#Tele wiring diagrams how to#
#Tele wiring diagrams mod#
#Tele wiring diagrams mods#
#Tele wiring diagrams series#

#Tele wiring diagrams mods#

Also, you can incorporate other mods into this wiring, such as the '50s wiring that I've covered before. The only change is the new sound for the middle position the other two settings are not affected. And the beauty of this is we still have the familiar operation of a standard Telecaster 3-way selector.

#Tele wiring diagrams mod#

There are other ways to accomplish the mod, but this is my favorite method because it's simple to wire and you can easily reverse the mod or upgrade to a 4-way switching system at a later date. The important detail here is to connect the hot wire from the neck pickup to the volume pot's input lug, rather than directly to the switch, which is the usual approach. 1 shows the wiring, which looks familiar but is a little bit more complex than standard Telecaster's wiring. For all other pickups sporting a metal cover that's connected to the pickup's ground, you'll need to break this connection before you proceed.įig. How do you do this? How do you do this? Glad you asked: We covered this before in “ Preparing Your Tele for Future Mods.' If you have a Strat pickup, a P-90, or some similar single-coil in the neck position, you can skip this step.

#Tele wiring diagrams series#

If you're craving burly Tele tones, series wiring will deliver. If so, you'll have to break this connection and solder a third, new ground wire to the metal cover. To begin this mod, you must first check if the neck pickup's metal cover is connected to ground-which is the case for almost all standard Telecaster neck pickups. The new switching matrix for the 3-way switch looks like this: So let's investigate this lean, mean series-wiring scheme. It's like having a solo preset sound in the switch's middle position. You'll still have access to either the neck or bridge pickup by itself, yet be merely one click away from a hot series tone. The order of settings on the 4-way selector isn't everyone's cup of tea, and, similarly, adding a second switch to a Tele strikes some guitarists as unnecessarily fussy.īut wait: If you crave that powerful dual-pickup tone, yet want to maintain the Tele's glorious simplicity, why not simply configure the 3-way switch's middle position to connect the bridge and neck pickups in series? Yes, you'll lose the old middle position with both pickups in parallel, but if the series connection is all you need, this wiring is for you. But not everyone wants to swap their 3-way selector for a 4-way unit or add that extra 2PDT switch.

#Tele wiring diagrams how to#

I explained how to do this mod in a previous column, “ Telecaster Series Wiring.' In that same column, I also describe an alternative scheme that uses a second 2PDT switch to connect both pickups together in series, while overriding the setting of the stock 3-way switch. This is my preferred method, and I think it's the most useful Telecaster mod ever. This keeps the three familiar switching positions untouched and simply adds a new sound in switching position #4. The most common approach is to replace the standard 3-way pickup selector with a 4-way switch. There are several ways to mod your Telecaster for series wiring.

On a stock Tele, the pickups are connected in parallel when you use them together, but if you run them in series instead, the resulting output is hotter and louder, and this makes it much easier to drive your amp into saturation. Tele players often ask about adding series wiring to their instruments-a mod that lets you access a powerful tone when you engage both pickups.