GFS pickups

mjbphotos said:
Jimistone- sent you a PM. Ideally, I'd like to find someone local who could do the work, I'd just bring the whole guitar to him. Otherwise, I'll have to desolder the lead pickup, and resolder everything back together when the pickup repairs are done. ANd I am not a particularly good solderer!
Nothing wrong in getting all that done, but while the repair is happening, I don't have the Tele to use.
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well, no matter how you slice it you are going to have to pull the pick up. Put the gfs in and send the original off to get fixed. That way you can play your Tele while waiting for the repair.

By the way....
Snip the wire off close to the solder joint on the pot, instead of melting the solder at the pot. That way you can solder to the little piece of wire, instead of resoldering to the pot. If the pickup you are installing has the push back type cloth covered wire (that should be vintage correct for your guitar) you just push it back and solder to the little piece of wire attached to the pot where you snipped it off and then pull the cloth covering down over it. You'll never be able to tell it's spliced and not an original solder joint.
 
The thing I like about the GFS stuff (linked in my first post) - the harness is all prewired and the pickups use mini plugs to the harness, no soldering needed!
 
jimistone said:
Do you not know that a 72 Tele with original pickups will be worth a good bit more than a 72 Tele with gfs pickups?
That being said how in the world would fixing the original pickups be seen as "extra expense"?:facepalm:
Fixing the original pickups is an absolute no brainer.
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first off .... not everyone makes guitar decisions based on later on, selling the guitar.

Personally, I don't give the least little crap about what something will do for the resale value of my guitar unless it's something worht tens of thousand of dollars.
5 or 6 hundred bucks is inconsequential and wouldn't affect my guitar decision in the slightest.
Resale value is actually the absolute least important thing in the world to me ..... they're guitars ..... I play them ..... I make any changes I want to make to them.
Others feel the same.

And since you decided to be snarky about it let me tell ya', I know more about guitars than you ever will so don't try talking down to me.
Your obsession with the resale value of a '72 tele is definitely the focal point an amateur would zero in on though.
 
Lt. Bob said:
first off .... not everyone makes guitar decisions based on later on, selling the guitar.

Personally, I don't give the least little crap about what something will do for the resale value of my guitar unless it's something worht tens of thousand of dollars.
5 or 6 hundred bucks is inconsequential and wouldn't affect my guitar decision in the slightest.
Resale value is actually the absolute least important thing in the world to me ..... they're guitars ..... I play them ..... I make any changes I want to make to them.
Others feel the same.

And since you decided to be snarky about it let me tell ya', I know more about guitars than you ever will so don't try talking down to me.
Your obsession with the resale value of a '72 tele is definitely the focal point an amateur would zero in on though.
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Not trying to be "snarky". I just hate to see somebody given poor advice that's all. $500 doesn't mean anything to you, but you told him you couldn't see him incurring the extra expense of fixing the original pickup?
Lmao.
This is a very ironic post all the way around....you give me the "don't talk down to me" biz and all the time you are the one talking down to me.

You always do this though....when anyone disagrees with you you get pissed off and talk about how much more you know than them and how much better you are than them.
Maybe you should just chill and realize that there are different opinions on things and that others besides you know a thing or 2 about guitars.
Sorry mjbphotos...I don't want to see your thread get bogged down with this kind of crap.
I said what I needed to say and I'm done.
 
mjbphotos said:
The thing I like about the GFS stuff (linked in my first post) - the harness is all prewired and the pickups use mini plugs to the harness, no soldering needed!
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I got a bass guitar pre with all the pots and Jack wired together as a harness....with the solder free pickup connections this past week

It's nice but it's not just a drop in upgrade. The ground wire from the bridge will have to be soldered. Also, the jack in the prewired pre didn't fit my bass so I had to change out the jacks...more soldering.
It wasn't that big a deal though.
 
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jimistone said:
I got a bass guitar pre with all the pots and Jack wired together as a harness....with the solder free pickup connections this past week

It's nice but it's not just a drop in upgrade. The ground wire from the bridge will have to be soldered. Also, the jack in the prewired pre didn't fit my bass so I had to change out the jacks...more soldering.
It wasn't that big a deal though.
Click to expand...

Where do you solder that ground wire on a Tele? To the bottom of the 'ashtray'?
 
Bridge pickup on a tele has a brass baseplate which is electrically connected to the bridge/strings by the pickup screws. The shield around the pickup wires will already be soldered to that baseplate. The other end of that should reach the jack sleeve somehow and in this case it's probably already handled in your pre-wired harness. That is, in the special case of a telecaster, there is no separate bridge ground, and you probably won't have to worry about it. :)
 
ashcat_lt said:
Bridge pickup on a tele has a brass baseplate which is electrically connected to the bridge/strings by the pickup screws. The shield around the pickup wires will already be soldered to that baseplate. The other end of that should reach the jack sleeve somehow and in this case it's probably already handled in your pre-wired harness. That is, in the special case of a telecaster, there is no separate bridge ground, and you probably won't have to worry about it. :)
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That's what I thought, thanks. Going to put the GFS stuff on my 'santa list'.
 
Comparison I made...

Hey, guys...

Don't know if it will be useful... But I made this comparison some time ago... Between the Gibson Classic 57 and the GFS Lipstick Pro Tube Humbuckers...

 
that IS interesting .... of course lipstick buckers are a different beast than a classic bucker in construction but I think it holds its own .... a little lower in output and bit thinner sounding to me
 
Got the GFS pickups, switch, pots and jack installed tonight, hot DAMN! When I put the ohmmeter on the old bridge pickup I couldn't get anythign but infinite resistance, no matter what range I picked on the meter (and I verified it was working by measuring the (newer) alnico neck pickup I had pulled off, which was about 8.6K.
I got the GFS pickups and harness with their 'kwik plug's, so no soldering needed. Only thing I had to do extra was use the old control nuts as spacers under the plate, as the threaded stems on the GFS pots were longer than the originals. The old switch was showing a lot or corrosion (not rust), much like the a lot of the 45-year-old hardware on this Tele.

No chance for recording tonight, hope to get some done over the weekend, but I was able to dial in sweet Tele Twang or monster gain pretty easily.
 
They're great. I was able to dial in a nice variety of sounds.

This is a collaboration song I tracked yesterday (the vocals need to be redone). There are 2 rhythm guitar tracks panned 1/2 left and right in it, and the lead part at 3:25 gets some nice break up tone, which I never could get with the old pickups.

 
I should probably start a new thread about this, but since we're on the subject of GFS pickups -

Anybody ever tried the 'EVH' humbuckers?
 
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