One of the projects that I have been putting off for a while is the installation of new pickups in my Malden Mozak offset tele-type guitar. It is my only Tele-type guitar, and my main reference for the Telecaster tone. The balance between the stock bridge and neck pickups was ultimately something that I thought could be improved on the guitar. The bridge position hit the front end of my amps in a pleasing way, but the neck position was dark and quiet.
Malden Mozak.
I bought a set of Bootstrap Original Recipe Alnico III pickups as a cost effective upgrade to the stock Alnico V pickups. It took about a month for me to get the pickups in the fall of 2020, and I knew that the wait times would only increase as the brand got more popular. The current price for these US-made pickups is still less than some import sets I was considering like the Tonerider Tele pickups. The DC resistance of the pickups are 6.32kohm for the bridge and 7.20kohm for the neck. I had forgotten that the DC resistance of the bridge pickup was lower than the neck pickup.
The Malden Mozak will be modified as follows:
New pickups.
250K linear pots to replace stock 500K pots.
0.022uF Orange Drop capacitor.
Gotoh In-Tune compensated brass saddles.
New 3 way switch.
Edit: 5-14-21 - I recently completed the swap of the bridge and the pickups onto the Mozak. I got a a chance to measure the stock pickups by themselves, before I retire them in a storage bin. The stock bridge pickup's DC resistance was 7.78kohm and the neck pickup's resistance was 7.02kohm.
Bridge saddle swap prior to pickup swap.
I maintained the action and pickup heights to match the stock configuration, as they were within typical recommended values for Telecasters. I kept the old strings on throughout the installation, recording DIs to compare afterwards. I first replaced the bridge saddles with the Gotoh saddles. The Gotoh saddles seem to even out the guitar's sound. I set the intonation using the Cockos ReaTune plugin as my tuner. I was able to get within 1 cent on all strings, except for the A string being ~3 cents off. The stock saddles intonated fairly well in the past, but I think I got better results with the Gotoh saddles.
Part of the reason for putting off the project is the minor inconvenience of taking off the bridge to swap the bridge pickup. The stock guitar stayed in relatively good tuning for months at a time, and I was worried that I could not restore its stability with my skills. Time will tell. The installation ended up being a mostly painless swap, although it would've been much easier had I taken all the strings off. The pole pieces of the Bootstrap bridge pickup are flush with the pickup cover, while the stock pickup pieces are raised. The Bootstrap order came with several 1/4" length pieces of tubing to set pickup height, but I reused the stock springs to set the bridge pickup height at 3/32".
After bridge saddle installation and pickup swap.
The stock neck pickup was supported with foam, so I had to cut 3/8" lengths of tubing to get the Bootstrap neck pickup to match the height. The stock neck pickup cover was curved to somewhat match the neck radius, while the Bootstrap neck cover is flat. I used the high and low E string heights to set the pickup height at 7/64".
Comparison of stock pickups vs Bootstrap pickups after pickup swap.
The component swaps were overall an upgrade to the existing hardware. The pickups are more balanced than stock, and the rest of the electronics are more in line with a typical modern telecaster.
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