Swapping Tele Neck Pickups, Setting Pickup Height & Solder Tips - Ask Zac 132

well hello friends and welcome to Ask
0:58
Zac today
1:00
we are going to show some
1:02
footage of bill keck and i is a friend
1:05
of mine and fellow
1:07
he's the kind of the head repair guy
1:09
down at true tone
1:11
we're going to
1:13
you know we we filmed us
1:15
taking out
1:17
uh well you know exchanging neck pickups
1:20
so if you saw my episode from
1:22
two or three weeks ago it was how tele
1:24
pickups die and the whole reason i did
1:27
that video was because the neck pickup
1:29
in this esquire which was a 54 or 55 i
1:32
can't remember but
1:34
you know of course it was not original
1:36
to the guitar but a vintage pickup well
1:38
I'd had that in the guitar and it died
1:41
and so i did a whole episode on why they
1:43
die and to add kind of a whole other
1:46
level of uh
1:48
irony meaningfulness
1:50
um
1:51
i sent the pickup off to Ron Ellis to be
1:54
rewound
1:56
and as this picture is going to show
1:59
it had already been rewound and the
2:01
telltale sign
2:03
is the tape so it should not fender
2:05
would not have used scotch tape or clear
2:08
tape or whatever that is
2:10
around the magnets they would have
2:12
simply lacquered the bobbin with the
2:14
magnets and then wrapped the wire on it
2:17
so it was
2:19
funny to find out that
2:21
yes it is incredibly common for uh
2:24
vintage telecaster pickups to be rewound
2:26
and in fact you know my bridge pickup is
2:29
on its first rewind and my neck pickup
2:31
is on its second rewind
2:33
so
2:34
uh in the video you know you're gonna
2:36
learn some uh some soldering tips uh
2:39
cleaning up solder joints
2:42
um you know there's you get to see some
2:44
of the under the hood uh shots of this
2:47
guitar do some close-ups of the neck and
2:50
also you could see inside the control
2:51
cavity you get to see the original pots
2:53
and the cap in there and you can see
2:55
under the pick guard
2:57
and
2:58
yeah just some
3:00
also i give you my my kind of setup hack
3:03
on
3:04
setting pickup heights on a vintage type
3:07
telecaster so one with vintage output
3:09
pickups meaning not humbuckers or super
3:12
hot output and so
3:13
get all that and a whole lot more
3:15
so i hope you enjoy
3:17
and also
3:18
of course you know
3:20
before we go into the the footage down
3:22
at true tone uh you know while you're
3:24
thinking about it if you've been
3:26
enjoying the show please hit subscribe
3:28
if you've already subscribed i really
3:30
appreciate you supporting the show and
3:32
the best way is patreon and there's a
3:34
link to that
3:35
down in the description also there's
3:37
good old tip jar information down there
3:40
or you can go to ask zach.com and find
3:42
out about merch and other things so
3:45
thank you so much
3:46
and enjoy
3:48
we
3:49
got the
3:51
old neck pickup back from
3:54
Ron Ellis let me show you that
3:58
this is right here
4:01
so it has
4:02
new leads on it
4:04
as you can see
4:06
it's been rewound
4:08
and uh and re dipped in lacquer and such
4:11
and you see it's got a nice worn cover
4:15
and
4:16
you know the original cover and it's got
4:18
some of that brass
4:20
you know coming through where the chrome
4:22
plating has kind of been worn off
4:25
or is that nickel plating not sure but
4:28
uh seems like i should know that
4:31
but uh anyway uh this is this has been a
4:34
really interesting uh endeavor because
4:37
i sent this pick up pickup off again
4:40
it's like a 54 or 55
4:43
and when it was sold to me it was i was
4:47
told that it had the original wines on
4:49
it
4:50
and the pickup sounded great and i got a
4:53
good deal on it it wasn't like i paid
4:55
thousands of dollars for it
4:57
but uh it was interesting when i sent it
4:59
off to Ron
5:01
he uh he said this is absolutely a
5:03
rewind because it had scotch tape
5:06
around the magnets so uh so you know
5:10
instead of
5:11
lacquer dipping it uh whoever rewound it
5:14
they just
5:15
you know cleaned it up and put scotch
5:17
tape around the magnets and then put the
5:19
the wire on top of that so that's to
5:21
keep it from shorting out
5:23
so
5:24
i just thought also we would kind of
5:26
look at
5:27
you know the guitar
5:28
under the hood you can see some of the
5:32
uh
5:33
especially down in the uh
5:35
the control cavity you can see some of
5:37
the old red and blue paint
5:41
residue and also you can see on this
5:43
guitar where
5:45
the red primer
5:47
that
5:48
was used
5:50
is coming coming through the finish you
5:52
know we tried not to over sand so that
5:55
we didn't destroy the edges here
5:58
and uh
6:00
but in in doing that we probably didn't
6:03
sand enough because as you can see
6:06
there's this stuff coming through and
6:08
you can especially see it I'm going to
6:10
try to be
6:11
careful here because I've got a lot of
6:12
stuff hanging out but
6:15
I'm going to delicately
6:17
do this
6:18
you can see right right here you can see
6:20
all that reddish pink coming through
6:23
and you can see it you know on the
6:26
back of the body here
6:28
uh where
6:30
red is coming through of course some
6:34
down at uh the true tone offices today
6:37
and uh
6:38
see some uh
6:40
horn spots and an old visual sound h2o
6:42
pedal and then an old full drive one of
6:45
the guys here is uh
6:47
you know he
6:49
loves the the really old ones from the
6:51
90s that are like the the pull comp ones
6:54
on the on the volume control and those
6:56
are those are nice pedals
6:58
uh
6:59
let's see yeah of course it's just fun
7:01
to see the uh the grimy bridge
7:04
uh that you know of course we cleaned up
7:06
some but we didn't want to like sand
7:08
blast it or anything so of course those
7:10
are the original saddles and
7:12
and uh that of course that's the
7:14
original pickup that was rewound by by
7:17
Ron
7:19
this is the Ron Ellis tall neck that has
7:24
been in the guitar
7:26
since it was sent off
7:28
to be
7:29
um
7:31
since that pickup was sent to be rewound
7:33
so this is what you heard on the
7:36
when telecaster pickups die
7:38
um me playing the uh the intro piece
7:41
where I'm doing rainy night in Georgia
7:42
that's that pickup and this is a great
7:44
sending pickup it's very
7:46
it's much more in the stratty realm than
7:49
say
7:50
this pickup so the the 55 that again
7:54
that was on its second rewind and that
7:56
just kind of proves the point that these
7:57
guys
7:58
don't last forever
8:00
uh let's let's look at the uh
8:03
the wiring here
8:05
the selector switch has been replaced
8:07
but those are the original pots and this
8:09
is an original cap of course this was an
8:11
esquire
8:12
so it was wired up
8:14
such with also the resistors
8:16
and it had two of these big caps
8:19
and so of course i only needed one to
8:21
wire like a telecaster and also i
8:25
i gave the other one to Dan strain
8:26
because he needed it for his 57 telly
8:28
and it's the least i could do for all
8:30
the work he did on this guitar
8:33
let's just
8:34
have a little gander at the rest so here
8:36
you can see the fingerboard up close
8:39
see the wear marks from the strings you
8:42
know from playing it through the years
8:45
some beautiful
8:47
wear on the neck
8:50
of course it's been refredded by nick
8:53
over at joe glazer's shop
8:57
there's the uh
8:59
headstock and logo and if we go a little
9:02
further you can see this is the uh the
9:04
clear pick guard
9:06
that i uh
9:07
that i got from uh i believe w knows all
9:09
parts got it from all parts and this is
9:12
the piece of paper that's underneath it
9:14
that my friend uh Christy and jay smith
9:18
did so Christy did the uh
9:21
the uh cactus
9:23
and also my my name down there and she
9:26
really nice how she followed the the
9:28
curve
9:29
of the of the pick guard with the with
9:31
the z
9:32
so
9:33
all right so we're going to uh to do do
9:37
this
9:38
where uh bill keck who is a
9:41
uh the
9:42
head repairman here at true tone is
9:44
going to help me with this even though i
9:46
could kind of of course i could do this
9:48
myself but whenever i can get someone
9:50
that does something better than me and
9:51
and it's an excuse to
9:54
hang out for a bit I'm uh gonna have him
9:56
do that so yeah we're gonna
9:58
take out the the new tall which is again
10:01
a killer pickup but we're gonna put this
10:03
55 now second time rewound
10:06
uh first time by me
10:08
but we're gonna put put that in there
10:11
and then of course get it
10:13
strung up and get the uh the pic my uh
10:16
my crazy pick guard put back on there
10:18
and then string it up and it'll be uh
10:21
good as new this uh
10:23
measured
10:24
um
10:25
about 6.8
10:28
however one thing that people don't
10:29
think about
10:31
is that um you know we we have the air
10:33
conditioner kind of cranked in here
10:35
and if uh if you turn the air down if
10:38
you heat up a room or heat up a pickup
10:41
it will measure much higher
10:44
not not crazy higher but
10:47
you know pickup can can measure like 6k
10:50
in our cold environment and then it can
10:52
measure you know 7k so
10:54
uh anyway we're gonna get this pickup in
10:57
the guitar and uh just have some fun
11:03
all right friends here we are with my
11:06
friend bill keck who's the lead
11:09
repairman here at true tone and also he
11:12
you know built keck amplifiers and
11:14
worked for heritage amplifiers and
11:17
and uh he works on my amps for me and uh
11:21
dude I'm just I'm I'm spoiled rotten
11:23
having this guy nearby and he's just a
11:26
good guy and always helping me out so
11:27
he's gonna
11:29
we're just gonna film this and have fun
11:30
uh
11:32
uh he's gonna change the pickup out so
11:34
you get to see this go ahead and take
11:35
this one out
11:43
you can see that he's got a real
11:44
soldering iron not a soldering gun
11:47
so you can see over there the kind of
11:48
unit and it's so important to have one
11:50
that gets hot enough so that you don't
11:52
end up baking your components because
11:55
that's what you do when you when you
11:56
have a an iron that won't get hot enough
11:59
you end up
12:00
shortening the lifespan of your pots and
12:02
other parts see he's already
12:04
taken the the uh the Ellis
12:07
new tall out
12:09
and then he's gonna put this in and
12:11
you're gonna see the uh
12:13
you know always the bane of every
12:16
telecaster player when they're messing
12:18
with changing out the neck pickup is you
12:20
got to get it through this little channel
12:22
here now of course there are teles that
12:23
don't have the channel at all and that's
12:26
even worse
12:27
so thread the needle here yeah
12:30
all right
12:32
get it pointed in the right direction
12:39
sometimes bill will get some forceps out
12:41
and you know he starts
12:43
doing like surgery on it
12:45
yeah
12:46
hands like a surgeon okay here he goes
12:50
and not too much coffee this morning
12:53
not too shaky
13:02
shoving it through
13:06
make sure not to drag the neck pick up
13:08
alone
13:09
here we've got a nice view of the neck
13:12
now let's let's come back to where the
13:13
action is see he's already he's already
13:15
pulled it through while i was doing all
13:17
this other stuff
13:19
i'm not doing you guys a service
13:25
all right
13:29
in there she's got that set in there but
13:32
not it's not screwed down or anything
13:34
yet i'm just gonna wire it up
13:38
push back just a little
13:41
and that's the great thing about
13:42
the old cloth wires is they you know
13:44
they call it push back wire you know for
13:47
a reason because that cloth you
13:48
literally just push it back some
13:51
and uh clean up the old solder on the
13:53
top this this is another thing all you
13:56
soldering guys need to know about is
13:57
this uh
13:59
this braid
14:00
and uh so what
14:02
bill's gonna do is he's gonna clean up
14:05
this spot you know with this braid it
14:07
basically we'll just
14:09
apply heat to the braid and that will
14:11
just suck that solder out yeah
14:14
and you can see also that uh bill also
14:17
does dentistry in here you can tell
14:19
because he has this uh
14:21
toothbrush
14:22
well no no the the the light with the
14:25
magnifying glass because they've got old
14:27
eyes oh okay
14:28
just like the rest of us
14:32
so there he's
14:33
cleaning up he's going to clean it up a
14:35
little more
14:37
well i don't think i have to but i will
14:39
pin this so that
14:41
the is on better
14:50
a little solder too
14:56
just turn
15:08
let's set
15:12
have a nice shine to your solder
15:15
like a gray murky thing because that
15:17
indicates a cold solder joint
15:19
and bill's talking from experience from
15:22
building zillions of amplifiers and all
15:25
sorts of repairs
15:33
[Music]
15:36
all right let's get this guy on
15:40
wound
15:42
from there
15:44
a little more back here
15:52
of course he's wiring the white wire to
15:55
the switch and the black wire goes to
15:56
the the back of the pot to uh for
15:58
grounding purposes
16:11
let's lay it in there with the other one
16:26
you don't want to apply too much heat to
16:27
a pot because you can
16:31
heat up too much of what's going on
16:33
inside
16:35
that looks nice
16:37
yeah especially those being the original
16:39
pot
16:41
try to let them live as long as they can
16:43
but if they have to be replaced that's
16:45
just the way it is you know it's a
16:48
it's still a functioning and
16:51
playing guitar let's test it before we
16:53
go further
17:09
all right so that's a good old tap test
17:12
which uh you know of course he made sure
17:14
as he went through the three positions
17:15
that
17:16
of course the bridge pickup wasn't on
17:18
and then in the first position and of
17:20
course both were on in the middle and
17:21
then just the bridge in the uh
17:24
in the back
17:25
so
17:26
we're done soldering all right there you
17:28
have it now now i just have to uh
17:31
put it all uh
17:32
back together
17:36
all right now bill is going to of course
17:41
get the screws and such on here you want
17:43
to be careful you know man handling it
17:45
because your
17:46
your lead wire is coming from the the
17:48
coil the wrap
17:50
just like a hair
17:52
go into the
17:53
the tabs that connect to the wire so
17:55
you know you don't want to
17:59
so this is another way in which you can
18:00
kill a pickup is by jamming a screw or
18:03
something into the uh
18:05
into the windings or hurting the
18:08
or damaging the uh
18:10
those hair like actually thinner than
18:12
here like wire that's uh that's
18:16
you know so delicate
18:19
yeah you can see he's putting the screws
18:22
in there and then putting the the
18:24
rubber grommets and that and
18:26
grommets what do you call it spacers i
18:28
don't know what the proper terminology
18:30
is there but uh just that rubber tubing
18:33
yeah but that's that's what they used on
18:35
old
18:36
on
18:37
on their cars and it uh
18:40
it helps with the
18:42
feedback and such if you use metal
18:45
springs
18:46
a lot of times that can be a little more
18:48
problematic when it comes to uh
18:51
things getting microphonic
18:53
so
19:04
also work a little side to side you
19:06
don't want to
19:07
bring all of one side down and then try
19:09
to catch up because it'll be out of line
19:11
and you can flex that
19:13
bottom fiberboard yes because the
19:15
there's not that much clearance you have
19:17
to slowly put the pickup down because
19:20
the uh the routing is not gigantic so if
19:24
you start getting it real cockeyed you
19:27
can just like bill said you can damage
19:29
the flat work on the pickup and
19:31
ruin it you don't have a bunch of excess
19:33
wire under it which makes it easier to
19:37
maneuver the pickup but it also will
19:39
keep the pickup from sinking into the
19:41
cavity correctly so
20:02
and sometimes you have to experiment
20:03
with it just how much tubing you're
20:05
going to use
20:07
yeah sometimes you got to double up on
20:09
that
20:10
or just use or take some out no no i
20:12
gotta take the whole thing out and take
20:13
a little bit of tubing out
20:15
yeah sometimes you have to cut some off
20:17
mm-hmm
20:28
and this is kind of my trick for setting
20:30
the uh the neck pickup height which i
20:33
mean of course we're not doing right now
20:35
but uh i just
20:38
you know get it in and then i'll i'll
20:40
push down the string
20:42
at this last fret
20:45
and uh
20:46
and then i'll get it to where it just
20:48
clears it so basically i'm trying to get
20:50
the neck pick up as high as possible and
20:52
the reason is is i want to get the
20:53
bridge pick up as high as possible
20:56
and uh i like to get as much uh
20:59
you know because again these aren't like
21:01
super high output pickups
21:03
not that they're weak
21:05
but you know they're in the six to seven
21:08
you know i think they're around
21:10
upper sixes lower seven range and so
21:12
they're not so high output that it
21:14
doesn't hurt to have them close you know
21:17
fairly close to the strings
21:19
so that's kind of the way i do that so
21:21
there
21:22
there that's
21:25
there we go
21:27
so it's back together we still need to
21:28
get the uh the pick guard and get some
21:30
strings on it
21:32
set your height
21:34
and a little adjustment can make a big
21:36
difference getting that little sweet
21:38
spot
21:42
all right guys so
21:43
while you were gone
21:45
i uh i changed the strings
21:48
and if you're interested i did a whole
21:50
video on the way i change strings and
21:53
lock em
21:54
the unwound strings and like how many
21:56
wines i do on the g string to get enough
21:58
downward pressure and all that stuff
22:00
there's a whole video about that if
22:01
you're interested in that
22:03
so strung it up
22:05
and also i set the neck pickup height
22:07
and so this is my trick for neck pickup
22:10
height what i do is and this is the key
22:13
to setting up the pickup heights on both
22:15
pickups what i do
22:17
is i press down the string on the last
22:21
fret on the high e string
22:23
and then i set it to where it just
22:26
clears it
22:28
and that's basically as high as you can
22:30
get it now these these pickups
22:33
are in the upper 6k you know lower 7k
22:36
range and so that's okay now if you have
22:38
some really high output pickup that
22:41
might produce enough pull
22:43
that it would actually
22:44
you know
22:45
it could hurt the tone and the tuning of
22:47
the instrument but on this one it's not
22:49
going to do that
22:50
so and i like my pickups as close to the
22:53
string as possible with vintage type
22:55
pickup so what i do is i i get that
22:58
physically set and then i go by output
23:01
and so what i'll do is i'll hit this
23:02
string as i go back and forth and i'll
23:05
set this height
23:07
to where it matches the output or maybe
23:09
this one is just a touch louder but i
23:12
don't i don't want the neck pickup to be
23:14
louder because that's that's the sound i
23:16
want
23:17
and then i'll go to the base end and
23:19
i'll do the same thing i'll hit it
23:21
and then i'll switch back and forth and
23:23
all and i'll well first off i need to
23:25
back up
23:26
it's like after i get this
23:28
set then i have to set this height so
23:31
then you want the outputs to be similar
23:34
so you don't want it to be out for
23:36
itself and then you set it also to this
23:38
one all right
23:40
so now we're going to do
23:42
we're going to put the fancy pickguard
23:44
that i have back on so
23:46
i need to say again that
23:48
this was done by my friends uh jay and
23:50
christy smith
23:52
and jay of course is the gentleman that
23:54
did the the ask zach logo and uh
23:58
has done a lot of work for me and so he
24:01
and his wife christy and christy is very
24:04
dear to me because she's a good friend
24:06
and also it's because of her that i met
24:08
my wife
24:09
so uh so it's very dear to me to have
24:12
her work
24:14
on on my guitar you know jay and christy
24:17
so they did this you can see this is
24:19
kind of heavy card stock
24:21
and it has a bit of a
24:24
it has some little flecks in here and
24:26
such
24:27
and what we're going to do to make it
24:29
sit here properly
24:31
is i'm going to loosen this a little bit
24:35
because i found that i kind of have to
24:36
put this under
24:38
the uh the control plate a little bit
24:41
so
24:42
carefully
24:44
i'm going to get this under here under
24:46
the strings
24:48
here we go
24:50
we're gonna go down
24:53
and get
24:54
underneath the plate a little bit
24:57
and we're gonna carefully
24:59
go down
25:00
around
25:02
the pickup
25:04
and of course the neck itself make sure
25:07
that it's flat
25:10
and in position lining up with the holes
25:14
and then we're gonna get this clear
25:16
guard that came from uh from all parts
25:19
and we're gonna slap it on there again
25:22
we're gonna carefully go underneath here
25:27
and we're going to go down
25:30
and yeah everything feels really good
25:34
feels good and flat
25:39
i am very careful
25:42
to you to put the screws
25:45
down to where i can remember where they
25:46
went so this is the way i do it i get a
25:48
piece of tape
25:49
and i put down
25:51
the two that go here and then the three
25:53
that go here and in the right order so
25:55
that i can uh
25:56
you know
25:58
get it off
26:00
of course the
26:02
got sticky tape
26:03
so i'm just going to put that in just a
26:05
little bit
26:07
not too far
26:08
i'm going to take the next one
26:12
this is the bad part again of using tape
26:35
and these screws are even like they're
26:37
different sizes and and that's just what
26:39
was on the guitar
26:41
so i would just kind of continue to do
26:42
that because i don't want to
26:46
enlarge holes that don't need to be
26:48
enlarged or put in too small of a screw
26:50
in another spot so it's just a good idea
26:53
and also
26:54
you know sometimes these screws have a
26:57
different amount of wear and such on
26:59
them so i'm going to straighten this one
27:01
out some because it was going in a
27:02
little funny
27:04
i'm going to start taking it down
27:08
take this one down
27:23
i'm gonna double check to make sure
27:25
we're lining up here
27:28
we don't have a problem here and no
27:30
we're good
27:31
okay
27:35
i'm gonna go ahead and
27:37
kind of push this down and also
27:39
get the control plate
27:41
back into position which it is now
27:50
well that's just turning and turning i
27:53
might need to
27:54
address that
27:56
um
27:58
tighten these
28:14
look again we're going to make sure all
28:16
the the screws are are flush we're going
28:19
to make sure the pick guard is sitting
28:20
correctly
28:21
make sure everything's right and it is
28:24
so
28:25
and again as i was showing you earlier
28:28
this guitar has a bunch of kind of
28:30
orangey pinkish red
28:33
undercoat uh kind of sealer coat that
28:36
was from when the guy painted it blue
28:38
with a blue spray paint
28:41
and uh so it's been coming through you
28:43
can see there especially on the sides
28:45
but yeah
28:46
so it is all together but i might uh i
28:49
might need to uh in fact i will need to
28:51
address this one screw that just kept on
28:54
uh
28:55
turning here i'll probably uh
28:58
get you know i might do the just the old
29:00
matchstick and some super wood glue in
29:02
there but uh
29:04
we'll get that addressed but there you
29:05
have it it's all it's all back together
29:08
and i got the
29:09
neck pickup and
29:11
there we are