Nocaster Broadcaster wiring vs modern Telecaster wiring

Pickups, wiring schemes, switch techniques and onboard active electronics for guitars and basses
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modman
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Post by modman »

Two days ago I went over to a friend to help him upgrade the pickups of his Highway 1 Telecaster to Custom Shop Nocaster pickups. I didn't quite look up any wiring schemes, so was kind of surprised to find that the Nocaster set included a wiring scheme that differs from the standard Telecaster controls:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wi ... ster_blend

What is the tone control on a normal Tele, functions as a blend control to add the neck pickup.

The reason for this seems to be historically related to the development of the amplifiers:
Just pulled my Nocaster apart for the first time since i had it. Tried to take pictures for you but they are super blurry. Yours has definately been modded, possibly back to "modern" setting or whatever they call it. The reason some complain it's "muddy", which mine still is, is it has the original "dark" neck settings. This was necessary back in 51 before Leo had perfected the electric bass. 52 tele's have it standard as well. However, when you get either a CS51 nocaster, or a 52 tele, you get a kit to change it to your setting, which converts it back to a standard tone knob instead of blend, and Bridge, Bridge/Neck, and Neck settings. Strange that the pot is a 500k. Mine are both 250's. To summarize, i think you said it's sounds great. So, problem solved! Anyways, first post and all, hope i said something vaguely in-TELE-gent. Boom tish!
http://www.tdpri.com/forum/1127124-post8.html

If this explanation is true, it sheds some light on the mojo aspects of these 'super original' reissues of pickups, for which you seem to need an pre 52 Fender amp.

Some hardcore mo'jokers still insist on using the original wiring:
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showth ... p?t=193694
http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-tech/96 ... stion.html
http://www.tdpri.com/forum/telecaster-d ... iring.html
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lmlacoss
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Post by lmlacoss »

Ohlord. A topic which I can finally be useful in.

What can I say about Broadcaster Blend Wiring that hasn't been said about a seedy brothel? Don't do it. You will die of something horribly unsavory. I was fooled by a regular mojician into performing this modification on my MIM Telecaster (because I am an idiot.) I've since found out that my stock pickups are far less suited to the task than the Nocaster set. Said friend purchased the set from Fender, so, since I hadn't gotten around to rectifying the travesty that I'd wrought on my telecaster, I bribed him to let me use his for a few days.

I don't have sound bites for the experiment that I did, but I checked to see that our modifications both resembled the Seymour Duncan diagram, and they did, and then proceeded to play them side by side through the same amp, a B-52 AT-100 (I'm a neanderthal.) With sickeningly bright setting engaged, the tone of the Neck position had a particular satisfying, but un-telecaster sound to it (however, this is not a footswitchable option, so switching back to the bridge made your head scream until you mashed the bright button on the head.)

However, there wasn't much that I found pleasing about the other two settings. This is personal preference, of course, but I found it a sick joke that you couldn't get the punchy bridge pickup sound due to the blend control. The neck without cap setting (middle position) had a premature darkening effect when you turned down the volume, and the blend didn't have the nice, consistent taper that a real nocaster does. That being said, the nocaster pickups did, in fact, sound better than my MIM telecaster pickups, but that was to be expected. I developed my own theory on why the Nocaster pickups and wiring weren't as effective as they were back then.

I can't really discount the amplifier theory, and I think that it's a step in the right direction to defining why the Nocaster pickups aren't really responding the way that Fender's advertisement goons say they should, but I think that it may be partially due to the hardware used. New Telecasters which are going to be modified have 250k Custom Taper pots in both positions, which really bleed out signals at an awkward rate. This doesn't actively change the tone of the guitar excepting in that your fancy blend control, which is the crown jewel of the Nocaster, now functions like a cheap wah pedal.

That's all I've got. Cheers. Light me up where I've gone astray.

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Post by RnFR »

i don't quite understand what this has to do with amplifiers.
as i understood the explanation in the thread it was the lack of an electric bass that spawned the dark neck pickup which could then be used instead. :scratch:
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