Main Description

Our take on the very earliest Telecaster® pickup - wound using 43 Plain enamel wire, Alnico 3 rod magnets, and mounted onto a zinc plated steel base plate.

If we're talking "that tone" - this is certainly it. Its clean, its crisp, its got twang for days - everything you think a vintage Telecaster® should do, this will do.

Its not a pickup without its draw backs - the combination of a relatively low wind (remember that 11K with 43 AWG isn't "double" 5.5k of 42 AWG!) with the weakest grade of Alnico poles - its fair to say that this pickup isn't exactly a power house. Its not overly "sustainy", its not all that responsive, it can, on bad days, be hard work - and thats probably a very good reason why it never really stayed the coarse in historical terms - appearing for the first 2-3 years that the Tele® was being produced.

BUT - if you can get your head around the occasion "fight" - its a great little snap shot into a period of real interest with the electric guitar.

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

Sound Clips

Should be just below!

Phase and Polarity

Why does it matter?
Right – without getting bogged down on this too much (because, your buying pickups here – this is something that we, as the builders, have to worry about, not you, the guitarist!) – but having pickups that are phased and polarised correctly (or incorrectly) can drastically affect the sound of the guitar, so its worth knowing at least a little.

Phase
When we speaking about a pickups phase, we’re talking about the direction of the coils wind.
Fairly easy to get your head around really – with the coil in front of you, sitting as it would be in the guitar – you’ll be able to see the start and end of the coil (at least with single coils with eyelet terminations) – black wire will be on one side, that’ll be the start, and either white/yellow/red/blue/whatever wire will be on the other side. That’s the end of the coil.

If the start is on the left, and the end is on the right – that’s a clockwise wind – what is normally considered “Standard”
If it’s the opposite, with the start on the right, and the end on the left – that’s a counter clockwise wind. Normally called “Reversed”

Polarity

The way the magnets have been charged. Magnets have an inbuilt “orientation”, so with rod magnets, the round “top” (and bottom) are the poles – so they will either be “north” or “south”

Easy to ID – off a compass up to the pole, and the poles will attract the needle. North polarity poles will attract the south side of the needle, and visa versa. (Yes, that’s correct – North polarity attracts south, south attracts north! The earths “north” pole, is south polarity… I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but trust me – it’s true!)

The Problem
Pickups that are “out of phase” (and or polarity) – where both pickups are either the same polarity, or the same phase, or both -  will, usually sound “washed out” (when two of them are wired in series or parallel)  – it’s a bit of a quirk of the design of a guitar, and some are affected worse than others if you do go “out of phase” – but the general thinking nowadays, so to have a reverse wound pickup and a standard wound pickup whenever you have 2 pickups “live”.

The solution
Standardisation! The magic word in pickups!

All manufacturers try to keep their pickups phased and polarised in a way that makes them cross compatible with any other pickups they make (although there are some exceptions to that rule), and, on the whole, that standard becomes universal – so an Axesrus® pickup will work along side a Seymour Duncan® pickup will work alongside a Montys® pickup will work alongside a Wilkinson® pickup.

So, with Telecaster® pickups – the standard runs like this.

Bridge pickup – Counter Clockwise (Reverse) and North Polarity

Neck Pickup – Clockwise (Standard) and South Polarity.

And that standard, was set back in the mid to late 1950s, when Fender® finally stopped messing around with the designs! But its interesting to see that up until the late 50s, there were both standard and reverse wound bridge pickups appearing on Telecaster® and Esquire® guitars! But by 1959, right up until 1988 (and possibly after, but records are patchy at that point, purely because Fender® changed how they manufactured… everything!)

Simple right? Everyone’s working to the standard Fender® set in the fifties and you’ve nothing to worry about?... well… not quite.

Everyone, more or less, follows the standard, but there’s one weird exception.

Fender® Musical Instrument Company!

For some reason, that no one seems to have been able to figure out, Fender struggle to stick to their own standard. Some pickups follow it to the letter (62 American vintage reissue, the TexMex, anything from Fender Japan, The Yosemite set) and other sets, they don’t! (Texas Specials, Twisted Tele®, Nocasters)

It looks, on the face of it, to be split along the “Custom shop” vs. “everything else” branding to be honest with you, but this is only a rough rule of thumb. The “Pure vintage” line, seems to mix up phase and polarity from one model to the next, and Squier® pickups seem to be dependant on what the factory worker has had for breakfast that morning. Purely random.

So, its worth bearing that in mind if your planning on mixing and matching a pickup from Axesrus® (or Montys® or Seymour Duncan® or DiMarzio® or anyone whos using “The Fender standard”) with a Fender® pickup! I’ve absolutely no problem with it – especially with the Telecaster® - I appreciate very few of us are into it for the neck pickup, so I wont cry foul if your only replacing the bridge! Just do yourself a favour, and have a check on the phase and polarity!

And this, is the weird and wonderful world of pickups in a nut shell! A standard was set 70 years ago, everyone works to it, apart from the company who set it! No surprise that I don’t sleep well eh?

Either way – we offer all of our pickups in reverse wound/polarity options in the dropdown (under the “non-standard options” – so its there if you need it, and as always, if your in doubt, you can always give me a nudge on the contact form and I’ll talk you through figuring out what you need.

Matched Set?

I normally use this section of the write ups to “suggest” different combinations of pickups that’ll work together – but with “pickups for Telecaster®”, I’m going to be a little more in depth with this, and try and explain why we’re treating the necks and bridges as separate products.

Now, that part your probably interested in!
Compatibility

EVERY NECK PICKUP FOR TELECASTER WILL WORK WITH EVERY BRIDGE PICKUP!*
(with 2 exceptions – hot rail humbuckers and anything “silly”, like our Heavy Heart)

There, I said it! Easy as that. You want a T90 bridge to pair up with your existing Fender® neck? Or you want to use a Screw Vintage! Neck along side your boutique Nocaster® reproduction bridge? You can! There are absolutely no draw backs! Its one of the wonderful things about the Telecaster® from my point of view.

So they’re all the same?

Now, this is going to sound a little hard on a guitar we all love, but, stay with me as I try to explain why.

The Telecaster neck pickup, because of its size and shape, is enormously limited in what it can do – from a pickup winding point of view, because its so small, and everyone wants it to have a metal cover – we have to work within a very tight arena in terms of design – so, on the whole? They’re all going to be wound with 43 AWG wire, the maximum we can get away with is somewhere between 7K and 10K, and we know that the metal cover is always going to attenuate some of the “snap” out of it.

So, we have a funny situation where Tele neck pickups kind of always sound pretty similar – its not that they all sound the same, but, on the whole? Tele necks sound like Tele necks – some might be a bit more open, or give you a bit more twang, or be a little gutsier, or a little crisper, but you’ll never break away from a very recognisable “that’s a Tele® neck!” tone. You’ve only got control over the seasoning, rather then being able to hugely tone shape in the same way you can with a Humbucker.

There are, obviously, ways to break it – our Screw vintage! Is wildly over engineered to make it sound “more like a Strat®” in the neck slot, and there are noise cancelling, stacked humbuckers hiding under Tele covers, and there are open faced, FeCrCo/CuNiFe poled, mixed wire wound exercises in insanity… but we’ve got to remember the golden rule with pickups.
“We like what we recognise”

And that kind of explains why Tele® neck pickups are what they are – the engineering challenge of “making something different, that looks the same, is the same size, and sounds familiar” – is insane! So, if I can give you one piece of advice when it comes to the neck slot? Accept it for what it is – if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and tastes like a duck? It’s a Tele neck.

A historical mis-match
This section is a little self-indulgent, but it does follow on from the above, and I think its worth typing out, so here goes.

Whilst I’ll stand by my belief that “most Tele necks sound similar” – that’s most definitely not true of the bridge pickup! It’s a bigger pickup, and we’re not ham strung by a cover – so from a design point of view? The Skys the limit! (Even pushing past the “we like what we recognise” idea, and ending up with pickups where we recognise the tone from a different style of guitar! Something you can’t do with the neck pickup)

Now, this is a bit of a back handed compliment in a way, but, even if we go all the way back to the Broadcaster/Nocasters – the bridge pickups and the neck pickups, tonally, have VERY little in common. Thankfully, this is something we accept with the Telecaster® (and we don’t with other guitars, weirdly!) – the idea that the bridge is a twanging, biting, snapping, raucous, chicken fried, Nascar watching, good ol’ boy with a foul temper, and the necks this weirdly woolly, forgiving, smooth and sultry, slightly overweight counter point – would be madness to a Les Paul® or RG player, buts its perfectly normal for a Tele purist.

It does, however, put me in a weird position when doing the write ups, because I like being honest about how these things sound, and I cant really say “Hey, our T90 pickups sound like a P90! Throaty and rich and aggressive, but retaining a huge amount of head room and breathiness, which makes them absolutely idea for someone wanting a pickup to pair with a P90, or a humbucker!” – because, frankly, its not true of the neck pickup! The neck pickup, sounds like a Neck pickup with shades of Strat® - so, my thinking is “Whats true on the guitar, is true on the website” – we treat the different positions as different products, and we be as honest as we can be.

Setup

250 pots work perfectly (thats what was used on the recordings for reference) and a 0.022 or a 0.047 cap on the tone will see you absolutely fine.

Warranty & Returns

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to write this section up, and, I really wish I didn’t have to, but, if I’m being honest and transparent about how pickups work, for better or worse, it’s probably worth being honest and open your rights as a consumer too, and maybe give a little insight into how we actually build pickups.

How we do it

Pickups, at our end of things – are “Custom made” – I cannot stress this enough. When you click the “Add To Cart” button, there is no pickup on the shelf, no bucket of pre-terminated bobbins or half complete pickups. It is made, entirely, from scratch using the parts we have available.

This means, if you order a Bourbon city, or a Hot Iron, or a Texas Blue, it is wound FOR YOU. It is being built to the specifications you have stipulated in the drop-down menus, even the most “normal” design, is still, essentially, built to order.

That entails our pickers collecting the parts from stores, delivering them to the winders, who then get the copper on there, and then the wound coils going to the techs to solder, terminate, test, polish, wax pot, clean, retest… you get the idea.

This is all done “in house” and, obviously, there is a queue, which is first in first out, so pickups will NEVER be shipped same day. Realistically, it takes about 2 weeks, but we do get busier at the beginning/end and middle of the month, so that can have a knock on effect.

And this is all being done, by hand, on a VERY small scale. At maximum, we can produce about 6 pickups a day.

It works wonderfully frankly, because we can make, pretty much, anything you can dream up, and keeping it small scale, means we have an exceptionally high attention to detail with each pickup sold.

Returns

So we have an item, when all is said and done, that didn’t exist until you purchased it, that has cost a lot of man hours to actually manufacture, and has been manufactured to your exact specifications.

As such, pickups come under the remit of “custom work” as laid out under the our terms and conditions, and as outlined in the UK governments distance selling regulations.

This means, in short, pickups are none returnable, and none refundable.
I understand, in this day and age, that may seem quite the hard-nosed approach, but, sadly, there’s no wiggle room in this. Once a pickup is wound, there’s no going back. It belongs to you. There is no “I’ll test it to see if I like it” or “I’ll return it if I don’t like the colour!”.

Warranty

All Axesrus pickups come with a “relaxed lifetime” warranty as far as I’m concerned. I’m never going to ask you to register the purchase, stop offering support 12 months after purchase or limit support to the initial customer in the case of second-hand stuff. We are incredibly proud of the pickups we produce, and I’ll help out wherever I can.

However, its worth laying out what I’d consider “realistic” expectations as to what we will cover as part of a warranty.

Repairs and replacements
Whilst we will not accept pickups as return for refund under any circumstances, we reserve the right to repair or replace any pickup that develops a manufacturing fault within a reasonable time frame.

I won’t put a scale on that time frame, but I will say, its at our discretion. If you’re lucky enough to have some of the VERY early hand wound stuff we made, and we (stupidly) thought we could do it at £20 a pickup, and the coil wires snapped after 10 years? I’m probably not in a position to repair or replace it free of charge, you know? You’ve had your fun; you’ve got your money’s worth!

On the flip side of that – if you’ve bought a £200 humbucker 2 years ago, and it’s developed a fault? You’d better believe Axes is bending over backwards to get it repaired and get you up and running again.

I’ll say this too, we won’t hang you out to dry – if that £20 pickup can be repaired, even if we’re not doing it as part of the warranty, we will offer to repair it at a reasonable price.

Damage vs. Fault
Pickups are delicate creatures I’m afraid. Nature of the beast I suppose, they were never designed, all those years ago, to be “presented” outside of a guitar, so go in knowing this, pickups can be damaged. Either in transit, whilst in storage, or during install.
It is VERY difficult to know how a pickup has developed a fault, so most of the time, we will go into all warranty claims with the mindset that “it’s a manufacturing fault”, frankly, because it keeps everyone happy, avoids any awkward conversations as to “who’s done what” and, normally, repairing damage done during install is the same work as repairing a manufacturing fault either way. Worst case, we might have a delicate email exchange about who’s covering the postage, but that’s about as bad as it gets.

However, we will take this approach only when a pickup, which is showing damage, is only showing minimal damage. I appreciate everyone makes mistakes.

Pickups that have been heavily damaged, have seen heavy wear and tear, or have been intentionally broken in an effort to raise a warranty claim, will see not be repaired, or replaced. Neither free of charge or “for a fee”

Lead times and cancellations
We do publish the lead times on all of our custom build work, and there is very little we can do to decrease the time it takes to actually manufacture this stuff I’m afraid, short of jumping you to the front of the queue (which is never fair, and we won’t do it)

Be aware that once an order is placed, work beings on your build, and as such, you’ve entered into the contract, and there is no backing out. Coils can often be wound within the hour or the order being placed, but they will sit in the work queue due to a back log at terminating/testing/cleaning.
Modifications
There are, occasionally, situations where someone buys a pickup, installs it, plays it for a while, and then might want something a little different down the line. Maybe a different magnet, or a cover fitting, or a new hookup wire fitting.

I am happy to carry out this work, and, normally, regardless of the “time since purchase”, this will be done simply for the cost of parts and postage.

However, the “depth” of these modifications, and if we’re willing/capable of carrying them out, is at the discretion of Axesrus. We’re happy to discuss this on a case-to-case basis, but go in eyes open, that its unlikely to be part of the warranty.

“Warranty with initial purchase”
I’m not a stickler when it comes to this stuff, but I will say, we do have to draw the line somewhere, so, strictly speaking, this “relaxed warranty” is, officially, limited to the original purchaser of the product.

That said, I’m not a robot, nor am I a fool. I’m aware that sometimes, a pickup is moved on relatively quickly, or is bought by a 3rd party for someone else, so, in these cases, lets just be sensible about it. I’ll carry forward a “true” warranty on a pickup for 12 months after the initial purchase, regardless of who is contacting me in regards to any issue.

However, I will need to know who the initial customer was. Even if it’s just their name and a rough date of purchase.

This goes for technical support too – I’ve no problems offering support on Axesrus products, regardless of “time since purchase”, but I will ask for some proof that they are in fact, Axesrus products.

Modifications to second hand parts, will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis too.

Changes in specification/tolerances
Over the years, we’ve had a few “interesting” conversations regarding pickup specifications, especially when it comes to returns and warranty.

The published specs of our pickups, are published with a “within tolerance” subtext, based off of the readings from our testing equipment.

There will, always, be variation between one pickup and the next, and whilst we endeavor to keep those readings within the tolerances stated, they do occasionally wander outside of the 10% we stipulate as “acceptable” – this is usually due to temperature fluctuation, or specification changes outside of our control (wire diameter, alloy composition etc.) – any resulting change in readings based on these factors, will result in an updated technical spec on the website, but, as you can imagine, the first we know about an unforeseen spec change, is when the pickups come off the winder.

We do not consider these “out of spec” accidents to be cause for a warranty claim I’m afraid, and we endeavor to keep on top of them so the information we’re giving you at point of purchase, is as accurate as possible.

Warranty postage
Repairs or replacement postage cost, outside of an initial 14 day period, is at your cost. I appreciate, in some situations, that this is prohibitive (especially when shipping outside of the UK).