
Fig. 1
In my guitar shop, players often ask about how to improve the tone in a Tele neck pickup. Here are several ways to address it, including a pickup wiring that removes the tone load in the neck pickup’s switching phase, resulting in a slight high-end boost.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. This month, we’ll continue our “no tone control” journey from last month [“Mod Garage: The Scott Henderson S-Style Wiring”] with a cool mod for your Telecaster. Something I hear a lot in the shop is that people aren’t happy with the tone of the neck pickup in their Telecaster. It’s often described as muffled, colorless, lifeless, or similar. Why is this? It’s usually a mixture of three things:
1. The physical location of the neck pickup. You have the same issue on every electric guitar, no matter if it’s a Telecaster, a Stratocaster, a Les Paul, or whatever else. The neck pickup has the warmest tone of them, which is the physical nature of the beast.
2. A standard Telecaster neck pickup has a closed metal cover that’s attached to the pickup’s ground to add some shielding. Because the cover is closed, a good portion of high end will be drained to ground because of eddy currents, even with a thin German silver metal cover.
3. Interestingly, the neck pickup of a Telecaster is often adjusted way too low from the strings for whatever reason. Some players told me that they hit the metal cover with their plectrum, so they adjusted it deeper to get it physically out of the way.
So, let’s see what can be done to address the above problems regarding a Telecaster neck pickup.
Physical location: We can’t outsmart physics and we can’t change the location of the neck pickup inside a Telecaster, so there is nothing we can do here.
Metal cover: We have several possibilities to enhance the tone of the neck pickup. One option is to simply replace the metal cover, which will change the tone noticeably, similar to how moving a carpet or rug away from your amp changes the sound. On the other hand, you lose the shielding abilities of the metal cover. A good compromise is an open-frame pickup cover in the shape of a rectangle with an open top, to break eddy currents. This will enhance the tone while still providing some shielding.
Another solution would be to swap the pickup with a Stratocaster pickup or whatever pickup you like best. But this is not as easy as it sounds. Other pickups have other dimensions, and you will need to reroute the pickup cavity in the body as well as the opening in the pickguard to make them fit. There are a lot of replacement pickguards available that already have such routings for a Strat pickup, so this is not really a problem. A good compromise is a replacement pickup in a Telecaster neck pickup size that offers a different construction under the hood, like the Lollar Royal T Neck that is a Stratocaster-style neck pickup in a Telecaster shape. These are 1:1 ratio replacement pickups, so you don’t have to struggle with new pickguards and routing the Telecaster’s body.
"One option is to simply replace the metal cover, which will change the tone noticeably, similar to how moving a carpet or rug away from your amp changes the sound."
Pickup height: This is super easy to solve: Simply adjust the pickup closer to the strings. The closer the pickup is to the strings, the more high end and volume it will have. We measure the pickup height from the top of the pickup magnet to the bottom of the string while the string is pressed in the last fret with the guitar in playing position. A good starting point for a Telecaster neck pickup is 3.5 mm (9/64") on the low E string and 3.0 mm (1/8") on the high E string. Start with this and listen to what happens when you change the pickup-height adjustment until you find the tone you like best.
I recommend adjusting pickup height first and hear if this does the trick for you. If not, continue with swapping pickup covers or pickups.
As you can see, there are many ways to address the muffled tone of a Telecaster neck pickup if you don’t like it. Here’s another weapon of choice you could try that lies somewhere between the aforementioned strategies. Maybe you adjusted your standard Telecaster neck pickup correctly and now you’re close to being happy with the sound, but it’s still a tad too warm and round for your taste.
Chances are good that this can be solved inside the wiring. Usually, Telecaster players are happy to have a tone control for the bridge pickup that can sound very shrill and ice-picky without one, depending on your playing style and type of bridge pickup. But only a few players really use the tone control for the neck pickup. So how about a wiring with the tone control only affecting the bridge pickup? This way you will get rid of the load of the tone pot (usually 250k) plus the tone cap. Maybe this will give you the tad more high end you’re looking for, so give it a try.
The good news is that you don’t need to change the standard 3-way pickup selector switch like we did on the Stratocaster last month. This is mostly because a regular Tele only has a single master tone control, so we’re happy with the two switching stages of the standard switch you already have in there.
With this wiring, illustrated in Fig. 1, you will end up with these three settings:
1. Bridge pickup with volume and tone control
2. Bridge + neck pickup in parallel with volume for both pickups and no tone control
3. Neck pickup with only volume control
To further enhance this wiring, you can use a no-load pot for the tone control. This way you’ll also be able to engage the bridge pickup without tone control if this is an option you want.
That’s it for this round! Next month, we’ll continue with some Danelectro wirings, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep on modding!- Mod Garage: The Ricky King Stratocaster Wiring ›
- Mod Garage: Swap That Tone Knob for a Warmth Control ›
- Mod Garage: The Scott Henderson S-Style Wiring ›
Very diverse slate of tones. Capable of great focus and power. Potentially killer studio tool.
Sculpting tones in a reliably reproducible way can be challenging. Midrange emphasis may be a deal breaker for some.
$199 street
Bold-voiced, super-tunable distortion that excels in contexts from filtered boost to total belligerence.
Whitman Audio calls the Wave Collapse a fuzz—and what a very cool fuzz it is. But classifying it strictly as such undersells the breadth of its sounds. The Seattle, Washington-built Wave Collapse has personality at low gain levels and super crunchy ones. It’s responsive and sensitive enough to input and touch dynamics to move from light overdrive to low-gain distortion and degenerate fuzz with a change in picking intensity or guitar volume. And from the pedal’s own very interactive controls, one can summon big, ringing, near-clean tones, desert sludge, or snorkel-y wah buzz.
The Wave Collapse speaks many languages, but it has an accent—usually an almost wah-like midrange lilt that shows up as faint or super-pronounced. It’s not everyone’s creamy distortion ideal. But with the right guitar pairings and a dynamic approach, the Wave Collapse’s midrange foundation can still span sparkly and savage extremes that stand tall and distinctive in a mix. There’s much that sounds and feels familiar in the Wave Collapse, but the many surprises it keeps in store are the real fun.
Heavy Surf, Changing Waves
The absence of a single fundamental influence makes it tricky to get your bearings with the Wave Collapse at first. Depending on where you park the controls to start, you might hear traces of RAT in the midrange-forward, growly distortion, or the Boss SD-1 in many heavy overdrive settings. At its fuzziest, it howls and spits like aFuzz Face orTone Bender and can generate compressed, super-focused, direct-to-desk rasp. And in its darker corners, weighty doom tones abound.
The many personalities are intentional. Whitman Dewey-Smith’s design brief was, in his own words, “a wide palette ranging from dirty boost to almost square-wave fuzz and textures that could be smooth or sputtery.” A parallel goal, he says, was to encourage tone discoveries in less-obvious spaces. Many such gems live in the complex interrelationships between the EQ, filter, and bias controls. They also live in the circuit mash-up at the heart of the Wave Collapse. The two most prominent fixtures on the circuit are the BC108 transistor (best known as a go-to in Fuzz Face builds) and twin red LED clipping diodes (associated, in the minds of many, with clipping in the Turbo RAT and Marshall Jubilee amplifier). That’s not exactly a classic combination of amplifier and clipping section components, but it’s a big part of the Wave Collapse’s sonic identity.
The BC108 drives one of two core gain stages in the Wave Collapse. The first stage takes inspiration from early, simple fuzz topologies like the Tone Bender and Fuzz Face, but with a focus on what Dewey-Smith calls “exploiting the odd edges and interactivity in a two-transistor gain stage.” The BC108 contributes significant character to this stage. The second, post-EQ gain stage is JFET-based. It’s set up to interact like a tube guitar amp input stage and is followed by the clipping LEDs. Dewey-Smith says you can think of the whole as a “fairly” symmetric hard-clipping scheme.
“The magic of the circuit is that those gain stages are very complimentary. When stage one is running clean, it still passes a large, unclipped signal that hits the second stage, making those classic early distortion sounds. Conversely, when the first stage is running hot, it clips hard and the second stage takes a back seat—mostly smoothing out the rough edges of the first stage.” Factor in the modified Jack Orman pickup simulator-style section in the front end, and you start to understand the pedal’s propensity for surprise and expressive latitude.
Searchin’ Safari
The Wave Collapse’s many identities aren’t always easy to wrangle at the granular-detail level. The control set—knobs for bias, filter color, input level, and output level, plus switches for “mass” (gain,) “range”(bass content at the input), and “center” (shifts the filter’s mid emphasis from flat)—are interdependent in such a way that small adjustments can shift a tone’s character significantly, and it can be challenging to find your way back to a tone that sounded just right five minutes ago. Practice goes a long way toward mastering these sensitivities. One path to reliably reproducible sounds is to establish a ballpark tone focus with the filter first, dial in the input gain to an appropriately energetic zone, then shape the distortion color and response more specifically with the bias.
As you get a feel for these interactions, you’ll be knocked out by the sounds and ideas you bump into along the way. In addition to obvious vintage fuzz and distortion touchstones I crafted evocations of blistering, compressed tweed amps, jangly Marshalls, and many shades of recording console preamp overdrive. The Wave Collapse responds in cool ways to just about any instrument you situate out front. But while your results may vary, I preferred the greater headroom and detail that comes with single-coil pickup pairings. Humbuckers, predictably conjure a more compressed and, to my ears, less varied set of sounds. I also found black-panel Fender amps a more adaptable pairing than Vox- and Marshall-style voices. But just about any guitar or pickup type can yield magnificent results.
The Verdict
Though it’s hard to avoid its filtered midrange signature entirely, the Wave Collapse is a pedal of many masks. Once you master the twitchy interactivity between its controls, you can tailor the pedal to weave innocuously but energetically into a mix or completely dominate it. These capabilities are invaluable in ensemble performances, but it’s super enticing to consider how the Wave Collapse would work in a studio situation, where its focus and potency can fill gaps and nooks in color and vitality or turn a tune on its head. Pedals that stimulate the inner arranger, producer, and punk simultaneously are valuable tools. And while the Wave Collapse won’t suit every taste, when you factor together the pedal’s sub-$200 cost, thoughtful design, high-quality execution, and malleability, it adds up to a lot of utility for a very fair price.
PG contributor Tom Butwin demos seven direct boxes — active and passive — showing off sound samples, features, and real-world advice. Options from Radial, Telefunken, Hosa, Grace Design, and Palmer offer solutions for any input, setting, and budget.
Grace Design m303 Active Truly Isolated Direct Box
The Grace Design m303 is an active, fully isolated DI box, delivering gorgeous audio performance for the stage and studio. Our advanced power supply design provides unbeatable headroom and dynamic range, while the premium Lundahl transformer delivers amazing low-end clarity and high frequency detail. True elegance, built to last.
Rupert Neve Designs RNDI-M Active Transformer Direct Interface
Compact design, giant tone. The RNDI-M brings the stunning tone & clarity of its award-winning counterparts to an even more compact and pedalboard-friendly format, with the exact same custom Rupert Neve Designs transformers and discrete FET input stage as the best-selling RNDI, RNDI-S and RNDI-8.
Telefunken TDA-1 1-channel Active Instrument Direct Box
The TDA-1 phantom powered direct box uses high-quality components and classic circuitry for rich, natural sound. With discrete Class-A FET, a European-made transformer, and a rugged metal enclosure, it delivers low distortion and a broad frequency response. Assembled and tested in Connecticut, USA, for reliable performance and superior sound.
Hosa SideKick Active Direct Box
The Hosa SideKick DIB-445 Active DI delivers clear, strong signals for live and studio use. Ideal for guitars, basses, and keyboards, it minimizes interference over long runs. Features include a pad switch, ground lift, and polarity flip. With a flat frequency response and low noise, it ensures pristine audio.
Radial JDI Jensen-equipped 1-channel Passive Instrument Direct Box
The Radial JDI preserves your instrument’s natural tone with absolute clarity and zero distortion. Its Jensen transformer delivers warm, vintage sound, while its passive design eliminates hum and buzz. With a ruler-flat response (10Hz–40kHz) and no phase shift, the JDI ensures pristine sound in any setup.
Radial J48 1-channel Active 48v Direct Box
The Radial J48 delivers exceptional clarity and dynamic range, making it the go-to active DI for professionals. Its 48V phantom-powered design ensures clean, powerful signal handling without distortion. With high headroom, low noise, and innovative power optimization, the J48 captures your instrument’s true tone—perfect for studio and stage.
Palmer River Series - Ilm
The Palmer ilm, an upgraded version of the legendary Palmer The Junction, delivers studio-quality, consistent guitar tones anywhere. This passive DI box features three analog speaker simulations, ensuring authentic sound reproduction. Its advanced filter switching mimics real guitar speaker behavior, making it perfect for stage, home, or studio recording sessions.
Learn more from these brands!
PRS Guitars launches the CE 22 Limited Edition, featuring a 22-fret, 25” scale length, mahogany body, maple top, and vintage-inspired 58/15 LT pickups. With only 1,000 made, this model offers classic PRS aesthetics and a blend of warmth and bolt-on articulation for vintage-inspired tone and modern versatility.
PRS Guitars today announced the launch of the CE 22 Limited Edition. Only 1,000 will be made, marking the brief return of a 22-fret version of this bolt-on mainstay. The 22-fret, 25” scale length CE 22 Limited Edition combines a mahogany body and maple top with a bolt-on maple neck. The guitar is outfitted with PRS’s vintage-inspired 58/15 LT pickups, push/pull tone control, three-way toggle switch, and PRS locking tuners with wing buttons.
“This limited-edition, 22-fret model in our CE line offers classic PRS aesthetics and a voice that blends warmth with bolt-on articulation for vintage-inspired tone and modern versatility,” said PRS Guitars Director of Manufacturing, Paul Miles.
The original CE, with 24 frets, first appeared in stores in 1988 and offered players PRS design and quality with the added snap and response of traditional bolt-on guitars. It wasn’t until 1994 that a 22-fret version debuted, just a few months after the release of the Custom 22. Last in stores in 2008, this refreshed CE 22 Limited Edition marks the model’s return to the market.
With a unique combination of specs, the CE 22 Limited Edition is a different animal from the CE 24. These differences include the model of pickups, placement of pickups, and, of course, the number of frets. That is all while retaining the CE family’s combination of maple and mahogany, nitro finish, PRS Patented Tremolo and Phase III Locking Tuners.
The limited-edition model comes in Black Amber, Carroll Blue, Faded Blue Smokeburst, Faded Gray Black and McCarty Sunburst.
For more information, please visit prsguitars.com.
CE 22 Limited Edition | Demo | PRS Guitars - YouTube
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