Pickguard - Humbucker Conversion - For Fender Telecaster

Main Description

Another one of our incredibly popular conversion pickguards, this time we’re looking to beef up your Telecaster® with the extra power you only get from a full fat humbucker in the neck!

So why the humbucker? Well – the Telecaster® has been with us since 1950, and it really is a victim of its own success; the design has barely changed since the 1960s, having always been that winning combination of Bridge pickup, short and sharp with plenty of bite and twang, alongside a Neck lipstick with contrasting warmth, almost to the point of being muddy. Nowadays, music is so much more varied, with Fender® guitars playing in more genres than anyone could have ever imagined!

And that’s where the humbucker conversion plate comes in. Where your normal Tele® pickup is warm, a little woolly, a little jazzy – by routing out the neck for a humbucker, the possibilities are endless! You want 1950s sparkle and chime just like your favourite Les Paul®? Looking for that throaty, chewy growl from your favourite Dimarzio®? This plate is the ideal starting point, all you need to know is what pickup to fit.

If you're loving that classic bridge pickup tone, but just can’t get your head around that neck, the obvious move is to switch out to something else. Now with your Strat® or your Les Paul® - no problem! There’s a million and one pickups out there, with a wide variety of styles and flavours available – the Telecaster® doesn’t really have that option.

When you see a direct lipstick replacement, because of the limitations imposed by the construction (such a small pickup, and we all want that metal cover right?!) they all sort of aim for a similar sort of voicing. Its twangy bridge, and its warm neck.

So rather than re-invent the wheel, the easiest option to get more from a Telecaster®, is to go down the humbucker route, allowing you to tap into the HUGE range of pickups that are out there catering for your Gibson® and Epiphone® players! The only limit here is your imagination – hot and heavy, fatter and warmer – it's completely up to you.

Hole configuration

With all of our conversion plates, the aim is to make them as accessible as possible, so we’ve stuck with the eight hole design that’s been in circulation on every Fender® Telecaster® since 1959/60, and is being used on production guitar even today. With the 59-modern setup, you get the eight mounting holes that are there to combat any possibility of warping, and with most of the plates on offer here, they’re built using three ply PVC for added stability.

Be aware though, if you’re going historic, the eight hole configuration was initially released in a single ply version in late 1959. We carry both single and three ply plates for the sake of completeness, but we advise that a single ply plate is likely to exhibit the same issues over time as those early Telecaster® guitars, even with modern materials.

Routing

Aside from the Humbucker in the neck, this plate is all standard. The bridge section is cut out to accept both Modern and Vintage style Telecaster® bridges, and the control plate is cut out to 32mm, which will take a Fender® control plate, or the Axesrus® Control plate with no problems.

Fender®, Squier®, Telecaster® and Tele® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation and Axesrus® has no affiliation with FMIC

Other Part Compatibility

For some unfathomable reason, the humble Tele® has seen more "factory" modifications then any other guitar i can think of - from the glaringly obvious, like dual humbuckers fitted with locking tremolos, to the frustratingly subtle (different size control plates or bridge routes!) - so, just as a little bit of re-assurance, its probably worth listing a few of the common parts that interact with the pickguard here, that'll commonly turn up on the same guitars

 
  Control plate

All of our pickguards for Telecaster® use a 32mm wide control plate - thats pretty much the standard nowadays. Once upon a time, Squier® were using 34mm wide control plates, and Fender® Japan will use a 32.2mm control plate (although I'd argue that 0.2mm isn't really enough to worry about personally) - but for the most part, all models with a control plate, will have a 32mm one, atleast from Fender® and Squier®, so thats the standard we work to.

    1.6mm Thick control plates match up with 1 ply thin pickguards, and 2mm plates match up with 1 ply thick, 3 and 4 ply pickguards. 

  Pickups

 The Humbucker Neck Telecaster® is a bit of a weird beast truth be told - its actually a little tricky to match the neck pickup to perfectly with the bridge pickup. "Modern" bridge pickups are actually a little wimpy strangly - they get their "heat" from their natural compression, usually from being built with 43 AWG - so whilst its an ideal place to strat with a HB Neck conversion, dont overestimate the power of the neck humbucker - something very traditional, inducing around 4-5 Henrys, will be absolutely ideal.
 
        Bridges
      
      This being a very much "standard" plate, it'll accept any of the "normal" bridges you'd expect to see one a Telecaster® - the big metal plate, holds the bridge pickup, sits in the notch at the rear of the plate, with a few millimeters of clearance around the edge.

          Its worth remembering with the 80s plates, that they have a cross over point - they've been used on guitars that take the 4 screw (vintage/lipped/ashtray) bridges, they've been used on Mexican guitars (which 
          have conversion bridges as standard - look modern, but the mounts are the same as vintage) and they've been used on guitars that take the (increasingly rare!) 3 screw bridges.

          The plate itself is designed to take pretty much any Telecaster® bridge, but worth checking compatibility on bridge vs. guitar too.

Screws

You do, weirdly, see some variation in pickguard screws - but for simplicities sake, we keep all of our plates working to the same size thread/head. Stops things getting confusing.

Axesrus Loaded Control Plate for HB Neck Tele

Electronics

Now, guitars that mix and match humbuckers and single coils hit a slight niggle - the single coil wants to be seeing a 250k pots, and the humbucker wants a 500ks - esqpecially on the volume - with a Tele®, your not getting 2 seperate volume pots in there - so theres a little tweak to the wiring! If you wire a 500k (or a 470K resistor) in parallel with the single coil, whenever the bridge pickup is in the circuit, it'll "see" a 250k pot on the volume.

Very handy, because it stops the thing getting razor sharp.

We do pre-loaded control plates that are fully customisable if your looking to make some tweaks, but as standard, its a great fit for this type of guitar.

Tortoise Shell Explained

You’ve probably noticed with the pickguards, we do A LOT of different variations in tortoise shells – and even then, we barely scratch the surface when it comes to completing the line-up.

Basically, Tortoise shell, originally, way back when, when it first started (long before the electric guitar was a thing) was just that – pieces of a tortoises shell, fixed together into a shape, and polished until semi-transparent (some of the early acoustic pickguards were actually made this way)

Now, obviously, none of us want to see a return to those practises, but seemingly, everyone liked “the look” – so with the advent of plastic in the early part of the 20th century, science found a cheaper way (it wasn’t until the seventies when trade in hawksbill turtle (the main source of Tortoise shell) shells became illegal!)

The first “plastic” Tortoise Shells were made from Nitrate plastics, usually Celluloid – and, frankly, it’s pretty gorgeous! Its semi-transparent, it’s got a sort of leopard skin look to it, and it soon worked its way onto guitars (again, most acoustics)

The problem is – Celluloid plastics are astonishingly flammable – they have a low point of combustion, and once they’re burning, they don’t go out until the fuels gone, or they flame is deprived of oxygen. As you can imagine, no one really liked working with Celluloid. It was risky to use (cutting = friction = heat) it was dangerous to store, and it wasn’t really suitable for the job at hand ( it changed colour when exposed to sunlight, it warped, it shrank, it was generally, pretty badly behaved!)
Never the less, it did eventually find its way onto electric guitars by the late 50s and early 60s, but was soon replaced for something more suitable and much safer.

Nowadays, you see Tortoise shells in either Polyoxymethylene (more stable as a material, but still very flammable) or PVC (which is fairly bomb proof, but does give off toxic fumes if burnt)

Now, getting to the modern day – Tortoise shell comes in 5 “variants” for us (ignoring the Celluloid offerings, they’re still out there, and great for historical accuracy, but just be VERY careful with them – not only in buying them/storing your guitar once its fitted, but also in actually sourcing the stuff, we’ve yet to find a factory who will even consider making a plate with it (too big a fire risk) and even when we do, its very cost prohibitive (more expensive to buy the things then we could ever dream of selling them for!) – there are guys out there making them though – but as a rough guide, expect to pay upwards of £150+)

  
  Classic

Now this is a funny one. For the longest  time, it was the only Tortoise shell we had access to, and honestly – its OK –  turns up pretty often on mid-priced guitars, such as the Squier® Classic vibe  and vintage modified lines – personally, I think of it was a cheats Tortoise  shell, because it seems to be a screen print sandwiched between the layers of  PVC, and as such, it looks a little flat. It is, however pretty uniform, so if  you want all your tortoise shells to look the same, classics the way to go.

  3 Ply Brown

 Now we’re talking – rather then a “flat layer” brown  tortoise is the real deal – layers of semi-transparent PVC (one yellow, one  brown) over laid to give that characteristic look. For whatever reason, the 3  ply version shows a little more yellow in the mix then the 4 ply. It shows a great  depth of colour as a result, and if pressed, I’d say it was my favourite of the  shells.

  4 Ply Brown
Slightly darker then the 3 ply version, less yellow  bleed through in the mix (presumably because the yellow “layer” is thinner)

  
  3 Ply Red
Similar to the brown version really – yellow and red,  one on top of the other, but it’s the same principle, same results, just a  little more vibrant then the brown.

  4 Ply Red
Where the brown 4 ply shows a little less yellow, the  red version pretty much cuts it out completely. Its almost bordering on a red pearl  for us, and certainly not without its charms. Ideal if you really hate the idea  of the yellow peeking through.

  Celluloid
For completeness sake, heres a photo of a celluloid plate too - i think we can all agree, it looks absolutely glorious, and theres a real depth to the "shell" effect - but if you look closely at the photo, you can probably see that the plate (in this case a Jazzaster) has badly warped, its been kept in the same conditions as the PVC plates above, for the same amount of time, but its way past being usable now.

Pearls Explained

Pearloid plates are similar to the tortoise shells, but theres a little less subtly between them, and they dont really have anything overly interesting in their history - as far as i can tell, they're always been PVC, and the variations in colour and pattern are pretty easy to follow.

So lets take a closer look.

  
  White Pearl

The most common pearloid you're going to see - "white pearl" - i think its safe to say we all know the look. Interesingly, Pearl pickguards are actually made from a material intially intended to be a faux "mother of pearl" (which is the inside of an oyster shell)

  Aged Pearl

 More common then you'd think strangely - fairly safe to think of it as the Parchment version of white pearl. For whatever reason, the pearling is a little tighter, with fewer blank spots between the reflective sections.

  Ivory Pearl
If Aged Pearl is the Parchment, then Ivory Pearl is most definately the Ivroy to the white - much more creamy in colour. Usually, you only see if in a 3 ply triple Ivory - not very common nowadays, but does occasionally turn up.

  
  Avalon
This is a fairly new pattern as far as we can well - actually a much closer representation of that "mother of pearl" look that the original pearloids were going for. Rather then being broken up into reflective "squares", its more bothches and swirls, gives it a nice crisp finish.

  Abalone
If Avalon is getting closer to mother of pearl, then its probably only right that we've got one thats getting close to its opposite number, abalone (which is the inside of the shell of a few species of marine snail) - its certainly a very "unique" pattern, and again, is more swirls then squares.

  Black Pearl
Black pearl is always a bone of contention for us - its not "really" black - its more a dark grey colour - there is a blacker version out there (not that we can find it!) called "Moto Pearl" - but yeah, they've both got their place.

  
  Purple Pearl
Hardly an all time classic, but not without its charms. Nice tight pearling, very few gaps between the squares, so nice and uniform - a love it or loathe it colour i suppose. Pair it with a black body and black plastics, and its a nice little statement piece though.

  Blue Pearl
Colour aside, its a fairly traditional pearloid - reflective squares, blue tint - looks a bit crackers on its own, but with the right body, it can work really well.

  Green Pearl
Again, a bit of a novelty colour for me - not exactly what you'd call a classic, but if thats your thing - more power to ya.

"Whites & Creams" Explained

Ok, even i'll conceed that this isn't the most thrilling of toics at this point, but there is actually plenty of confusion when it comes to the "off white" pickguard colours, so seeing as we're ticking off pearls and tortoise shell varients, we might as well address the parchments, mints and creams too.

So lets get stuck in

  
  White 

We carry all our white plates in the above "shade" - its a completely opaque pigment, and is what you expect really, a very clean, crisp, pristine white.

  Parchement

Occasionally called "aged white" in the trade - parchment is the next shade in from white, slightly darker with a very slight creamy/yellow tint - think of it like old news paper.

  Ivory 3 ply
As called aged white (and a source of much confusion!) - Ivory  is the only plastic that differs in colour in its 3 and 1 ply forms. The 3 ply above is quite a yellow, almost buttery cream, almos shades of nicotine staining.

Avalon Mother of pearl pickguard for a stratocaster

Ivory 1 Ply

And, for completeness sake - Ivory 1 ply. Strangely, never called Aged white - differs from the 3 ply version quite drastically, its much more a cream colour.A little softer, much less nicotine yellow.

Mint

Now, Mint is where things get really fun.

Mint was originally designed to mimic the "greening" of white celluloid plates as they age, but as they've become more popular, tastes have changed a little, so you see some variations within mint, so we differentiate between these variations.

At the bottom, you've got Mint "B" - the original Mint - its quite dark, and quite green. Any guitar you see online with a mint plate, is likely to have a mint B - its the most common of the mints.

Slap bang in the middle, you've got Mint "A" 3 ply- this is a slightly ligher then B, and is a half way house between parchement and Mint B for me - a little more subtle, a little less green.

And right at the tip, we've got 1 ply Mint "A" - slightly different to the 3 ply version, a little less green again.