Information on Brent Mason’s Telecaster

1. Information on Brent Mason’s Telecaster • Resources • Guitar Player Magazine • Joe Glaser • Brent Mason’s Hot Licks Video • Middle Pickup Position • Relationship with bridge pickup • Response plots • Schematic • Assumptions

2. Information on Brent Mason’s Telecaster • Info from a Guitar Player Magazine interview Feb 2000, quoting Joe Glaser: • .. The front pickup is an old Gibson mini-humbucker, and the middle is a Seymour Duncan Hot Strat Stack. The back position has seen a lot of experimentation, but a Duncan Vintage Tele Stack has been there for quite a while, and it's a really good-sounding pickup. • The one mod that is fairly unique is a blend control. In the back position, it lets you dial in however much of the middle pickup you want. Brent uses it to take just a little edge off.

3. Information on Brent Mason’s Telecaster • From Brent's video • Brent indicated in his video that he had a custom Seymour Duncan pickup that had different sections or windings for the wound vs. plain strings. That was evidently replaced by the Vintage Tele Stack above. Also, Brent says that the blend control works with blending in the middle with the neck PU too, which makes sense. • My conversation with Joe Glaser • Joe said Brent was using the Vintage Tele Stack as of 2 years ago. I also believe that the blend control was a pot to dial in the middle PU to the output.

4. Information on Brent Mason’s Telecaster • Middle Pickup Position • The middle pickup is closer to the bridge than that of a Stratocaster • This will change the midrange cut of the blended pickups • The closer bridge to middle pickup spacing relationship will roll of harshness of the treble strings but leave the wound strings clear with some mid cut. • Measurements were scaled off a photo and the distances were calculated in the following spreadsheet

5. Middle Pickup Spacing

6. Middle & Bridge Pickup Interaction Analysis • Bridge Slant • The bridge pickup is slanted of course. This is because the amplitude of the vibrating strings increase as you get further from the bridge saddle. Since the wavelength of the bass string is longer than the treble strings, the slanted position picks up the strings amplitude at near the same level • The middle pickup is not slanted. Therefore the closer the pickups are to each other, the larger relative offset there is between the distance of the pickup on the big E vs. the little E. • Analysis • The following plots show the spectrum of the pickup response with and without the middle pickup blended in, based on the close middle pickup spacing.

7. Bridge Pickup Only (Treble E String) Pickup distances on treble E string Treble E string Bridge Pickup Only Basic Comb Filter Response Middle pickup off

8. Bridge & Middle Pickup Interaction (Treble E String) Treble E string Bridge Pickup Blended With Middle Midrange cut removes harshness of treble E Bridge pickup blended in

9. Bridge Pickup Only (A String) Bass A string Bridge Pickup Only Basic Comb Filter Response T. Downs 6/15/2001

10. Bridge & Middle Pickup Interaction (A String) Bass E string Bridge Pickup Blended With Middle Muddy midrange spectrum reduced Pickups farther apart at A string Bright presence range pronounced Bridge pickup blended in T. Downs 6/15/2001

11. NOTES:1. COMPONENT VALUES ASSUMED A Guess at the Schematic

12. Assumptions • Wiring • Middle pickup series/parallel switch not included in analysis. It should not change outcome of spectral plots considerably • No clue if a treble bypass capacitor is used • No clue of the tone cap value • It was confirmed through Brent that the middle pickup can be on by itself. The means the volume controls are wired backwards like some Les Paul guitars