Seymour Duncan Antiquity Tele Neck Pickup - Chrome Cover Unaged

Make a really good sounding Tele neck pickup is more challenging than you would expect, and the Seymour Duncan Antiquity Retrospec'd (un-aged) Tele Neck cracks the code for authentic vintage tone. The Duncan Antiquity Tele neck pickup is scatter-wound, and uses Alnico V magnets for a fulsome tone and just enough bite for lively picking.

What is scatter winding? With a machine wound pickup, wire is automatically fed onto the spinning pickup bobbin in straight even layers. It's fast and efficient. But parallel wires carrying a current (guitar signal) can induce capacitance in the wires, which attenuates high frequencies and can make the pickup sound less lively. With a hand wound pickup, the operator feeds the wires onto the bobbin in more of a random pattern, and often a more loosely packed coil. The wrapping pattern of the wire is "scattered" and not neatly lined up. The lack of tightly stacked parallel wires reduces the capacitance effect, and the pickup will sound a little brighter and more airy. Back in the day scatter winding was a result of pickup winding being mostly manual, and not an intentional practice to create the best tone. As pickup builders like Seymour Duncan unlocked some the magic of vintage pickups, scatter winding became a feature and not a bug. 

In the words of Seymour Duncan....

The Antiquity Tele Lead will give you that early-’50s Tele tone, but with the high end sweetened by the custom-calibrated, hand-ground Alnico 2 rod magnets. What you get is the classic Tele twang and snap, but with a treble response that is bright but never piercing.

The Antiquity Tele Rhythm is a faithful reproduction of an early-’50s Tele neck pickup. The bass response is full and round, and will add richness to your chords, while the specially calibrated hand-ground Alnico 5 rod magnets and custom coil winding give the top end a smoother, more musical attack. It’s great for big, bold rhythm playing, and percussive enough for classic country-style chicken pickin’, with a reverse wound/reverse polarity design for hum-canceling when used in combination with the Antiquity Tele Lead pickup.

Each pickup is hand-fabricated and scatter-wound in our Custom Shop. We use vintage-style push-back cloth wire, a custom deep-drawn cover for neck models, and all Antiquity Tele vintage Telecaster pickups are lacquered and potted in lamp black paraffin wax, just like they were in the ’50s.

Alnico 5 magnets
6.5K DC resistance