guitar pickup Archives - Mr Glyn's Pickups

Telecaster wiringg diagram by Mr Glyns Pickups. Tele wiring diagram

I like to support my customers any way I can so here’s a Telecaster Wiring Diagram for a standard Telecaster to help you fit your set of Mr Glyns Pickups.

Telecaster wiring diagram. By Mr Glyns Pickups. — Tele Wiring Diagram

I’ve draws this diagram using the colour code for Mr Glyn’s Pickups.

I use shielded cable for my Telecaster pickups so not only do they hum less but by swapping the red and white wires it’s easy to reverse their phase. That’s really useful if you want to use a 4 way switch to combine the two pickups in series as a humbucker.

This is the standard Telecaster Wiring Diagram – there are plenty of modifications you could make to change things a little.

Changing the capacitor to one of a lower value will lessen the effect of using the tone control. A .022 microfarad cap, for instance, will make the tone control more subtle to use but it’s not great if you like using the tone as a wah wah.

I like to use a treble bleed on my Tele to avoid treble loss when using the volume control – here’s some info about it https://mrglynspickups.com/2020/09/04/treble-bleed/

Mr Glyn’s Pickups’ Story

My name is Glyn Evans. I have been a full time pickup winder and luthier since 1995. I wound my first pickup under the guidance of legendary guitar repairer Ted Lee while studying guitar making/repair under him at City of Leeds College of Music in the North of England. There’s something about the physics that really appealed to me. I went straight home, built my own winding machine, bought some wire and started experimenting. In those pre-internet days there just wasn’t any information available on how to make good pickups. I made pickup after pickup, I wound and I listened. I made notes of every variation both good and bad so I could learn what was happening. Looking back I think that time was invaluable for developing an intuition for making pickups. Whenever I came across a result I didn’t understand I swatted up on the physics; there’s a lot to learn. I wrote all the experiments down in a notebook, I still have the notebook and I’m still adding to it. I love hearing my pickups played live or on recordings; it feels good to have played a very small part in that sound.

My day to day work has always been in guitar repair so I’ve been privileged to be able to study first hand some of the great vintage (and modern) pickups. I have re-wound and repaired countless faulty pickups to either restore them to their original state or to improve them. This is how you learn and I think I will always be learning.

In 2012 I had the idea for my own range of pickups. In 2020 MrGlyn’s Pickups website went live. I’ve been lucky enough to know many professional players who’ve given their time and expertise to help me. Every pickup design I make has been tested both by me and some of these “test pilots”. They’ve been in and out of numerous guitars, recorded, gigged, analysed and altered more times than I can remember. I am really happy with the results, I hope you will be too.

In 2012 I had the idea for my own range of pickups. In 2020 MrGlyn’s Pickups website went live.

I’ve been lucky enough to know many professional players who’ve given their time and expertise to help me. Every pickup design I make has been tested both by me and some of these “test pilots”. They’ve been in and out of numerous guitars, recorded, gigged, analysed and altered more times than I can remember.

I am really happy with the results, I hope you will be too.

Here are my Telecaster Pickup demos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOdXLT6XwMylvwTfhCDTzJjmzhq2kQbLD

Telecaster Wiring Diagram

Fender Telecasterbridge pickup from 1968

I repair quite a few old pickups and thought you might be interested in this ‘68 Telecaster Bridge Pickup.

As you can see it’s looking pretty tired. I quite like seeing pickups like this – it’s clearly given great service for decades. This is just wear and tear and the sign of a happy life and although it isn’t working now there’s no reason why it can’t be made good for a few more decades.

One of the first things I noticed is the black tape. Underneath it is the original waxed protective string. I’m not sure why someone added that.

The plate underneath has aged fantastically but as you can see the earth wire is missing from it. I re-solder the connections just in case there is a dry joint but the pickup is still dead.

I suspect this is the fault- the top plate has warped over time and the corrosion has got in and damaged the windings. That top plate looks like a skateboard deck – it should be flat! This pickup is going to need a re-wind.

With the back plate off you can clearly see the date.

And here it is, this is the problem. With the windings cut away you can clearly see that the corrosion on the pole piece has spread into the winding. There’s a bit of wax in there too from when it was potted originally.

So here’s the plan. I need to flatten that top plate back. Then clean up the pole pieces. I need to do something about the corrosion. And finally re-wind the pickup to original spec. And most importantly make it look like nothing ever happened.

Cleaning the poles is easy, then I flatten the top plate and glue it in place with super glue. Originally it was just a push fit. Then I treat the rust with some anti rust stuff. Here you can see it masked off so I can give the poles a couple of coats of lacquer.