Guitar incoming! School me on Telecasters

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nightlight

nightlight

Well-known member
I’m not at all experienced with Telecasters, never even played one, but was thinking of picking up one I found as an experiment with clean and lower gain tones.

This will strictly be a recording guitar, as I have other guitars that are more useful for the kind of music I play.

That said, I think it would be selling the guitar short if I restrict it to clean tones. I mean it’s obviously not built for metal, but seems like a rock and roll staple, and I could really get into that.

How do you guys use your Teles? Anything I should know? Any great albums I should listen to (especially heavy ones) that featured a telecaster?
 
Tom Morello gets most of his tones with the neck pickup. The typical old school Tele bridge pickup is pretty bright but it's way more muscular/powerful than a Strat single coil. They can sound good with some gain but only so much ime. To me they really shine into a wound up Vox type amp.
 
I use them pretty extensively with quite a bit of gain, generally tuned to D/drop C. Lots of them can be pretty bright, the tone knob is your friend if that's the case. Get a 4-way or p/p to run your pickups in series, it sounds in between a p90 and humbucker run in series. If they're too noisy with your setup try an emg set before you say fuck it.

I'm not positive about the Red album, but Baizley has used a tele on every other Baroness record.
 
SpiderWars said:
Tom Morello gets most of his tones with the neck pickup. The typical old school Tele bridge pickup is pretty bright but it's way more muscular/powerful than a Strat single coil. They can sound good with some gain but only so much ime. To me they really shine into a wound up Vox type amp.
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Was just reading about Morello after you posted that. Interesting that he uses the Tele for drop D tunings and with the neck pickup. I would never have thought of that.

Al Chapo said:
I use them pretty extensively with quite a bit of gain, generally tuned to D/drop C. Lots of them can be pretty bright, the tone knob is your friend if that's the case. Get a 4-way or p/p to run your pickups in series, it sounds in between a p90 and humbucker run in series. If they're too noisy with your setup try an emg set before you say fuck it.

I'm not positive about the Red album, but Baizley has used a tele on every other Baroness record.
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Don’t they start squealing from the gain?

The only experience I’ve had with single coil guitars extensively is a Sugi DH496C I used to own and got stolen - which I couldn’t get high gain tones out of no matter what - and an India-made Gibtone Stratocaster copy, which was a really poor quality instrument, but all I could afford.
 
nightlight said:
Don’t they start squealing from the gain?

The only experience I’ve had with single coil guitars extensively is a Sugi DH496C I used to own and got stolen - which I couldn’t get high gain tones out of no matter what - and an India-made Gibtone Stratocaster copy, which was a really poor quality instrument, but all I could afford.
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I haven't had any feedback issues (mind you I'm used to hollow bodies) but they can definitely get pretty noisy. If you run a 4-way you get noise canceling in pos. 2 and 4 with a lot of tele sets by lifting the ground from neck cover and running one cover to pot. You'll still get some noise but it's pretty manageable. Emg's are silent ime. I get a pretty spot-on Slayer sound through a jcm900 no problem.
 
John 5 plays a mean one. Never messed with them, they look comfortable as hell to play
 
If it’s too twangy with what’s it got in it, I recommend Fender Tex-Mex pickups. Great throaty midrange that works great with gain. Had a Fender roadworn Tele that came with those and it sounded very good into a gained up Marshall. Just couldn’t live with the 7.25 fretboard radius.
 
90% of my playing is a tele through a Monomyth Skeleton Key, so don't rule out higher gain tones with a tele!

Led Zeppelin I was all tele, and even though he switched to a Les Paul after that, in the studio he still used a tele on a lot of albums (eg. the solo on Stairway to Heaven). ZZ Top used a tele a good amount outside of Pearly Gates. For cleans I lean towards Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen, so a tele through an American styled amp.

I upgraded my stock pickup to a BKP Piledriver which is probably the highest output tele pickup I could find, thick in the low mids and tight but still plenty of twang. Style wise I use Drop C# with a good amount of gain and try to mix Zeppelin/ACDC stuff with hardcore chugs and some spaghetti western thrown in.

this is a tele through a fuzz and one of my favorite tones.
 
ners said:
90% of my playing is a tele through a Monomyth Skeleton Key, so don't rule out higher gain tones with a tele!

Led Zeppelin I was all tele, and even though he switched to a Les Paul after that, in the studio he still used a tele on a lot of albums (eg. the solo on Stairway to Heaven). ZZ Top used a tele a good amount outside of Pearly Gates. For cleans I lean towards Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen, so a tele through an American styled amp.

I upgraded my stock pickup to a BKP Piledriver which is probably the highest output tele pickup I could find, thick in the low mids and tight but still plenty of twang. Style wise I use Drop C# with a good amount of gain and try to mix Zeppelin/ACDC stuff with hardcore chugs and some spaghetti western thrown in.

this is a tele through a fuzz and one of my favorite tones.
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Interesting you have the Piledriver because when I think of Tele and rock my first thought is usually Status Quo.
 
I love my Teles. Neither are Fender/Squier though. One is just a parts guitar assembled and setup by a guy that was local to where I lived. The other is a Von K relic, which is basically the same thing, but done up to more vintage style frets and such. Neither have hot metal pickups or anything, but Tone Riders in one and Duncan Antiquities in the other. I love BOTH of those guitars. Sure, they don't have the compound radius boards, big jumbo frets, hot pickups, a Floyd, anything like that, but they play so great and are comfortable. If I was sponsored by a big time guitar company and got a signature model, it'd be a hotrod Tele over any other shape.
 
skoora said:
Interesting you have the Piledriver because when I think of Tele and rock my first thought is usually Status Quo.
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I used the stock pickup (Fender V-mod) for a long time and often think about switching back.

I originally swapped to the BKP because I was finding the low end too boomy and what I've since learned is that my cab was causing that more than anything. Since swapping from an Emperor 212 to a Mesa 212 I can actually use the resonance knob.

The BKP is nice to get some of the chug/grind though out of the low end.
 
Gitfiddler said:
love teles but hate the positioning of the pickup selector switch
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I wire mine reversed, so volume knob first, tone, then switch. I also use the Callaham control plate that gives you an extra 3/8" clearance from the tone knob so your not banging up your fingers when going for the switch.

IMG_7909.jpg
 
Thanks for all the inputs, guys. I really wanted to try out a Tele, so I purchased a used one and put it through its paces this evening. Check out the NGD post if you'd like.
 
ners said:
90% of my playing is a tele through a Monomyth Skeleton Key, so don't rule out higher gain tones with a tele!

Led Zeppelin I was all tele, and even though he switched to a Les Paul after that, in the studio he still used a tele on a lot of albums (eg. the solo on Stairway to Heaven). ZZ Top used a tele a good amount outside of Pearly Gates. For cleans I lean towards Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen, so a tele through an American styled amp.

I upgraded my stock pickup to a BKP Piledriver which is probably the highest output tele pickup I could find, thick in the low mids and tight but still plenty of twang. Style wise I use Drop C# with a good amount of gain and try to mix Zeppelin/ACDC stuff with hardcore chugs and some spaghetti western thrown in.

this is a tele through a fuzz and one of my favorite tones.
Click to expand...

Claims are mixed about the guitar used for the guitar solo on Stairway to Heaven. Jimmy Page has said he played a Telecaster, while the studio engineer says Jimmy played a Les Paul.
 
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