Pickup screws with latex tubing.
If youāre used to cranking your Tele, you may have encountered a feedback issue or two. Here are some easy solutions.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. A lot of players struggle with feedback issues ontheir Telecasters. This is a common problem caused by the design and construction of the instrument and can be attributed to the metal cover on the neck pickup, the metal base plate underneath the bridge pickup, the design of the routings, and the construction of the metal bridge and how the bridge pickup is installed in it.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to eliminate most of these issues. And if you havenāt faced such problems on your Tele, you can still give these a try, and chances are good that you never will. These procedures will not alter the tone of your Telecaster in any way, so itās better to have it and not need rather than to need it and not have it.
Checking the Pickups
Over the years, I have seen the wildest things coming stock from the factory, especially on budget pickups: unbent metal tabs on neck pickups, loose metal base plates on bridge pickups, bridge pickups only held by the springs, and other crazy stuff.
Letās start with the neck pickup. Make sure the cover is installed tightly and is not loose in any way. The metal cover is only held by three metal tabs that are bent around the bottom of the pickup, one of them usually connected to the pickupās ground. Make sure they are tight, holding the metal cover firmly in place. If not, they need to be re-bent. Be careful to not break them.
āOften, these small metal springs can cause feedback, and Iām sure Leo Fender had his reasons for choosing latex tubing instead.ā
On the bridge pickup, the metal base plate on the bottom needs to be attached firmly. Check with your fingers to see if it can move. If so, even in only one spot, you need to re-glue it to isolate vibration. Otherwise, it will squeal at high volumes. This is easy to do, and the easiest and best way is to completely take the base plate off, clean it, and re-glue it with a thin layer of silicone from your local Home Depot.
While you are in there, itās always a good idea to convert both pickups to 3-conductor wiring by breaking the ground connection of the metal cover (neck pickup) and the base plate (bridge pickup). Attach a third wire to one of the lugs of the metal cover and another one to the metal base plate, and solder both to a grounding point of your choice, e.g. the casing of one of the pots. This can be helpful for future mods, like any 4-way switch mod, where this is a mandatory requirem
Un-springing the Pickup Attachment
If your pickups are attached with metal springs to enable height-adjustment, you should replace them with some latex tubing. Often, these small metal springs can cause feedback, and Iām sure Leo Fender had his reasons for choosing latex tubing instead of metal springs. This is cheap, fast, and easy to do; you can get latex tubing from any guitar store or online for only a few cents. (See photo at top.)
Cushioning the Pickups
On a Tele, thereās usually a gap between the bottom of the pickups and the inside of the guitarās body. This open space can exacerbate feedback issues. Luckily, itās easy to solve with a piece of foam.
Using a piece of white paper, outline the routing for each pickup. Cut them out as a template for the foam. Then, trim the foam to shape. Place the foam on the bottom of both pickup routings, and you are done. There is no need to glue or attach the foam in any way.
Itās important that the bottom of the pickup is touching the foam so there is no more open gap. I usually use foam that is a little bit thicker than necessary, so the pickup will press on it slightly, making a perfect connection. The type of foam is not important as long as the gap is closed. I prefer to use foam rubber that is easily available in a variety of thicknesses.
Closing Support Routings
On a lot of Telecasters, you can find open support routings from the neck pickup routing towards the electronic compartment. This is for easier access when running the wires of the neck pickup through the body.
Note the various cavities in this typical Telecaster body.
Photo courtesy of Singlecoil (https://singlecoil.com)
There are two ways of routing the wires of the neck pickup through the body: from the neck pickup routing directly into the electronic compartment or into the routing of the bridge pickup, and from there into the electronic compartment, which is the traditional way. In the latter case, make sure all the wires are running underneath the additional piece of foam. If you have any open support routings on your Telecaster body, put some foam in to close them. You donāt need to attach the foam; the pickguard will hold it in place. The kind of foam doesnāt matter, and you can also use things like a small piece of cotton cloth, cotton wool, Styrofoam, etc. in there.
Addressing Bridge Plate Flaws
One of the most common reasons for unwanted feedback is the typical Telecaster bridge plate. The Telecaster bridge system was designed in the ā40s by Leo Fender himself and is crude at best. Its function was simply positioning the strings and providing a rough, easy adjustment of the intonation and the string-height settings. It wasnāt long before Fender released the much-improved bridge design found on the Stratocaster.
The current production Fender vintage bridge plate, as well as most budget aftermarket bridge plates, is made from thin hot-rolled steel in a deep-drawn process. Using this manufacturing process, parts can be made very quickly and cheaply, but at severe cost in quality. The steel used must be very soft and thin to allow it to fold and bend in the corners.
A classic Telcaster bridge plate.
Photo courtesy of Singlecoil (https://singlecoil.com)
Unfortunately, this process creates unusual internal stress in the steel, which can bow the plate so it canāt sit flat on the wooden body. This is a common reason for unwanted feedback on so many Teles. Interestingly, the early vintage bridge plates Fender made used a cold-rolled steel procedure to relieve stress in the material and to avoid this problem. Long live modern mass production!
If you have a Tele with a bowed bridge plate, there are three possible things you can do:
ā¢ Change the bowed bridge plate for a straight and even one. (This is the easiest way to avoid any troubles.) There are excellent replacement bridge plates on the market, so youāll have plenty of choices for materials, designs, finishes, etc.
ā¢ Get the bowed bridge plate to a metal fabricator or tool maker so they can try to solve the problem for you. This process will probably cost you more than a new bridge, so this is only an option if itās a special bridge you want to keep, no matter the cost.
ā¢ Drill two small additional holes on the front of the bridge plate, shown as red dots in the picture. After re-installing the bridge plate on the guitar, tightly drill two wood screws through these holes. Often, modern replacement bridges already have these two additional holes. In many cases, this will do the trick, so you donĀ“t have to buy a new bridge.
If you have gone through this entire list and still have problems with feedback, itās very likely that the pickup itself needs to be re-potted, which a pickup builder can do for you.
Next month, we will stay on the Telecaster subject, taking a close look at the famous Andy Summers Telecaster wiring, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
The Georgia-based sludge slingers rely on a Tele-to-Marshall combination for their punishing performances.
Since forming in 2010, Atlanta noise rockers Whores had only released one LP, 2016ās Gold.āuntil this year. Eight long years later, their new full-length, WAR., dropped in April, and Whores celebrated by tearing across the country and blasting audiences with their maelstrom of massive, sledge-hammering rock ānā roll.
The day after their gig at Cobra Nashville, Whores frontman Christian Lembach, dressed in his Nashville best, met up with PGās Chris Kies at Eastside Music Supply to run through his brutal road rig.
Brought to you by DāAddario.Earthy Esquire
When vocalist and guitarist Christian Lembach got sober over 20 years ago, he bought a FenderĀ Telecaster off of a friend, then picked up an Esquire shortly after. That original Esquire stays home, but he brings this pine-body Earth Guitars Esquire out on the road. (Itās the lightest heās ever played.) Itās loaded with a German-made reproduction of Schecterās F520T pickupāaka the āWalk of Lifeā pickup intended to reproduce Mark Knopflerās sound. (Lembach buys them in batches of five at a time to make sure heās got plenty of backups.)
Itās equipped with a 3-way selector switch. At right, it bypasses the tone circuit; in the middle position, itās a regular bridge-pickup configuration, with volume and tone activated; and at left, the tone is bypassed again, but an extra capacitor adds a bass boost.
Lembach installed six brass saddles in lieu of the traditional 3-saddle bridge. He often plays barre chords higher up the neck, and the six saddles allow for more accurate intonation.
All of Lembachās guitars are tuned to drop C, and he plays with DāAddario Duralin .70 mm picks. Theyāre strung with heavy DāAddario NYXL sets, .013ā.056 with a wound G. The 30-foot Bullet Cable coil cable attenuates some of the guitarās top end.
Tuned-Up Tele
Lembach had this black Fender Telecasterāthe one he bought from his friendāmodified to his preferred Esquire specs, with a single bridge pickup and the same 3-way selector configuration as his other weapon. He prefers the 6-saddle bridge to this rusty 3-saddle version, but this one holds a special place in his heart all the same.
Favor From Furlan
When John Furlan of Furlan Guitars reached out to Lembach about building him a custom guitar, it was an easy sell. The two worked together on this beauty, based on a non-reverse Gibson Firebird body with a Fender-style scale length, roasted maple neck, and rosewood fretboard.
Itās got a bridge and locking tuners from Hipshot, and itās loaded with Greenville Beauty Parlor P-90s. A typical Gibson-style toggle switches between neck, bridge, and both configurations, while another Esquire-style 3-way switch on the lower bout handles Lembachās preferred bridge-pickup wirings: no tone, tone and volume, or bass boost.
No Logo
Lembach stays loyal to his twin Marshall Super Leads, with taped-over logosāan aesthetic Lembach picked up from Nirvana. A tech in Atlanta figured out that the one on the left is a 1973, which runs at eight ohms, or half power (Lembach removed two of the power tubes), into a 16-ohm cabinet. The power drop allows Lembach to coax feedback at lower volumes. The original preamp tubes from Yugoslaviaāno longer a country, mind youāare still working in the amp.
The one on the right is a reissue 1959SLP from 2002 or 2003, which Lembach finds brighter than his vintage model. He goes into the lower-input second channel to dampen the edge.
Both amps run through Marshall JCM800 cabinets with Celestion G12T-75s.
Christian Lembach's Board
A Loop-Master Pedals Clean/Dirty Effects Switcher manages Lembachās signal. Its A loop is used for verses, bridges, intros, and outros, and has the majority of the pedals in it. The first thing in the A loop is the ZVEX Fuzz Factory made specially for the band, followed by a Devi Ever Soda Meiser, Beetronics Swarm, Keeley Nova Wah, Spiral Electric FX Yellow Spiral, Boss NF-1, and Alexander Pedals Radical II Delay.
The B loop has a clone of the Electro-Harmonix Green Russian Big Muff, an EHX POG, and a ZVEX Super Hard On. The A loop is already pretty loud; B somehow gets even louder. An EHX Superego+ is a new addition that Lembachās planning to integrate.
A CIOKS DC10 powers the board, and a Lehle device under the board cleans up unwanted hum and noise.
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A resonant alder body lays the perfect foundation for bone-rattling, stadium-ready tones. Dressed up in a nitrocellulose lacquer finish, this alder body also has a "belly cutā for superior comfort during the longest sets. Built for speed, the 25.5ā scale maple neck features a 12ā radius rosewood fingerboard with 21 medium jumbo frets for fiery leads and silky bends. Pearloid block inlays add a touch of unexpected class to this TeleĀ® - it's a workhorse, but that doesn't mean it can't look good. The real magic lies in the pickups: two Custom Chris Shiflett "Cleaver" Noiselessā¢ CS-90 pickups pair powerful output with the throaty midrange punch and singing highs of a vintage single coil, all without hum.
The "F"-style tuning machines, bone nut and wing string tree with nylon spacer keep things in tune through marathon sets, while the string-through body hardtail bridge enhances resonance and sustain.
With its workhorse build, versatile voice and road-tested design, the Limited Edition Chris Shiflett Cleaver TelecasterĀ® Deluxe is a must-have for guitarists who demand dynamic, uncompromising tone. Only available in limited quantities, this stage-ready TeleĀ® matches Shiflettās hard-hitting style. Plug in and carve your own path through anything, anywhere.