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I know the Tele is well established in jazz realms. But how many are purists and stick with the classic single coils? Or do you swap out the neck pickup for a humbucker? Or maybe you're an outlier and use a P-90?
Opinions? Thoughts?
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06-04-2024 05:41 PM
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A Charlie Christian style pickup does it for me:
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I have owned three Telecasters (all long gone at this point). One had a stock single coil neck pickup, one had a Mini-humbucker neck pickup and one had a full size humbucker neckpickup. All three had ash bodies and maple necks and were strung with TI Flat wound strings. I thought the one with the full size humbucker got the best jazz sound by far.
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I prefer a single coil, and the Fender Custom Shop Nocaster is very tough to beat. I think other options can work well, but I only have a Tele for it to be a traditional Tele.
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I had a tele with a '51 nocaster pickup in the neck. Great sound and I see why people like them. For me, I need my sound to be really fat, especially for single lines, so a full size humbucker for a serious jazz guitar or nothing. The single coils were really nice for chord melody and things like that, however.
In a tele w/ roundwound strings I like an Alnico 2, gibson '57 classic was really nice but my favorite was a Seymour Duncan '59 with a magnet swap from A5 to A2. In my archtops with flatwounds I like Alnico 5.
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Kind of both. I think that the Wilde (Bill and Becky Lawrence) L280TN stacked humbucker sounds excellent and is my current neck pickup on my semi-hollow Telecaster. My solid body Telecaster has a pair of Wilde Micro Coils, which are remarkably warm and fat and somewhat less noisy than standard Telecaster pickups. Prior to the stacked humbucker from Bill and Becky, I had a DiMarzio Area T stacked humbucker neck pickup in the semi-hollow, which was excellent for jazz also.
I have also tried several different PAF pickups (Gibson, Seymour Duncan) in that guitar as well as a Pete Biltoft Charlie Christian style. That one was a great pickup but the noise drove me nuts and I stopped using it (old house, crappy wiring); the PAF's seemed a little dull and personality-less in that guitar. But the PAF sure worked for Ed Bickert in his!
On the other hand, the Classic 57s in my Gibson ES 175 sound awesome.
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I like both.
One of my favourite Telecaster neck pickups is the Bill Lawrence Micro-coil. Still a true single coil but almost noise free, capable of big warm sounds but also lots of chime with the tone control opened up.
My Telecaster currently has a 70s Gibson T-Top humbucker in it. I like the fact it is a bit microphonic (no potting) and fairly bright sounding. The Telecaster still sounds very much like a Telecaster, but with a bit more heft in the mid-range.
All my archtop guitars have single coils, it's very useful to have a humbucker equipped instrument in situations where I know a venue has a particularly noisy power supply.
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Single coil for me.
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Either, as long as the single coil is a P90.
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One of each.
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The noise of the 60 cycle hum with single coils seems a big factor that encourages some to go the humbucker route.
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Single coils were my least favorite out of all the different types of pickups. Hums of any type were my favorite - regular, mini, single coil size. But also liked P90s, hum shaped P90s, mini shaped P90s, and Jazzmaster pickups. True single coils were my absolute least favorite lol.
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What didn't you like about single coils?
Originally Posted by Bobby Timmons
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I'm a bassman so like fat tone. Single coils are the thinnest. I also like the spongey attack of humbuckers because of the 2 coils. Single coils have a brittle, immediate attack.
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Ive got a Sadowsky T-style that im going to put a Lollar CC pickup in it.
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Single coils out of question for me. Not for the tone, which I rather like, but the hum makes them unusable in a lot of situations. And no, I don't wanna 'live with it', and the singers and bandmates I work with even more so lol.
I found the Filtertron style humbucker is my sound. It sounds awesome in a tele. I actually love that great Gretsch sound more than traditional tele's anyway, so it's perfect. Perfect for jazz AND rocknroll.
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Do you find Filtertrons twangy? I know "twang" is a Telecaster thing but it's usually not a jazz thing. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Yea I do, totally. I tried some regular humbuckers, and it was... weird. But Filtertrons in a tele is like Gin with Tonic, it's just made to be, it's natural. The bridge twang and growl, the neck is chimey and clear... and I don't even have a tone control, I ditched it. Turn down the volume a little bit and it's great clean jazz tone. Originally Posted by Blkat
My tele is a thinline though, maybe it also a factor.
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My 2nd guitar is Squier thinline tele with Fender wide range (i think thats what they called?) humbuckers, and it's also a beautiful thing. The best jazz tone of any teles I played. And in a full band setting it sits in the mix much better than a regular tele. I can't honestly understand why those Fender humbucker teles aren't more popular, to me they are just better all around teles.
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I ditched a Gretsch with TV Jones classic because I couldn't de-twang it enough, even with the tone rolled way off. Maybe in a Tele they'd be more versatile since, for some reason, Telecasters seem more adept at being tonal chameleons. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
Mind you, I don't dislike twang. Hence my choices in guitars. But I like to be able to nullify it and get a good jazz tone (whatever the heck that is!) if I want.
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If it's a tele, it should be a single coil. IMO. The tele neck pickup has been much maligned over the decades, when it's a gorgeous tone. And works quite well for jazz. Nothing wrong with a humbucker of course, it has it's own sound too, but if it were me in that case I probably wouldn't have bought a tele, I'd have bought a Les Paul or even better a 335.
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With cleaner jazz tones, usually not an issue? Originally Posted by Blkat
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If you're playing relatively loud in a place with dirty power, yeah, you might still hear some sizzle. I bought one of those Hum Debugger things years ago, works like a charm. Originally Posted by ruger9
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Well, to me the twang lives at the bridge pickup. And classic filtertron is def twangy at that. The neck pickup is fine... but then again I'm not looking for a super dark tone on any guitar, let alone a tele so... Maybe my idea of a jazz tone is different. Also this tele is my Swiss knife guitar, it's not exclusively for jazz. Originally Posted by Blkat
But like I mentioned, thinline teles with Fender humbuckers should satisfy anyone looking for a jazz tone, it's really good! They come stock with 250K pots, so not much twang there, but still very clear, still that Fender sound we all love.
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I'm a Telecaster fan and I've tried a lot of different neck pickups in my Teles over the years. My all-time favorite for jazz is TK Smith's version of the Charlie Christian. I've tried CCs from several different modern brands and TK's just seemed to have that special something.
Are all single coils noisy? Yes, but an Electro-Harmonix Hum-Debugger pedal takes care of that pretty effectively.
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