How to isolate a telecaster neck pickup cover ground.
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- Опубліковано 17 сер 2019
- When doing various Telecaster mods - such as 4-way, 5-way, phase switching, or series/parallel switching - it's usually necessary to have a 3-wire neck pickup. This means you have a Neck (+), a Neck (-), and a Neck (ChromeCoverGround).
This doesn't mean you have to buy a new pickup though. Isolating the chrome cover ground on your existing Tele neck pickup is super simple, and only takes a few seconds.
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- John
- reverb.com/shop/johns-gear-lo...
Excellent video instruction!
Thanks for in detail explaining and showing a closeup of what needs to be done to modify the pickup to make it work properly with another pickup.
Such a great explanation John, really appreciate it, I changed my Fender Tele pickups to Seyomour duncan quarter pound and your video explained exactly what i needed to know to have the neck seymour duncan pickup with the three 3 cables required to use the special tone knob with the 3rd cable required from neck, thanks a lot!!!
Thank you very much. That should fix the buzz problem on my new tele SD neck pickup cover.
I had this figured out but wanted to double check my approach before I did the deed. Thanks!
a very clear explanation of what to do and why you're doing it. great video, thanks!
Excellent video. I’m about to upgrade one of my Teles with a 4 way switch and new Fender 64 Vintage PUPs. So glad I watched your video first. Thanks.
Thanks. Had a reasonable understanding of the how but was struggling with the why. Well explained.
Life saver
Super helpful video. Thanks for making!
Great tutorial
Great! Thank you for this video!
Good well thought out explanation.
you are the best ever existed!!!
thank you so much!
Awesome video. Thanks
Thank you!
Very good videos !! I have a guestion , instaled a 920D 4 pos. plate , what could cause the neck pickup to sound thin and almost naisley?
I was just trying to find how to ground my Squire Tele neck pick-up that has normal switching, and now am confused with all the talk about series and parallel etc. I'll have to look further for instructions (I'm not an "electrical" person. Thanks.
Thanks John! That helps a lot. I'm trying to figure out if this needs to be done on the new Fender Gen 4 Noiseless Tele neck pickup. I have a 4-way switch on an Emerson pre-wired control kit. They mention in the wiring diagram that "If your neck pickup has a cover, you must lift the existing ground and add an additional ground wire." They describe the way you did it in this video. I'm not sure the Gen 4 pickup needs this???
No - the Gen-4 Noiseless is already a 3-wire. The green wire is the isolated cover ground on that one.
Thank you Thank you Thank you
Brilliantly explained John been searching the Internet to get an explanation on grounding metal covers.
Just a quick question the pickups i am ordering all have metal covers on them with the positive / negative and ground wires for the covers.
Is it acceptable to ground all the wires for the pickup covers to the same point on the volume pot eg all three wires under the same blob of solder?
As you can probably tell i am a complete newbie to all this 😂
Yes - that's perfectly fine. Ground is ground is ground.
Hey John I bought a set of Baja Fender Tele pickups , control plate S1 Switch... When my local guitar shop went to hook everything up the Yellow wire on the neck pu came off. Making the whole Baja thing and possibly the neck pick up useless. Would what you did here fix that. Thanks Mike.
Well - maybe. In the case of the older Baja pickups, then yes it's just an isolated ground that goes to the chrome tab. In the case of the newer ones (I don't recall the exact year - the new ones are obviously different), those are three wire Fender Noiseless pickups and the pickup already has separate solder pads for each wire. In both cases, the yellow goes to one of the lugs on the S1 switch. Here's where it goes -- p4.zdassets.com/hc/theme_assets/549136/200076499/014-1502A_SISD.pdf
@@johnnygeek After seeing your video and another I called him up and told him to hook the wire back up to the "blob of solder" he said it came from. Told him it was a cover ground and thats how you can turn any tele into a 4 way which is what a Baja is plus of course the S1... It worked ! He was a bit confused as mine had a white black and yellow wires and the diagram has green.... Thanks for your video and reply. I plan on learning to solder and do this 4 way mode to other tele's
How do you put a Tele Neck pick up back in phase? I have the J.Mascis tele that is out of phase and want to change that. Thank you.
You can flip the PHASE of a pickup, by simply reversing the wires. Positive becomes negative / negative becomes positive. However - if the cover "ground" is piggybacked through the negative with that jumper - you need to snip that and make a new dedicated cover ground wire. That said, that doesn't change the POLARITY of the pickup (magnets North Up vs. South Up). There's no way to change that. So - your mileage may vary on buzzing or noise. This is why a lot of Telecaster "sets" have a RWRP (Reverse Wound, Reverse Polarity) neck pickup - so they're hum cancelling in the mixed position.
Wish I could find out how to remove/replace the chrome cover without screwing up the pickup!
The telecaster neck pickup has three metal "tabs" - one of which is probably soldered to the pickup negative in some way, as shown in this video - for the purpose of grounding it.
To remove the cover, (after disconnecting that middle tab from the pickup negative as shown in this video) - simply bend the tabs up and pull it off.
You may find that it feels like it's still stuck on there - that's because they're typically "wax potted", meaning - the whole pickup was dunked in hot wax during manufacturing. This helps reduce microphonic squeal. The cover will pop off - it just needs a bit of force to break itself loose from the wax.
Can't you accidentally break the teeny little winding wire if you just force it off? YES!
If it doesn't come off easily after bending the tabs up, heat it up with a hair dryer or a heat gun to soften the wax if needed. If using a heat gun, pay attention to your heat setting, and any "plastic" elements. If your pickup has vintage style cotton-covered wires, you can go hotter than if it's got plastic wires.
@@johnwainwright3313 Wow, thanks. That’s very helpful! Appreciate your thoughtful response and info.
Isn't much easier to disconnect the ground of the bridge pickup?
You certainly CAN do that - yes. However, most if not all circuit diagrams available online will show the Neck as the one that is getting it's phase reversed, or being used as the "switched" pickup in a Series/Parallel configuration - so, I showed the neck pickup - so everything matches up with what most people will be doing, and the circuit diagrams they'll likely be using.
I have done circuits where I flipped phase on a Tele Bridge, or used the neck as the "starting" pickup in a Series/Parallel circuit (meaning the Bridge negative would be the one running through the Series/Parallel "switch" - rather than the Neck).
In fact, there are times where you'd need to do that - such as in a H+S situation with a Tele bridge pickup and a PAF neck with a braided/shielded lead - since that can't be cover-ground-isolated, or phase-reversed.
The concept is the same for the bridge - disconnect the grounding jumper from the pickup negative to the copper plate, then solder a new, dedicated ground wire to the copper plate.
Is it necessarily "easier"? No - not really. Actually, your soldering iron needs to be able to get REALLY hot to be able to get a proper connection to the thicker copper plate.
If you're doing a mod using a commonly available diagram found online, then 99 times out of 100, you'll be flipping phase on the neck, or series-switching from the neck. As such, you'll be isolating the cover ground on the neck.
You CAN however, do it to either one - depending on your circuit requirements.
This is for a 4 way switch?
Yes, you would typically use a 4-way switch to do the Series/Parallel switching. I've also seen it done with push/pull pots.
Yes, but not necessarily. You can do phase reversal with any number of switches - 4-way, 5-way, push/pulls, mini-toggles, etc. The main thing is that IF you're going to do phase reversal or series/parallel switching on this type of Tele neck pickup, it has to have the ground isolated. How you end up connecting it within the main wiring configuration varies depending on the individual schema.
With my old eyes I had trouble seeing where the 3rd wire goes
To any of the three "metal tabs" that hold the cover on. Key however, is that attaching the 3rd wire is step 2.
Step 1, is removing the (current) jumper connecting the middle metal tab to the pickup negative. This is the part that allows you to actually do whatever the mod is - phase reversal, series/parallel switching, whatever.
Performing Step 2 and attaching a 3rd wire back to the cover (which can go to any of the three metal tabs), is just to ground the cover to eliminate buzz.
This is an extremely long-winded explanation. Simply cut the jumper and attach a lead. See Lindy Fralin's page for further instructions.
The reason this is long-winded, is for those who WANT to know the why...rather than just the how. But thanks for your feedback.
Hi John, can you please respond to my Reverb message thanks
Reverb managed to lose a bunch of my messages. I have responded to everything I can currently see. If in doubt - feel free to reply to it to bubble it up to the top of my inbox.