Solderless Telecaster Blender System

Description

Accolades:

Guitarist Magazine – 10/10 Gold Award, Issue 516, November 2024, Gear of the Year Nominee December 2024

Guitar World, USA – 5 Star Review, November 2024

NEW! Our new Solderless Telecaster Blender System pairs a set of our handwound Telecaster Pickups with our award winning Telecaster Blender Mod. But … and this is a big ‘but’ – this time it’s in fully Solderless flavour! Armed with only a mini screwdriver, you can now upgrade the complete electronics engine of your fave Tele in not much more time than it takes to do a string change. No soldering. No hassle.

Your Tele. Three positions. But finally – full control. 

You love your Telecaster. The twang, the bite, the simplicity. But if you’ve ever sat in the neck position wishing for just a touch of the bridge pickup to liven things up – or found the bridge alone a little too much to tame – you already know exactly what this mod solves.

The Telecaster Blender Mod keeps everything you love about the standard Tele setup: your three way selector, your master volume. What changes is the tone knob. We’ve replaced it with a dual concentric pot that does two jobs in one footprint – no extra drilling, no extra holes, no compromising the Tele’s legendary simplicity.

The upper knob is your standard master tone, exactly as you’d expect.

The lower knob is the game changer. Turn it down from 10 and it gradually blends in whichever pickup isn’t active. In the Neck position? Dial in a touch of the bridge for a livelier rhythm sound. Bridge position a little too much? Bring the neck in to round off the twang and add warmth. At 10, the pot is completely removed from the circuit – zero colouration, zero compromise.

The real magic lives in the mid-range of the control. A subtle blend of bridge into neck is one of the best rhythm sounds a Tele can make. It’s a sound we’ve been chasing for years and at last it’s here.

Also worth knowing: if you opt for the Reverse Wound Reverse Polarity option when pairing the Blender Mod with a set of our pickups, the hum cancelling effect kicks in far earlier than with standard wiring – giving you an element of hum cancellation in all three positions. Perfect for those noisy stages!

The Solderless Telecaster Blender System comes with a set of our handwound pickups and a pre-wired harness with our ‘Radioshop Telecaster Blender Mod’ attached to a cardboard mount, complete with knobs, loaded with all USA grade components ready for you to install easily and transform your Tele’s tone.

Installing our Solderless Telecaster Blender System is a lovely way to spend an hour and the great news is you’ll be rewarded with a total tonal upgrade via your new pickups and control over both your pickups’ volume via your new blender mod. The transformative power of any one of our well balanced Telecaster pickups sets is truly something to behold and with the added versatility the Blender mod brings, you’ll be grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat in no time!

Watch the video below if you’d like to see more on the Blender Mod and how it works but the headline is this – you have your normal volume control and at the back of the control plate is a dual concentric pot set. The upper control is your normal ‘Master’ tone control and the lower control is the Blender. On ’10’ the Blender does absolutely nothing and is removed from the circuit completely. But dial that big ole’ knob (!) down and you can add as much of the neck pickup as you like when using the bridge pickup and vice versa. A truly great and versatile development for Tele players and one which bagged us five stars in Guitar World magazine and 10/10 and a Guitarist Gold award in issue 516 of Guitarist Magazine.

An instructional video on how to install the Solderless Telecaster Blender System is coming very soon but rest assured, your new Blender system comes with easy to follow instructions which will enable you to be strumming in no time. The long and short of it as follows though …

You have 6 spade connectors already installed by us:

• A white (hot) and black (ground) spade connector attached to your new jack which has been prewired by us. These will be connected to the blue terminal on the volume pot as per the product images. There’s a white circle showing where the white connection goes and the ground (black) is left blank.
• White and black spade connectors already attached to your bridge pickup. Connect these to the black terminal on the volume pot. White circle on the left for the White (hot). Black goes immediately to the right.
• White and black spade connectors already attached to your neck pickup. As above these go to the black terminal. This time, connect the white to the far right of the terminal (labelled with a white circle) and place the black control alongside the black one from the bridge pickup. Just follow the circles!

That’s it! Just remember to remove your existing jack (keeping aside for a future project) and also discard the ground connection which is sometimes trapped under the bridge assembly of the Telecaster – your new Bridge pickup has a ground connection which replaces the need for this!

Please Note – the Solderless Telecaster Blender System is only available with a set of our pickups.

Specification

• Includes a Set of our handwound pickups of your choice and a pre-wired Solderless harness attached to a cardboard mount with the ‘Radioshop Telecaster Blender Mod’
• Choice of Reverse Wound Reverse Polarity Bridge Pickup for hum cancelling when both pickups are used or ‘Vintage Spec non RWRP’
• 3 way Oak Grigsby Switch
• CTS 250k Volume Pot
• CTS Dual Concentric Tone Knob – Upper Knob: Master Tone, Lower Knob: Blender Pot to blend between pickups
• Choice of Sprague Orange Drop or Paper In Oil Capacitor (traditional Fender 0.047uf value)
• Switchcraft Mono Jack
• Comes with chrome or gold knurled knob for the Volume
• Choice of chrome, chrome with black or gold knurled knobs for the Dual Concentric Pot
• Does not include control plate or switch tip
• Blender pot is a No load potentiometer – performs no function and is removed from the tone circuit when on ’10’. Blends the pickups when set below ’10’

Watch: The Radioshop Telecaster Blender System with our Pure ’50s Tele set (set previously known as Vintage ’52s)