These Seth Lover Wide Range (WR) humbuckers came from a 1972 Fender
Telecaster Deluxe. The pickups are unpotted and the original harness has 1
Meg Ω pots for its two Volume and two Tone controls.
Before installing any pickups—especially used or vintage units—use a multimeter to confirm they’re working and measure their DC resistance. This vintage WR bridge pickup has a DC resistance of 10.34k Ω. That‘s hot! Testing
also revealed that the vintage neck WR humbucker was almost dead.
Both are great pickups,
but there is no substitute for
the original.
Test Before You Solder!
Before attacking the electron-
ics with my soldering iron,
I needed to test the pickups
to know what I was working
with. This is where things
got interesting. I got out my
multimeter to test the original
pickups to make sure they
were still functional. The WR
neck pickup was practically
dead—this made my heart
sink! (My client wasn’t too
happy either.) Fortunately, the
vintage bridge pickup was per-
fect. At this point, we decided
to leave the WR reissue pickup
in the neck position and install
the original ’ 72 pickup in the
bridge position. Though we
couldn’t use it for this project,
the client will get the vintage
WR neck pickup rewound by
an expert.
