Description

Hoagland Custom, located in sunny Fernandina Beach, Florida, has specialized in custom guitar wiring and pickup making for over 25 years…

& we love what we do!

This is a new, custom-wound, handcrafted Telecaster neck pickup wound to (sort of) Fender® “Twisted Tele” specs.

Originally designed by Alan Hamel (when he worked for Fender’s Custom Shop), this Tele “Twisted Heywood” neck pickup sounds a lot closer to a Strat than a Tele neck (re: not muddy).

The problem with Tele neck pickups is that they tend to sound “muddy” and, the lower the quality of pickup, the muddier they sound. That is partially due to their neck position placement and, partially, due to the elements of their construction.

Differences between a Tele neck pickup & a Strat neck pickup:

• The Tele neck has a shorter coil than a Strat
• The Tele neck uses a thinner coil wire (43ga) than a Strat (42ga)
• The Tele neck has less winds of coil wire on it than the Strat pickup
• The Tele neck uses different magnet heights than a Strat – Tele neck pickups are flush with the top of the bobbin, that is, all the same height. Strat pickups magnets are staggered, that is, differing heights. This is done by the Strat pickup builder to accentuate the tone from some strings and retard the tone from others resulting in that signature Strat tone.
• The Tele neck has a metal cover – either brass or nickel/silver, that tends to attenuate (bleed to ground) highs making it sound “muddy”. The Strat neck has a plastic cover offering no effect on the pickup.

Components:

• ~ Neck – wound with 7,250 winds of 43ga enamel-coated pickup wire to 6k with alnico 5 magnets (clean and crisp… not muddy!)
• ~ Wax-potted to eliminate squealing & microphonics
• ~ Cover is not included
• ~ Vintage-style, cloth-covered leads
• ~ Handcrafted with all “Made in the USA” parts (bobbins in North Carolina, magnets in Arkansas, pickup wire in Wisconsin, lead wire in New York)

There are a lot of variables that go into creating, or recreating a tone. While each item in your signal chain is important, no one item will do the job. Pickups, along with the way your guitar is wired, are probably the most important parts in your signal chain. Changing out the pickups/wiring has the biggest impact on your sound. If you are looking for a better-than-stock-Fender tone, THIS is where you start.

We do not recommend that you use a pickup cover with a Tele neck pickup. It tends to bleed a lot of highs to ground and, in our opinion, it tends to kill the tone. If you DO want a neck pickup cover, we suggest one of the “open” covers as they tend to pass more highs to your signal chain.

Premium quality pickups that are handwound when you order them. We can custom-tailor the winding or the types of magnets to any spec that you’d like.

This neck pickup is handcrafted by Hoagland Custom and wound specifically FOR YOU. It is NOT an “off-the-shelf” pickup. It is NOT a relabeled, imported pickup. This is made in our shop, from scratch, and it is the highest quality pickup you can buy made from 100% American made parts. If you want it a little underwound, simply tell us. If you want it a little overwound, simply tell us.

While all of our pickup & wiring solutions are built to be installed rather easily by most do-it-yourselfers, we always recommend that you have a guitar professional at your local guitar shop install them for you. There are a lot of variables when it comes to working on guitar electronics (ground loops, conflicts in values of different parts, etc.) and your local guitar tech is experienced to handle troubleshooting for you.

Contact Hoagland Custom with any questions regarding these handcrafted Hoagland Custom pickups, or any other guitar wiring solution that you might need.