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Main Description
Surface Mounting Mini humbuckers - its a mouthful of a name, i know - but in the sake of fairness to all the companies building them of late, we think its only fair to give them their proper name, rather then just saying "TV Jones®" or "Filtertron®" - so, in short, you're looking a pickguard, for your Telecaster® that will take these very specific size and shape pickups, Be they TV Jones®, Gretsch®, or anyone elses.
Semantics aside though, its what you expect really - This pickguard allows you to port the pickup into the neck slot, surface mount it onto the body, and away you go!
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
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+)
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.
"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
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