Arcane Tele '42 Custom Experience Neck Pickup Black

The Arcane Custom Experience 42 Tele® neck pickup is hand made and hand wound in California. The Custom Experience 42 Tele neck is a Strat/Tele hybrid that pumps out traditional tones with much cleaner attack and better clarity. It's a great cure for blah Tele pickups.

Very few guitars have two pickups that are so polar opposite as the Telecaster®. But there was logic -- or a least method -- to Leo Fender's madness. The Tele  neck pickup was designed to mimic the sound of a bass guitar. The electric bass had not been invented quite yet, and the conventional string bass was getting drowned out in Fender's core market of Western Swing bands. In theory, the Tele could be a guitar or a bass. For that reason, most players don't really like an "authentic" Tele neck pickup. They are murky to the point of sounding like someone talking under water.

The neck pickup has evolved over the years to be much cleaner than it's original muddy and dark sounding origins. The Arcane 42 neck pickup is a hybrid design to provide more "Strat®" like characteristics. Like its name, this pickup uses enamel 42 gage wire, Alnico 5 magnets and a nickel silver cover instead of the original vintage-correct brass. We dropped both this into a custom-made Alder Tele and checked them both out through our Bassman Reissue Ltd and Dr Z. Remedy with Jensen/Eminence 4x10.

The "42" does have the characteristics what people like about a "good" Tele neck pickup: The wound strings have a nice, hollow, round sound with a hint of metallic "bounce" similar to the low strings on a piano. The highs are clean, but have a little softness around the edges, and not the glassy bright edge of a Strat. Where the "42" sets itself apart is that it does not compress under attack like most Tele pickups. Dig into the low strings and they respond nicely with good picking dynamics and a snappy feel that is yes, like a Strat. The highs have a nice responsive feel too, although the cover and other aspects of the design still give it a rounder, smoother feel than a vintage Strat pickup. Think of it as Tele tone/Strat attack, and you wouldn't be far off. It also sounded great through our Sparkle Drive MOD, brightening up with a nice crunchy tone that retained good string definition, and didn't get all squashed and soupy.

The Arcane Custom Experience 42 Tele neck pickup is a great cure for the "Tele Neck Blues", and it maintains the look of your guitar.