The Telecaster Mod Guide

Dirk Wacker
August 04, 2011
48 Comments

I hope you all had a great holidays and that

Santa brought you some nice new gear toys
maybe a Telecaster? If so, heat up your
soldering iron, because this month, we will take
a closer look into the Telecaster circuit and the
possibilities to expand its tonal palette.
To start, I would like to ask you a question: how
many things can you name that are still built
today exactly the same way as 60 years
before? The Telecaster is one of them! Without
any doubt, Leo Fender was one of the great
masterminds in musical history. Almost 60
years ago, he constructed an electrical guitar
that remains a landmark today. The Telecaster
is a guitar with very complex primary-tone
physics, but on the other hand, is electronically
very simple. If your Telecaster has a good primary tone, it will benefit from the
following mods and you can maximize your tonal possibilities.

A General Electrical Update

Many guitars suffer from poor components that can turn into trouble within a
short time; following Murphys Law, your troubles will most likely happen in
the middle of a solo, live on stage. To make your guitar road-worthy, I highly
recommend completely replacing all external components with a "made in the
Far East" quality. This can also cure a dull sounding guitar and the virtual
"blanket over my amp" syndrome. A fresh and matched set of high quality
CTS pots, a good CRL 3-way switch, a new Switchcraft or Neutrik output jack,
all connected with good cable and solder plus a top-notch tone cap can do
magic to your tone.
Having said that, let''s look at the standard Telecaster wiring that is used in
almost all Telecaster guitars today. Through the years, the values of the pots
and the tone cap changed several times, so I didnt name it in the drawings.
We will talk about this subject later.

Changing Pot and Cap Values

As a guideline you can say the higher the resistance, the warmer the tone.
This is valid for both the pots and the tone cap. For a very bright sounding
guitar, I recommend 250k pots to get rid of the penetrating highs; vice versa,
you can use 500k or even 1Meg pots on guitars with not so sparkling highend sizzle to bring out more of the top-end. Of course, this all is personal
choice, and is dependent on the pickups you use.
The standard value of the tone cap is 0.047uF, but for most of us this is
almost overkill, because when you use your tone control the tone will get
clinically dull and liveless. If you dont want darker tones like this, I
recommend changing the tone cap to a much smaller value (e.g. 3300pF, up
to 6800pF). This will guarantee that your tone will always be defined and full
of life and color, even when you completely close the tone control. You can
dial in numerous different tone colors with this simple and inexpensive mod,
and its a good field to experiment on your own. Personally I use selected
3300pF Orange Drop caps and 250k pots for a classic, vintage Telecaster
tone.

Pickup Swapping
I bet the number of good replacement pickups available for Teles has never
been bigger than today. An often discussed subject is the Telecaster neck
pickup, as it seems to divide players into two different parties: you either love
it or hate it. For full disclosure, Im lean more towards the "I hate it" camp and
usually replace this pickup in all of my Telecaster guitars because the
standard pickup is too "boxy" sounding for my tastes. If you are willing to
reroute the pickup cavity (or better yet, let an experienced luthier do it), here
are some suggestions that sound incredibly good on a Telecaster:
a Stratocaster neck pickup
a P-90 soapbar pickup (especially on a Thinline Telecaster)
a Gibson or Gibson-style Mini Humbucker

Coil Splitting
If your guitar is equipped with a 4-conductor cable humbucker, you can
perform all kinds of coil splitting to enlarge the number of possible sounds
singlecoil mode, parallel mode, in phase, out of phase, etc. A prime example
of a good sounding bridge pickup humbucker for Telecasters is the DiMarzio
"The Chopper" pickup. A pickup like this can give you the best of both worlds:
a hot and punchy humbucker tone and a classic, twangy singlecoil sound in
the split mode. One problem with this is that all the pickup manufacturers use
different color codes, so there is no general guideline how to wire all the coil
splitting options, as it depends on the pickup you have installed. If you cant
download this information directly from the factory homepage, here is a link for
you that could be helpful.

50s Vintage Wiring

Im sure you''ve heard about this magical wiring that Gibson used inside late
50s Les Paul guitars and that was almost forgotten for a long time.
Electronically there is nothing special about this wiring, it simply connects the
tone pot to the output of the volume pot (middle lug), instead of with the input.
This changes the way the volume pot reacts, and the overall tone gets
stronger and more transparent - more "in the face," you could say. There is
much less of the typical treble loss that occurs when rolling back the volume
and the tone control reacts smoother and more linear without the typical hot
spots.
Its possible to rewire all guitars this way, not just Les Pauls. With a
Telecaster its simple, because you only have to change one wire, marked
red in the drawing. You can also consider using an additional switch to have
both wiring variants available: the classic Fender wiring, as well as the 50s
Gibson vintage wiring.

The "Strato-tone" Mod (aka "Nashville" Modification)

Many of the top Nashville studio players, like Brent Mason or Reggie Young,
are playing Telecasters with an additional third pickup in the middle position to
get those popular "in-between" Strat sounds (bridge plus middle and middle
plus neck together in parallel). If you want to modify your Tele this way, I
recommend giving it to an experienced luthier and letting him do the
necessary woodwork (routing the additional pickup cavity, rerouting the

pickguard, etc.).
Any Stratocaster pickup is a good mate for the standard Telecaster pickups
and will expand your tonal palette drastically. You will also have to change the
3-way switch and install a standard Stratocaster 5-way switch and eventually
a third pot if needed. Basically, this is a standard Strat configuration and
naturally you can perform any Stratocaster mod you like (the 7-tone mod,
blending options, etc.), but we will talk about all this Strat stuff in a later
column. If one day you decide to switch back to the classic two-pickup Tele
configuration, you can simply take out the middle pickup, switch back to a 3way Telecaster switch and reinstall a standard Telecaster pickguard that will
cover the third pickup cavity; suddenly, the former modification is invisible
again.

4-Way Wiring
Position 2 of the Telecaster selector switch gives you both pickups wired in
parallel; this is a standard wiring, and one of the classic Telecaster tones. But
what if you need a fatter sound out of your Tele? The two outside switch
positions on the Tele - which select the bridge or neck pickup individually stay basically the same. But the middle position (both pickups together) wires
the pickups in series rather than parallel. This produces a thicker, meatier
sound, while still retaining the recognizable characteristics of a Tele. This is
not a hum-cancelling combination, but it gives the increased power of a series
link. So, in short, all you do is change the #2
position of your 3-way switch, so that the
bridge and neck pickups are in series
instead of parallel.
If you want to be more flexible, you can
install the Fender 4-way Tele switch, as
shown in the circuit below. This will give you
both sounds when you dial in the two
pickups together - wired in parallel (standard
wiring) and the wired in series sound.

If, for any reason, you dont want to install a 4-way switch, you can also use a
push/pull pot or a small toggle switch to manually add the neck pickup in
series when the Telecaster 3-way switch is in position #1 (bridge pickup
alone). Here is what you have to do:

Attention! If you have a standard Telecaster neck pickup with installed metal
cover:
For this alteration to work correctly, isolate the metal cover of the neck pickup
(if present) from its ground lead. Run a separate ground wire for the cover to
the back of the volume control! You can find a good pictured step by step guide for
this here - its in Spanish, but the pictures are international

"Direct Through" Switch

If you really want to hear the sound of your guitar together with the pickup,
there is only one way: soldering the pickup directly to the output jack.
Depending on the guitar, the result can be stunning; with a Tele, your tone will
be louder, stronger and more direct, a highly recommended mod for all the
country guys, as well as anyone who wants the maximum twang and spank a
Tele has to offer. The control pots always add a little load to the circuit and,
depending on the pots, the tone will get a bit softer and sometimes dull, losing
the shimmering highs and the organic vibe. As you may recognize, the
suggested method works well, but is not practicable in any way. However,
there are different ways to get rid of the control load in your guitar system:
1. You can replace all your pots with so-called "no-load" pots from Fender.
This is a very cool, albeit an expensive, way to enhance the sound of
your guitar. Electrically this pots are great; when you open them 100%,
a circuit will shorten this pot and erase it from the circuit, so it''s as if it
never was there. And you can hear it!
2. Another way to do this is to use a DPDT switch or a push/pull pot and to
perfrom my "direct-through" mod. You can see how to wire the switch on
the circuit below. Activating the switch will bypass all controls and all
pickups connected to the pickup selector switch are wired directly to the
output jack.

Combating Volume vs. Tone

Im sure you know the idiosyncracies inherent in passive single coil pickup
systems like the Telecaster - when you turn down the volume (even just a bit),
the high end or treble loss is not proportionate. In other words, a small cut in
volume creates a far greater loss in your guitars treble response. The best

solution would be to replace the complete system for an active one, but there
is a simple method to get rid of this problem.
As you may know, for some time Fender installed a so-called "bleeding cap"
on the volume pot to get rid of this problem. Leo was on the right track for
sure, but he choose a 1000pF cap that was much too big for this purpose and
you cant use one value for all configurations; it depends a lot on the pickups,
the pots, the cables and, of course, the amp you use. The theory behind this
is much more complex than it seems, so maybe we will take a closer look into
this in a later column. But for now, please take my word and desolder the
1000pF cap if you have one installed.
When rolling back the volume, this cap will pronounce the highs much more
than necessary and you can get some really cool, funky sounds with that, but
for most of us, 1000pF is not a helpful value in any way. For a standard
Telecaster with two singlecoil pickups, connected to two 250k pots, install a
470pF cap and experiment from there. The higher the value, the more treble
you''ll receive when rolling back the volume. For other pot values, you
unfortunately cant use the "cap only" method
because it would kill the mid frequencies. For
this, you will need a treble bleeding network
with caps and resistors in parallel or in series,
depending on the configuration.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this one and good
luck pimping your Tele-Babies!

Dirk Wacker has been addicted to all kinds of

guitars since the age of 5 and is fascinated by anything that has something to
do with old Fender guitars and amps. He hates short scales and Telecaster
neck pickups, but loves twang. In his spare time he plays country, rockabilly,
surf and Nashville styles in several bands, works as a studio musician and
writes for several guitar mags. He is also a hardcore DIY guy for guitars,
amps and stompboxes and also runs an extensive webpage (singlecoil.com)
about these things.