Low cost telecaster pickups?

Gear & Tools Talk 🎸 Guitars, Instruments & Maintenance
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Hi Everyone,

After building a Strat, my next guitar project is to completely restore a Squire Affinity Telecaster. I picked up a used butterscotch blond one yesterday for 40 bucks. Actually, the guy even said he would accept less money but I thought the price was very fair, and he looked poorer than me! Even with completely rusty strings and no setup on the neck for probably many years, it already felt nice enough to play, with no major problems, so I’m optimistic about the restoration. The neck is nice and straight and feels good in the hand. Tuners are fine, bridge is fine. Switch crackles and needs replacing - no big deal.

I don’t need another Tele (now there are going to be quite a few jokes about how many tele’s do we need), but for fun, I intend to restore and mod it. I already modified an Affinity tele with great results. In that one, I put in relatively low cost pickups, Tonerider Alnico 2 Blues, with very good results. So I want to put something quite different in this one to make it a really different sounding guitar. Perhaps something more powerful than Alnico 2’s?

I haven’t looked under the pickguard yet to see if the neck pickup cavity is large enough for a humbucker or a P90. It could be because they make S/H Affinity’s, I think, so I would be surprised if they route them differently. If it is, I might go that way and have an S/H or S/P90. If not, it will be a normal SS configuration but with hotter pickups compared to my Alnico 2’s. I know that some brands also make some sort of P90 hybrids in the size of a single coil.

I’m definitely not intending to spend a fortune on pickups and I already know there are some good low cost ones out there. So these are the brands I have on my list:

  • Tonerider (UK)
  • Oil City (already probably too pricey but look interesting). (UK)
  • Bootstrap (US)
  • Iron Gear (UK)

Does anyone have experience with any of these brands and can recommend any of their pickups for a hot tele!!! ?? I’d like to know what people think.

Best, Ian

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The Fender Tex-Mex pickups are really affordable for a Fender branded set. They are over wound Alnico 5 and I think they sound pretty good.

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Might be sufficient to just clean it. I like “DeoxIT”. You can find it on Amazon and several guitar parts stores.

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I know @DarrellW has recommended Iron Gear pickups in the past.

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I can vouch for Irongear pickups, they’re very good and you would have to pay a h3ll of a lot more for anything better!
There are a few options though, overwound was my choice, they’re hot but still reasonably vintage sounding at lower volume levels. Another option if you want a really hot sound is Hot rails (dual coil but not a humbucker), they’re single coil size and are really good.
I doubt very much that the body cutouts will accommodate anything other than a standard size single coil, unless it’s a special.
This is what I got, Axetec is where to order them from, if you go to Irongear directly they usually send you to Axetec.

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@DarrellW Thanks for the info Darell. The overwound Steel Foundries would probably be hot enough for me, especially as I also intend to have a 4 way switch which should give some interesting sounds. I’m guessing they are already quite a lot hotter than my Alnico 2 Toneriders which are 5.6 and 6.5k.

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I remember @TheMadman_tobyjenner :smiling_face_with_horns:recommending pickups in another thread… now that I’ve summoned him (Yes, I am well established in my Pentagram) maybe he will weigh in with Words of Wisdom…

Telecasters - One & Done for me!!!

Tod

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Iron Gear Hammerheads. Get down and dirty, have them fore and aft on my SSS to HSH updated Affinity Strat. Good VFM for sure.

They look “the dogs” as well !

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