3 ms·

Honestly, my biggest problem with telecasters are the sound of the pickups. I know they're easy to swap out, but those stock 'lipstick' ones on pretty much ever

Honestly, my biggest problem with telecasters are the sound of the pickups. I know they're easy to swap out, but those stock 'lipstick' ones on pretty much every Fender or knockoff i've tried just seem to have kind of a hollow lifeless sound. The bridge pickups sound like the neck pickups on other guitars and the neck ones just seem to have a hollow twanging sound I've never really liked. It does seem like swapping pickups on telecasters is pretty common. https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20164-mod-garage-before-you-swap-out-those-tele-pickups https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20164-mod-garage-befo... In all the years I've played I've just never really had any strong desire to own one.

jdietrich 8y ago
The Tele is a strange beast. There's a magic to the Tele that I've never been able to fully understand; a good Tele is more than the sum of its parts. It responds to vibrato and dynamics in a way that is quite unlike any other solid-body guitar. The overwhelming brightness can be difficult to tame, but it can also produce and extraordinarily open and harmonically complex tone if you work at it. It's worth bearing in mind that the Telecaster was designed for the heavy flatwound or pure nickel strings that were the norm in the 50s. A modern light gauge set of nickel-plated roundwound strings will sound exceptionally bright on a Tele. A plain third string won't intonate properly on a three-saddle bridge either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3qAp81vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3qAp81vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c
- beat 8y ago
  The brightness can be tamed just by rolling off the tone control. If I'm playing a passive-pickup Tele (my #1 Tele has EMGs and behaves differently), I'll usually roll both the tone and volume knobs off at least a bit, to tame it. It's very easy for guitarists to just turn the knobs up all the way and leave them there, but the Tele controls are a whole new world of magic. Another solution is to use a hotter bridge pickup (which will be necessarily darker), and replace the neck pickup with, heck, almost anything else.

jdietrich 8y ago

The Tele is a strange beast. There's a magic to the Tele that I've never been able to fully understand; a good Tele is more than the sum of its parts. It responds to vibrato and dynamics in a way that is quite unlike any other solid-body guitar. The overwhelming brightness can be difficult to tame, but it can also produce and extraordinarily open and harmonically complex tone if you work at it. It's worth bearing in mind that the Telecaster was designed for the heavy flatwound or pure nickel strings that were the norm in the 50s. A modern light gauge set of nickel-plated roundwound strings will sound exceptionally bright on a Tele. A plain third string won't intonate properly on a three-saddle bridge either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3qAp81vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3qAp81vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c

beat 8y ago
The brightness can be tamed just by rolling off the tone control. If I'm playing a passive-pickup Tele (my #1 Tele has EMGs and behaves differently), I'll usually roll both the tone and volume knobs off at least a bit, to tame it. It's very easy for guitarists to just turn the knobs up all the way and leave them there, but the Tele controls are a whole new world of magic. Another solution is to use a hotter bridge pickup (which will be necessarily darker), and replace the neck pickup with, heck, almost anything else.