Hi,
Sorry if this ends up being a long question, but I am looking to give my strat a little bit of a tele flavour. (I understand it will not sound exactly like a tele.)
So, as I understand it, this will involve doing two key things.
1) Getting a bridge pick up with a base plate (e.g. Seymour Duncan Twang Banger.)
2) Wiring the guitar so that I can select bridge and neck pick up together.
However, I believe that there may be some complications. So I have some questions:
How are teles usually wired?
I should say I don’t have a full understanding of all the details, but I do know that two pick ups can be wired together in a range of different ways: RWRP, in/out of phase, series or parallel, etc. And, for example, I know the baja telecaster is wired differently - compared to a usual tele (and has a 4 way switch).
So what are the characteristics of a standard telecaster? (E.g. Think Steve Cropper?)
And, apart from wiring the bridge to play with the neck, how does the tele wiring differ from strat wiring? (Note: I am not going to wire it myself, so I just need to know enough to ensure I buy the right parts.)
A (possible) complication
So far I have 2 pick ups – neck and middle – but haven’t bought the bridge yet.
Both the neck and the middle are south polarity. This wasn’t intended, but is what I have ended up with.
I appreciate that this means neck + middle won’t be hum cancelling. But maybe that doesn’t matter if I am aiming for tele style. (Depending on how I set it up, this combination might not even be an option.)
So do I want a north bridge? (To cancel hum when combined with the neck, or the middle.) Or should I get south. (I think I read telecasters aren’t wired to be hum cancelling? Is that right?) (Again, if you want an example of what I have in mind, think Steve Cropper.)
(Coincidentally, I have just watched this video, and (at 1 hour 12 min) Mick Taylor talks about preferring strats without RWRP.)
Output
My middle and neck pick ups are around 6 to 6.5 kOhm. And there are two possible bridge pick ups I could choose. One is 6.7kOhm, and the other is 8.3 kOhm. So, just in terms of output, any thoughts about which would be the better choice.
Thanks
Rob