Offset tele mod suggestions please

suspiciousminds

Chaps, would really appreciate some suggestions for pickup/wiring mods for the Offset CR tele i recently bought from Thomann.
So far, i’ve swapped the tuners for vintage style off-white and replaced the 3 saddles for gotoh brass compensated ones and its had a full fret dress and setup and really sounds great.
I have a couple of spare pickups lying around - a generic strat measuring 5.41 and a hotrails which could be splittable.
The body on this is already routed for a single coil size pickup, and i can get the scratchplate cut for just over a tenner.
The simplest option i thought was to keep the stock 3way wiring but add an on/off switch between the pots so i can flick it on in each of the 3 positions, possibly reverse.
Or swap the 3-way switch for a 5-way and wire it Strat style.
The pots are full size so if i swap them to mini pots i coul possibly add another one on the control plate.
Another thought was possibly coil splitting the WRHB in the neck - can it be done?
Any suggestions?

Funkfingers

Hot Rails for Stratocaster or for Telecaster - and for which position? 

Do you want the guitar to have the twang of a regular Telecaster or become a Rawk beast? A vintage style single coil will not be able to compete with a Hot Rails, no matter how low the latter is adjusted. The split sound of the HR is not particularly Fender-y.

suspiciousminds

Funkfingers said:

Hot Rails for Stratocaster or for Telecaster - and for which position? 

Do you want the guitar to have the twang of a regular Telecaster or become a Rawk beast? A vintage style single coil will not be able to compete with a Hot Rails, no matter how low the latter is adjusted. The split sound of the HR is not particularly Fender-y.

The hotrails would be in the middle position.
I have previously had it in the neck position on my jagstang but wasnt too keen so i swapped the original back in.
I really like the stock bridge pickup so want to keep that but rawk beast sounds good.

Funkfingers

suspiciousminds said:

The hotrails would be in the middle position.
I have previously had it in the neck position on my jagstang.

Ah, it is the Stratocaster format, then.

suspiciousminds said:

I really like the stock bridge pickup so want to keep that.

Good thinking. Having the stock single coil bridge/Treble restricts your options for the neck/Rhythm position.

It is possible to buy Tele-sized neck pickups with Stratocaster-like voicing. This would avoid unnecessary routing.

If you are determined to rout, good choices include Firebird, (LP Deluxe style) mini-humbucker, Dyna-Sonic, Filter'Tron, mini Charlie Christian.

Leftfield suggestion, if the budget can stretch to it, the Seymour Duncan CS Secret Agent stealth Esquire model.

Musical_Mystery_Tour

Humbucker at the neck posiition is always a good mod for any Telecaster to broaden its available sound options, and makes them look way better too.

Sporky

I'd go for a split-able humbucker in the neck, and 5-way switching to do various combinations. Fer example:

1) Neck series
2) Neck parallel
3) Neck (split) and bridge in parallel
4) Neck (split) and bridge in series
5) Bridge

Or something weird in 4, like neck in series, with bridge out of phase