thoughts on vintage

[youownastore]

Im building a tele and im torn between modern hum canceling tele pickups or vintage tele pickups. I was thinking about going with the antiquity telecaster 1955 if I go vintage or the stk-t2b and stk-t1n for a more modern sound. I'd like to know some opinions on these pickups so please feel free to leave as much feedback as you'd like

[Gearjoneser]

Personally, I like bridge singles to be wound as hot as possible.....right up to the point where they start to compress....and no more. I always want the neck pickup to be straight up vintage. That way the neck is always clear, and the bridge can always be dialed in with my volume control.

I like singles that are made the way they've always been....not stacked, hum cancelling, or single sized humbuckers. Traditional only.

I'm more of a fan of Alnico 5, just because I like tight bottom end, neutral mids, and clear punchy highs.

[Orange]

Modern pickups (hum cancelling etc) still have the vintage classic sound, just technically better, more balanced and less noisy.

Vintage pickups (i mean fenders, not Seymour Duncan's vintage line) aren't that balanced and they are very noisy, but apart from that i can't see what's better on a vintag pickup.....

I mean it's all Hype....
A lot of modern Strat and Tele pickups are just improved pickups, based on the original ones.
(Dio Marzio, Seynour Duncan)

[Lewguitar]

Personally, I like bridge singles to be wound as hot as possible.....right up to the point where they start to compress....and no more. I always want the neck pickup to be straight up vintage. That way the neck is always clear, and the bridge can always be dialed in with my volume control.

I like singles that are made the way they've always been....not stacked, hum cancelling, or single sized humbuckers. Traditional only.

I'm more of a fan of Alnico 5, just because I like tight bottom end, neutral mids, and clear punchy highs.

I kind of agree.

I like alnico 5 for the neck pickup: brighter and clearer.

But I like alnico 2 for the bridge pickup: more mids and more sweet compression.

The exception would be the Antiquity 1 Tele set where both pickups are alnico 2 and both pickups sound superb...and combined they are humcancelling although used individually they are not hum cancelling.

Only true humcancelling Tele pickups I've used and loved are the Joe Bardens.
They have the rep for being hi-fi and overly bright but that's simply not true, IMO...at least not now that I've had a couple of sets and really gotten into them.

I played a gig with the Bardens a few months ago and was told I had a Tele tone that sounded like a "velvet razor"! Now that's a great description of the Bardens. I was playing through a fully cranked blackface Deluxe Reverb amp and no effects.

I'm hoping Duncan will come out with a humcancelling Classic Stack Plus for the Tele...the Strat version is wonderful!

Lew

[Lewguitar]

In so far as Duncan single coil Tele pickups go, I like the custom shop set MJ wound me best of all: alnico 2 Tapped Tele Hot for the bridge and alnico 5 "Tele ala Strat" neck pickup that looks like a vintage Tele neck pickup but sounds like a Strat neck pickup.

After that, my fave would be the Antiquity I set: both alnico 2.

And after that, my #3 fave would be the Jerry Donahue bridge (a2) and one of the Tele neck pickups just mentioned.

Fralin Blues Specials are hard to beat too...but I've become pretty attached to my Duncans, especially after meeting Seymour, Evan, MJ and the gang at NAMM.

Lew