More Tele Talk

[Stan]

HI i just purchased a brand new Standard Tele, the specs say i have 2 Hot pickups, i'd like to know more than what the specs tell me, does anyone know what kind of pickups are standard on the MIM tele?

the specs must be wrong as i have 2 different types/style of pickups..............and the specs lead me to believe they are 2 of the same?

[SteveG]

HI i just purchased a brand new Standard Tele, the specs say i have 2 Hot pickups, i'd like to know more than what the specs tell me, does anyone know what kind of pickups are standard on the MIM tele?

the specs must be wrong as i have 2 different types/style of pickups..............and the specs lead me to believe they are 2 of the same?

If you have a single coil at the bridge and a lipstick at the neck that is normal ... a "hot" pick up has more windings in it (more wire on the pick up coils) and hence a higher output ..... nothing to do with the type or style.

[64Guitars]

The SG looks great AndyR. What year is it?

I've always wanted a decent SG. I used to have an SG-200 back in the early 70s but it was crap. It was a low-end budget model made when they first started stamping out the bodies on a machine instead of hand shaping them. The body was thick and heavy (for an SG) and it lacked the smooth contours of the older models. Pickups were single coils.

(Click to enlarge)

I've recently looked at some SGs in the local music store and I wasn't impressed. The prices were outrageous. But what struck me most was the extreme angle of the neck relative to the body. Here's a photo I found on the web which shows what I mean:

I don't remember the old SGs I tried back in the 70s being like that. I'm sure their necks and bodies were pretty much inline with each other (no appreciable angle). The neck and body on my 1962 EB0 (which is pretty much an SG bass) has no discernible angle at all, and my 1975(?) Midnight Special has only a very shallow angle. Anyway, I tried playing one of these new SGs in the store and it felt really weird to me. I just don't like that extreme angle at all. How is the angle on yours?

I love my 1962 EB0 bass. If I could find (and afford) an SG of similar vintage I'd love to have it. A good SG is a really great guitar. But, unfortunately, not all SGs are created equally. I hope you got one of the good ones.

[AndyR]

It's actually one of the new ones, brand spanking new even! A 2009 SG Special Faded.

The neck angle is as pronounced as the one in your picture.

I got it to replace an Epiphone SG Standard I bought second hand in the late 90s. The Epi is quite "hard" sounding, and is need of some work. The Bare Knuckles Pickups, "Riff Raffs", that were in it were kind of wasted there.

I'd heard about the Faded SGs, and that they were variable quality. But they were in my price range, so I took trip to see if I could find a decent one as a new home for my Riff Raffs.

The first one I tried was OK but was really thin and weedy sounding accoustically - it also felt quite rough. They're all "unfinished", so a certain amount of "roughness" is to be expected, but this was too much for me!

Then I found this one - really full and resonant sounding and a nice feel to it. There was another next to it that was harsh sounding, but this one is kind of "plummy". It's horses for courses, but that's the sound I was after, so it came home with me.

I ripped the pickups out and put the Riff Raffs in and stuck 11s on that afternoon, and I've been playing her ever since .

I quite like the neck angle myself (the Epi is almost flat), causes me no issues - but it is odd seeing the bridge humbucker so far out of a body with no pickup surround though .

The fret board's a bit dry at the moment, but that'll improve over the next few months with lemon oil and body grease. And the frets could have done with better crowning. I understand this is quite common with Gibsons at the moment - looks like it had a fret level and only a rudimentary crowning.

Plays nice though, and does all the stuff I wanted it to - blues, country, rock, pop. Clean, crunch, dirty. Has a nice "chewy" blues-rock tone, smoother and not as "hairy" as a Les Paul. As an added bonus, I've found it's really good for slide guitar (Duane Allman, Gary Rossington style). It's also not bad at rock/metal either - I was warming up and practicing for a take on the 48 metal challenge last night  , think I might have killed that set of strings though