shematic for this but i think there have been other threads on this.

um, there's no way to do that. you can put a 500k resistor in parallel with a 500k pot to get 250k, but not the other way around. just get a 500k pot, and a 500k resistor to put across the bridge pickup, so the neck sees 500k and the bridge sees 250k.

[~el gringo loco]

I've built a guitar with that configuration, and it was hard to get "just right" -- I actually spent months, on and off, tweaking the electronics and relative pickup heights and such until it was what I wanted. And just like you, at first the p90 was way too dark . . .

The first thing I found is that a P90 and a tele bridge pickup respond in very different ways. The besides the obvious that the p90 is inherently darker than a tele pu, tele pu is has a lot more dynamic range than a p90 -- the '90 is sort of binary in that it's either at rest, or it's at max volume (or distorting, which is cool, too). By comparison, a tele pu has a lot more "build" to it's volume -- it's way more touch sensitive. My point, I suppose, is that you're trying to make apples and oranges work together and you have to think about it that way -- it's not as easy as replacing one pickup with another.

The recipe I found was a 500k volume pot, 250k tone pot, .022uf tone cap, careful attention to absolute and relative pickup heights, and, importantly, I replaced the brass saddles with a set of titanium saddles I had lying around. The ti saddles could be really strident with bright tele pu's, but with the p-90 it gave a certain "snap" and crispness back that the guitar needed -- it's a mahogany thinline tele body with a Voodoo Broadcaster in the bridge and a genuine '56 P90 in the neck, fwiw.

The result is great -- it's a truly righteous guitar with three really distinct and very usable sounds. The neck is warm and jazzy, great for playing a slow blues or jump style chording, the bridge bites and snarls just like it should, and the middle position has a really unique sound that is great for chording or lead playing. You can hear it/see it here -- that's all middle position until then end of the solo, then it's the neck pu, all straight into a fairly clean but nicely cranked up Rivera Jake.

Good luck, it's something that I found frustrating to get right but was highly rewarding once it was where I wanted it to be.

~j

[jduv]

I emailed Jason about finding a sweet spot for the poles on the P-90, and here's the response I got:

there is no standard way to set those because not everyone hits the strings the same way- not everyone uses the same strings or amp or has thier action the same so you need to play with it.

Go closer to the strings untill you hear it give it up, if you go too far it can get blatty on the bass. I have seen where a half a turn on the screw made a difference. Put new strings on, might also be time for new power tubes.

as for wiring, fender wiring schemes are terrible try wiring it like my 50's LP schematic (on my site) youll take the wire coming off the pickup switch and pretend its the wire running from the neck pickup on the LP schematic so that wire would go directly to the volume pot. the wire in the LP schematic that goes from the volume pot to the pickup selector switch will now go to the output jack (instead of the switch and then the jack) and redo all the other connections between the volume and tone as in the LP schematic and you are done- replace the cap with a .022 or a .015 get rid of the treble by pass- you wont need it unless you want an un- natural trasistor radio sound- sometimes that works.

You'll find the volume and tone works better and you can roll the tone down without loosing as much volume as you do with stock fender schematics.

jason

After fiddling with it for an hour or so I totally understand what he is saying. I backed the pup down and played with the screws until I got a great bluesy sound from the P-90. It's still not as snappy as I would like, but I will continue to play with it until I get it to where I want it.

I'm thinking of switching from Hybrid slinkys to a medium guage string. Prehaps that might pull some of the snap back into it, at the expense of my fingers =D. Overall though it's turning out to be a mean sounding guitar. I'm giving it a run on a much brighter amp--my friends Matchless DC-30--on Saturday. I'll post my results.

As far as balance goes, the 5% underwound p-90 almost never overpowers the bridge pup. Even at position 2. I was blown away by this. I figured the P-90 would be way up in the mix...