Waaah Music Store Red Tele Pickup Set Analysis Review

[antigua]

A seller called "Waaah Music Store" on AliExpress is selling some unique Telecaster pickups www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003304410146.html . They have a lot of things going for them, not only are they high quality, with real fiber board and AlNiCo 5 pole pieces, but the fiberboard is also colored red, and the neck pickup is tapped with a ~10% reduction.  The only bad news is that the neck pickup's cover is brass, so the neck will sound dark if the cover is left on, but as you can see in the picture, the neck pickup has red bobbins too, so I think the correct move is to remove to cover and go for the unique red Tele pickup look. I have a red Telecaster that I'm planning to put them into. The neck coil is also tapped with kapton tape, so there is some protection aside from the brass cover. And the hookup leads are actual "pull back" cloth wire, the premium vintage Fender / StewMac style.

The bridge pickup has an inductance of 4.3H and a loaded resonant peak of 2.8kHz, that's a hot bridge pickup, very similar LCR values to the Cavalier Nashville Lion King  www.tdpri.com/threads/cavalier-nashville-lion-lion-king-quick-test.698856/ . The base plate is steel. 

The neck pickup's normal inductance is 3.1H, a bit hot for a neck, and 2.3H tapped, which is more normal. The loaded peak is 3.5kHz normally, or 4.2kHz tapped, which pretty ideally differentiates both vintage and "hot vintage" neck pickups. I think the main problem with a pickup with these tap points is that when you can quickly A/B vintage and "hot vintage", what seems like a big difference when you're swapping pickups somehow doesn't seem like that much of a difference when all it takes is the flip of a switch to go back and forth. That 500Hz difference happens in the high treble range. The bode plot suggests there will also be a 2.5dBV output drop when the neck pickup is tapped, which is equivalent to turning down the volume knob about half a notch. I do intend to wire up a Tele (a red colored one) to exploit the tap though, so I can try it out first hand. 

I haven't put these in a guitar yet, I was more interested in sharing this info quickly. The neck pickup's tap lead is yellow. Remember that when you wire a coil tap, you don't want to shunt it like you would a coil split, because if the tapped-out portion of the coil is caused to have DC continuity when tapped, it will create an eddy current loop, so the DP/DT selector has to wire "either full or tapped" with each of the pickup's two lead wires connecting to either side of the DP/DT, and then the center post leads out the pickup selector switch. 


Waaah Music Store Red Tele Pickups

Bridge
- DC Resistance: 8.557K ohms
- Q @1khz: 2.66
- Measured L: 4.395H
- Calculated C: 115.34pF
- Gauss: 1050G (AlNiCo 5)

Neck
- DC Resistance: 9.215K ohms, tapped: 7.846K
- Q @1khz: 1.642 tapped: 1.495
- Measured L: 3.120H tapped: 2.322H
- Calculated C: 111.26pF tapped: 123.89pF
- Gauss: 1050G (AlNiCo 5)

Bridge unloaded: dV: 12.4dB f: 5.87kHz (black)
Bridge loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 4.8dB f: 2.83kHz (blue)

Neck no cover unloaded: dV: 13.7dB f: 8.65kHz (red)
Neck no cover loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 14.4dB f: 8.65kHz (green)
Neck no cover tap unloaded: dV: 6.1dB f: 3.55kHz (red)
Neck no cover tap loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 6.7dB f: 4.12kHz (green)

Bridge pickup, neck with the cover, normal and tapped




Neck pickup, cover removed, normal and tapped

[antigua]

In a guitar...   I tried out the tapped neck pickup, and the difference in tone is surprisingly noticeable. In full mode, it sounds like a typical tele pickup, though slightly clearer due to the lack of a cover . eddy currents. In tapped mode, the sound become noticeable thinner, without much apparent consequence to the output level. I think it's a useful tap of you want a Tele's neck pickup to come closer to the sound of an acoustic guitar, or to get a more jangly tone.