Telecaster – Replacement Neck Pickup

I’ve been playing my Candy Apple Red Telecaster for about 5 years now, and it’s had a few modifications along the way.

It started life as an off-the-shelf Squire Fat Telecaster. It was resonably priced and ideal as a stage workhorse which I wouldn’t be too bothered about damaging. However the stock pickups soon started to show their weaknesses.

Being a “Fat” Telecaster, this guitar came preloaded with a full size humbucker in the neck position, this gave a really warm sound, and most importantly, it responded well to overdrive and distortion, but I soon started to detect the muddiness and set out to find a new pickup.

I did shop around for a bit, but I quickly decided it just HAD to be a Seymour Duncan pickup. but which one? Well to be fair, being in the neck position, I wasn’t spoiled for choice and following some recommendations and reviews, I settled for the ’59 Model Humbucker. This is modelled around the PAF pickup found in the original Gibson Les Paul and SG. It’s got a really great sound when clean and chugs along nicely when I stomp on my Guv’Nor II distortion pedal.

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