UNDER THE HOOD
What about the bits you can’t see? We investigate…
Both our review models here are very tidily routed for different pickup configurations, a one-size-fits-all production ploy reflecting the other models in this mini-range and the more expansive Player Series. So, removing the Tele’s scratchplate, the body has a humbucking rout at the neck and another single coil rout in the middle position. Likewise, the Strat is routed for HSH so you could easily swap scratchplates down the road, too, and load in HSS, HSH, HH or even HS pickup configurations – good news for us modders. Both neck pockets are tight fitting, too, and neither neck has a shim.
The circuits on both are clearly designed to work with these new Noiseless pickups. The Strat uses 1meg-ohm audio taper pots with a single .022 microfarads tone cap, a four-pole lever switch and a pull-push switched pot. The treble-bleed circuit is a little unusual in that wired between the input and output lug of the volume control is a 47kohm resistor in series, which then passes to a parallel-linked 150k resistor and 470 picofarads capacitor. The Tele uses the same value pots, tone cap and treble-bleed circuit with a standard two-pole, three-way lever switch.
At launch, there’s no detailed info on the pickups. The Strat’s pickups use rod magnets, approximately 4.72mm in diameter, and in terms of their stagger the two middle poles are the highest; the low E, A and B are all slightly lower. The neck and middle have approximately 49.5mm spacing and the bridge is slightly wider at 52.4mm. The Tele’s bridge pickup has flush magnet poles, and the neck, of course, is covered. There is no ID on the pickups on either guitar, but you can clearly see the two stacked coils of the humbucker design. DCRs here of the combined series linked coils are very different to single coils. So, measured at output, on the Strat we get 11.15kohms (bridge), 10.82k (middle) and 11.05k (neck), while the Tele’s bridge measures 13.74k, the neck 12.38k while in series mode with the pull-switch up we get the same reading of 25.7k in all three positions. This is a very good example of how a DC reading simply tells us how much wire is used and is not an indicator of output.