I was working on a fun project for a friend of mine. My friend had a Joe Strummer Fender Artist Series Telecaster, but he was unhappy with the pickups. We talked about pickups over a year ago, so I contacted Brian at Porter Pickups and he hooked me up with a Standard Telecaster set. My friend and myself were excited to get them in.

A few nights later he swung by my house to get them installed. I’ve installed humbuckers in various guitars, and swapped out pickups on my Stratocaster, but this would be my first Tele job. I was psyched to work on something different, so this was a great opportunity. When learning something new, I find doing a search first on YouTube to be very handy. I found this great video to keep me out of trouble when taking apart the Tele by SeymourDuncanChannel:

What I liked about the video, was the experience this guy showed. When you do things more often, you usually tend to learn to do it faster and better and avoid common mistakes that would make you back track or slow down. His first point was using a set of digital calipers. I love my calipers, and if you don’t own one, you should really think about it. Totally removes the guess work.. in just about everything. I love my calipers! To remove the bridge plate, you need to push the saddles forward so the screws can be removed. By measuring and writing down the values of the saddles, it’ll get you back in the game as far as intonation goes when you put bridge back. Again, smarter vs. harder. I love it. He also talks about using something to cover your work area on the guitar so you don’t mare the guitar when unscrewing/screwing screws. Definitely important to not cause damage when you’re trying to actually fix something.

The telecaster swap out was easy, but it is definitely more involved than a Stratocaster. There are more pieces to remove and is more difficult getting the wires routed, but overall, it was easy. The first step for me was to replace the neck pickup. I took note of what lug the signal lead was connected to the switch and where the ground needed to be connected. After completing that, I went to the bridge. The original bridge had a two connections for ground. One to the bridge plate and that hopped to the main ground connection, so I connected the ground of the pickup to the bridge plate connection.

Once everything was soldered, I tested. I think it’s pretty critical to test before everything is locked down! Pretty obvious right?  After getting the pickguard re-secured. I tested again. After adjusting pickup heights and securing the bridge plate, I tested again. I wanted to make sure that I did not break a connection during the reassembly, and if I did, I would probably have an idea as to what caused it.

Below is a photo of the Telecaster with the pickguard, bridge plate and pickups removed.

Here is a photo of the completed pickup swap out with new Porter Pickups

So we plugged this guy into my amp, and pickups sound AWESOME. If you’re looking for swapping out your pickups, I would highly recommend contacting Porter Pickups. Hot damn.

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The following a guest post by Brian Porter of Porter Pickups. The guest post is a very detailed procedure on how to replace pickups in your Fender Strat! If you’re looking to change/replace pickups, please take a look at Porter Pickups, he makes some fantastic pickups that are starting to find themselves in boutique guitars and in guitars of musicians looking to improve their tone. Check out PorterPickups.com for sound clips and make sure you follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

If you are interested in guest posting or submitting a guest review, please contact me!

Installing Strat Pickups. Step by step for putting new pickups in a strat style guitar.

Tools for the Job: -25-40Watt Soldering Iron-Solder -Phillips Screwdriver -String Winder -Tweezers (Optional) -Wire Cutters
Remove the Strings String Winders can save some time here.
Remove Pickguard Screws Remove all screws around the perimeter of the pickguard. Don’t touch the pickup or selector switch screws yet. If the strings can’t get out of the holes in the backplate, you might need to remove this as well.
Keep Screws in a Safe Place Put all the pickguard screws in a safe place, so you don’t lose them. Nothing like having a pickguard with one missing screw!
Pickguard is off….
Flip Pickguard Over…. It will still be attached with the jack wires, and the ground wire to the bridge, so make sure you carefully turn it over and don’t pull too hard on it.
Find where the wires go One wire from each pickup will go the the selector switch… Usually the white or “hot” from the pickup. In this case, the middle pickups “Hot” is yellow.
And one wire from each pickup will be soldered to the back of the volume pot…. The black wires from the pickups will be the “ground” Refer to wiring diagrams from places like www.guitarelectronics.com to make sure everything will go back in the right place. Watch where the neck, middle and bridge wires connect to the switch!
Unsolder Old Pickups Touch your soldering iron to the metal portion of the switch. The solder will heat up, and you can remove the wires from the old pickups. Eye protection is a good idea here.
Repeat the same process and unsolder black ground wires from the back of the volume pot…
Wires are now off! Time for some new tone!
Remove old pickups from pickguard Unscrew the pickups from each side, and keep the existing screws for mounting the pickups (We’ll use these again)
Pickups are out!
Spring or Tube? Many Pickups come with either a spring or a tube. We prefer to use the tube for pickup mounting, but you can use the same springs from the old pickups if you would like.
New pickups ready We’re installing our Porter 1960′s Strat pickups for this one.
Time to give this guitar a great new sound….
Install new Pickups Spring tube shown here with the cover on
It compresses and works to raise and lower the pickup height… For now, just make sure the pickups are sticking above the pickguard, we’ll fine tune the height later.
Pickups in!
Tape wires To make a neat wire path
Route the black ground wires Pull them past the bridge pickup, and tape them together near the volume pot.
Cut black wires to length Remember, they will solder to the back of the volume pot, so cut them near the middle of the volume pot.
Prep wires for soldering Here we are using vintage style cloth “push back” wire. You can push back the outer cloth to reveal the wire inside. For other plastic coated pickup wires, you.ll need to use a wire stripper. Leave about 1/4″ for soldering.
Solder to volume pot Put some solder on your wires before soldering to the back of the volume pot. This will make the connection easier. You might also need to put some more solder on the volume pot. Heat up the solder with your iron, and attach all three wires. Tweezers come in hand here since the wires can get hot.
Solder wires to switch Repeat the cutting, push back/ stripping of the white (Hot) wires and solder them to the appropriate lugs of the 5-way switch. Refer to a wiring diagram if you get lost. In this picture it is Bridge, Middle, Neck (Left to right)
Check your wiring job Turn the pickguard over and tap on the pickup magnets with your screwdriver to make sure they are making a sound at the right positions (1-5 on the selector switch). Shown here is the checking of the bridge pickup. If the neck and bridge are backwards, you can reverse the wires on your selector switch.
If it works right , put it back together Put in all the pickguard screws, and restring the guitar. After you have the strings on and can play it a bit, adjust the pickups heights to taste. Usually a nice balance between all three pickups volume wise is a good idea. Some people like the bridge “hotter” so they will raise that pickup higher than the other.

Enjoy your new pickups Often times a great playing guitar can be upgraded with new pickups for a lot less than buying a new guitar. If you have questions about pickups, please visit us online at www.porterpickups.com

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I wanted to take a few moments and talk about The Creamery located in Manchester, England. If you’re on Twitter, you might be catching some of Jaime’s tweets.. if not.. you should follow him for sure. Jaime at The Creamery make excellent custom guitars and some great handwound pickups. I mean the stuff.. looks sharp!

The Creamery primarily designs Fender & Gibson style guitars. I’ve been really digging the ‘butcher block’ bodies on the Telecasters, myself, but there are plenty of other examples to look at his custom guitar gallery. Along with custom guitars, he works on handwound pickups. His pickups include Scatteround, P90, Telecaster Bridge/Neck, Stratocaster, Jazzmaster, Humbuckers, Swing-Os and Wide-Os.

Pickups and guitars can be purchased directly from his site. Along with great products, he also offers a blog, which I particularly enjoy, since he does go into repairs, etc. Being the nerd that I am, I do like reading this stuff. Having experts break things down to the simple folk.. is extremely helpful.

If you have a chance, check out The Creamery (Website, Facebook and Twitter)

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I have to say, one of the coolest things about this site for me is meeting new people that are passionate about what they do. When I say this, I could be referring to players, builders, dealers, etc.  They’re all very passionate and passionate about things that I’m very interested in as well.

A couple of weeks ago Brian Porter from Porter Pickups contacted me… and I’m glad he did. Here is a guy that is passionate about building quality pickups and I was excited to check out his site. All sorts of good stuff there, from a blog to a forum, plenty of sound clips and descriptions of what he does. Also he’s located in a neighboring state of mine!

As you may already know, Brian has generously donated pickups to another official EffectsBay.com give away. If you don’t know about the Porter Pickups custom pickup give away, please check it out! For those of you that have already entered, but want to learn more about Porter Pickups, below are a couple of Porter Pickup demos courtesy of achrisisaac:

Here is a demo of the Hand Wound Classic Humbuckers – Gibson SG:

Here is demo of the Hand Wound Single Coils – Fender Telecaster:

If you get a chance, check out PorterPickups.com. They’re also on Twitter and Facebook. Follow them for more info via their newsletter.

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CONTEST IS CLOSED

I’ve given out pedals, enclosures, cables.. so why not pickups! I’m really excited about this give away, and I think you guys will really dig this. Basically, Porter Pickups is willing to give a set of hand wound pickups, but rather limit the type, they’re willing to give away a custom set to the winner!

Porter Pickups has one Tele model, three Strat Models (50′s, 6o’s and Modern), five different Humbucker models, and they’re even offering a Porter Anthem PAF clones. Normally their sets range around $180 for most styles with the Anthem PAFs being a little more at $260.

The winner will be able to choose the model they want, covers/bobbins and they’ll wind it just for the winner. This way the pickups will match up with your style (wound hot.. not so-hot, etc).

Okay, so now we’ve established… this is a pretty cool give away, I now want to talk about Porter Pickups since they’re being so generous with this sponsored give away!

Porter Pickups is owned by Brian Porter and is located in Boise, ID. They have a wide selection of pickups ranging from humbuckers to Strat replacements to P90 replacements to Tele replacement to his Custom Series PAF pickups.  Porter will also do custom orders as well. Along with offering great hand wound pickups, they also offer repair and rewind services for damaged or dead pickups, a good way to get your vintage guitar back in action!

PorterPickups.com has a ton of stuff to go over. Plenty of clips and info, along with info on dealers, builders and artists. I also see that Brian has his own pickup blog.

Okay, now to the give away. So how do you enter yourself to potentially win the Custom Porter Pickups Give Away?

First, be sure to follow EffectsBay on Twitter and/or Facebook to keep up to date with this give-away along with new give-aways.

Second, fill out the form below, in two weeks  (June 30th) I’ll randomly pick 3 entries as finalists. I’ll email the 3 finalists and the first one out of the 3 that emails me back will be the winner.You must enter a ‘valid’ email address, bounce back emails will be rejected. One entry per person (seriously people.. one entry per person). After the winner has been notified and all is good (I’ve retrieved mailing address, etc), I’ll coordinate with Brian at Porter Pickups to get the pickups built and  shipped to the winner.

This give away is open to everyone!

Remember to also re-tweet this post and help spread the word! If we continue to have success with these give-aways, I’ll be able to offer more and more… and we all love free stuff right?

So the question…. “If you’re the winner, what guitar will these pickups go in?”

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Yesterday, Dave G. sent me a email letting me know about a pickup give-away (thanks Dave!). Anyway, the pickup give-away is for Mayes Pickups, and in particular, the Trinity pickup for stratocaster or telecaster style guitars. I always like meeting new builders/developers related to guitar and bass, so I sent a email off to the owner of Mayes (Adam Mayes) to get some more info on the pickups. This is what he had to say:

The Trinity line of pickups are a 3k-ohm pickup in the Strat-style and between 3.0k- and 3.5k-ohm in the Tele-style.  They are a tri-coil passive pickup, meaning there are three independent coils in each pickup; one for the bass, mid and treble.

In its present phase, it is simply an improvement to the standard single-coil pickup.  It has lower resistance and smaller coils.  The result is greater clarity, texture of tone and sustain than a standard pickup.

It looks like he’ll be picking a winner every month. Simply send a email to freetrinitymayespickupscom with the name of the pickup of your choice in the subject line to win a Trinity. Winners will be drawn on the first of every month. Only one prize per person. Give away available for US residents only. Trinity pickups are $89.99/ea, so it’s a great opportunity to upgrade your tone.. or at least explore other pickup options.

For more information, please check out Mayes Pickups. On the site are some sound clips, etc. so it’s definitely worth a visit. Mayes Pickups also has a Facebook page.

Jeremy from GearPipe.com (who has been a great help announcing EffectsBay.com give-aways in the past) just announced that they’re having their first exclusive give-away.

Geoff Moore, a pickup winding guru and the founder of Fervor Pickups has been generous enough to donate a set of his handwound Classic Strat pickups. True to the name, these pickups will give you that classic Stratocaster tone. Geoff describes them as “low/medium-output single-coils with a strong but polished, velvety-smooth tone.”

If you’re into pickup specs, here’s the lowdown:

* Sand-cast Alnico rod magnets (similar to those found in ‘50s-vintage pickups)
* Highest-quality copper coil wire
* Carefully cut black vulcanized fiberboard
* Nickel-plated eyelets
* Standard output: neck – 5.8K, middle – 5.6K, bridge – 6.4K

Normally, these pickups sell for $225, so this is a great give-away! To enter the give away, simply check out the Fervor Giveaway post at GearPipe.com!

Help spread the word!