Rhythm, lead, chicken pickin’ and slide never sounded better! Our Vintage Plus neck model offers warmth and clarity and enough punch for country, blues, pop and jazz applications. The bridge uses aged magnets and is wound to retain the dynamic high-end that country players demand, and our new higher output wind gives plenty of low-end beef. Rolling back the volume and tone slightly create a wonderfully open tone for combined rhythm and chord work. Nickel-silver covers and a grounded copper plated baseplate adds to the tone and completes the look and feel.
Installing this set with a four way switch? We are happy to install a separate ground wire for the neck – just check the box above the “Add to Cart” button above. This will give you three wires – a coil start (yellow), a coil finish (black) and a ground wire (black wire from cover tab).
Dimensions
Telecaster Neck (Metric)
Telecaster Bridge (Metric)
Telecaster Neck (Imperial)
Telecaster Bridge (Imperial)
Wiring
2 Single Coils / 1 Vol / 1 Tone / 3-Way Blade
Usky –
I bought myself a Korean made Telecaster copy, which is very well made with the exception of the electrics. It was always my intention to replace the pups and after some serious research decided to opt for a set of these Tonerider TRT1 Vintage Plus pickups – I’m so glad I did too because they are simply brilliant!
I set the guitar up with a nice low action and pups sit approximately 2.5mm below the string height. This is slightly higher than recommended, but works for me.
Clean the tones produced are reminiscent of the 1950s guitar sounds. Richly toppy with the neck pup selected – great for country players.
Dirty they deliver exactly the depth of quality I was looking for the blues I love to play.
It may be worth mentioning my tele is a lot more ‘quacky’ since fitting the Toneriders.
Would I swap these Toneriders for anything else? Nope, but I might consider buying another reasonable tele copy to try out some alternative pups!
Colin Haughey –
have used these pickups before they were humbuckers and clarity was amazing have just fitted these tele vintage plus in a jhs vintage telecaster and I cannot stress enough how they have changed the sound amazing would be an understatement they are unbelievable the clarity is first class am going to get another set this time p90s for another guitar ,toneriders are the best pickups I have ever used . top marks to the seller for quick delivery and great packaging .do your self a favour get some tonerider pickups
Andy Bradshaw –
These pick-ups are astonishing.
They give you that classic Telecaster sound, lots of snap and bite, and dirty, they really crunch.
Absolutely no hesitation whatsoever recommending these, they are incredible – and at under £60, frankly they’re a steal. Buy them, you would have to spend a hell of a lot of money to get better pick-ups than these.
Update 9/9/2019. I now have these on four of my Telecasters and am about to add a set to a new guitar. They continue to delight me, giving a fantastic range of tones to my guitars. I have tried other brands, but I keep going back to these.
Olly Buxton –
SPANKTASTIC. I fitted some of these Tonerider TRT1s to a new Tele partscaster I built to 52 specs. WOW. They are magnificently jangly, twangy and spanky. I road-tested them against a mate’s Fender James Burton signature telecaster (dull), and my own custom Strat with Fender Texas Specials (Creamy and Austiny) and boy oh boy – for those clean Fender tones, they are in a different league of crystal, chicken cluckin’ spectacularity.
If you’re not careful I’ll post a video to show you.
Olly Buxton
Steven Jones –
I was building a Telecaster and was looking at the various Fender sets and other brand pairs when I came across these at half the price. Went to the reviews and pretty much all of them said they were amazing. They are not wrong – these beauties sound amazing and work exceptionally in my new build. It’s a Tele on steroids.
Wax potted and proper push back wire – these babies hold their own and exceed other offerings at half the price. Brilliant.
DJ –
Arrived today and immediately fitted them into my Squire Affinity tele. Although these have had great reviews I was still a little doubtful whether they would sound much different. I needn’t have worried, these sound fantastic and have turned an already good cheap guitar into a great cheap guitar. No need to spend double the price or more on big name brands, I doubt you’ll get better than these.
Mr. M. Kostyrka –
I very recently bought a Squier Classic Vibe Tele which to be honest was pretty good as it stood, but I always tend to customise my guitars as you end up with a better quality guitar for a lot less money than you would spend with a dealer. I also fitted a Gotoh bridge- the only problem here was removing the old Squier bridge plate- I had to use an impact driver to shift the cheap Chinese screws. The pickups themselves sound fine with more detail than the old ones- I may at a later stage change the main wiring and pots.
John MacDonald –
I build custom telecasters and use these vintage pickups as well as alnico II and hot classics regularly for customer builds. You really can go wrong with any of these…they all have the Tele tone that is pleasing to the ear! I will continue using all of these telecaster Tonerider pickups for all of my builds…no need to change a good thing!
Rufus Evans –
For years I’ve held the opinion the fender original vintage series were the best all round Tele pickup, now I really believe it’s the vintage plus set. It actually has a better balance. Attention to detail and quality of life upgrades. Absolutely worth every penny.
Owen Elkan (verified owner) –
Replaced the pickups on my Mexican classic 50’s Fender tele with these and they are fantastic- the original neck pickup was dull (but vintage accurate!) and the bridge pickup very very brittle and “empty” sounding, was always a bit disappointed with the guitar…
These pickups are SO much better, the neck pickup is mellow but nice and clear sounding, and the bridge has a wonderful full, bright but not brittle sound and works so much better with overdrive the volume balance betweenboth pickups is also a lot better. Cannot go wrong with these.
craignchimgee –
I bought a kit some years ago and these came with the kit. Later, I upgraded the electronics on the guitar which made a big difference and so I thought that I would upgrade my pickups as well to Seymour Duncan pickups because that’s a step up, right? Well, turns out I was wrong. I was new to building guitars and swapping out pickups and disappointment was the result. I was hoping the SDs would give me the same tone only… well, better. (Again, at the time just didn’t know better.) Turns out I had the tone I loved all along with these pups.
I don’t really use the bridge pickup unless the switch is in middle position for strumming. For lead stuff I use the neck pickup and I absolutely love the tone the Tonerider Vintage neck pickup gives me. Nice mellow lead sound when picking normally but, really snaps when hit hard: especially the G and B strings. (I bought the SDs because I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do, I should have saved my money.)
On a side note but, relevant: Thankfully, I learned my lesson. I’m upgrading a PRS SE standard with some humbuckers and this time I’m not bothering with SDs or some other “big brand” pickups; these Tonerider pickups are half the price and have just as good a tone– judging from my previous “upgrade” experience. I just picked up a Squier Strat and I’ll be coming to Tonerider when I do the upgrade on that..
Sean Barrett –
I purchased these pickups the other day for my classic vibe telecaster and they’ve completely brought it to life, great note definition and clarity and they handle gain really well which I wasn’t expecting due to their low output. I’ve bought pickups by Bareknuckle, House of Tone and the Creamery for my other guitars who are all good in their own way but charge 3 times the price of Tonerider. I was trying to save a bit of money this time round, so thought I’d give these a go after seeing the excellent demonstration videos on youtube and seeing good things on forums for many years. I’ve been blown away by how good they are. Great build quality, comes well presented and with a wiring diagram for ease. I’m already eyeing up a pair of the the Classic Blues Strat pickups. If you’re thinking about trying these out, don’t hesitate.