#TELECASTER PICKUP WIRING DIAGRAM MOD#

Carson worked as a professional Western swing guitarist and was Leo's favorite guinea pig for testing his Telecaster and early tweed amp designs. Today we know that it was not Leo's idea alone, and this change was mostly made because of Bill Carson's suggestions. In May 1952, Leo modified the circuit to incorporate a true tone control by skipping the blend functionality and discarding any two-pickup combination. Instead, the second pot acted as a blend or pan control between the two pickups, and this was only engaged with the 3-way pickup selector switch in the rear position. Remember, the original two-pickup Esquire wiring is characterized by the absence of a real tone control. In literature, this span is often referred to as “from 1950-1953,' which in most cases is precise enough. This circuit is also the one you can find in all “Nocasters,' so we can roughly say it was used from early fall 1950 to approximately May 1952. The guitar finally became the Telecaster in April 1951. This circuit was used for the two-pickup Esquire, which was later named Broadcaster. In his original hand-drawn circuit, Leo identifies the 250k pots as “1/4 meg' and there's even a little error-the 15k Ω resistor is shown as “15M.' You can see this drawing at the Fender Museum and it's one of the real treasures of the exhibit.

#TELECASTER PICKUP WIRING DIAGRAM MOD#

First we'll see how they evolved and then we'll look at ways to mod them.Ī while back, I showed you Leo Fender's two-pickup Esquire wiring, or Broadcaster blend circuit (“ The Two-Pickup Esquire Wiring,' April 2013), which was the first Telecaster wiring ever.

The next step involves an intense investigation into several factory-spec Telecaster wirings. We're laying the groundwork for a series of Tele mods, so it's important to have all the info at your fingertips. Let's continue our Telecaster adventure that began several columns ago (“ Preparing Your Tele for Future Mods,' June 2013, and “ Fighting Feedback in a Telecaster,' July 2013).

Telecaster pickup wiring diagram