Split Steel Poled Tele

Years ago, I ordered a pair of Lindy Fralin humbuckers and installed them myself on a Carvin guitar I had custom ordered. Back then, I didn’t do my own setups — even though I removed the humbuckers the Carvin came with and did the pots, the soldering, and installation of the Fralin humbuckers. Point being that it was the best guitar I ever owned or played. Ever. And I had a lot of great ones way back when.
I mentioned not doing my own setups back then because I took that Carvin with the Fralin humbuckers in it to a luthier I had known for years and had him do the setup. He had repaired, set up, and worked on thousands of guitars over the years, and that Carvin with the Fralin pickups duly impressed him. He raved about the tone. And it was amazing.
I stopped playing a long time ago. Only to begin again at age 71, and at age 72, I began a one-man shop building custom electric guitars and doing setups. The first guitar I am building, what pickup maker did I go to? Lindy Fralin. I ordered the split pole bridge pickup for an Esquire build I’m doing.
I will be ordering other pickup makers’ pickups as I build guitars — but Fralin will be my #1 go-to pickup maker. Can’t beat ’em. Fantastic pickups. Great people to work with.

11 out of 10 ! I put this in a Tele I built paired with a noiseless P90 in the neck and this bridge pick up is just stellar. It is very clear plenty of twang but never shrill. I can get many useable tones out of it using the guitar tone & volume controls, it’s so much better than the Fender noiseless I was using. If your thinking about getting one don’t hesitate it will improve your guitar no doubt about it.

This was paired with the Alnico Noiseless P-90 for a customer. Really big with enhanced lower mid-bass and quiet. The staff recommended a 5% underwind to balance the neck pup choice and they were spot on. Another exceptional effort by Lindy and company. Pairing with the ANP-90 gives you a really big sounding guitar with a versatile tonal range. Once again, you can’t do better than Fralins.

Put this in a custom Esquire build, and it may be the best rock bridge pickup for a Tele I’ve ever played. From sparkly cleans with the volume rolled back to Zeppelin I when cranked, it is touch sensitive and, like the rest of Lindy’s stuff, has TONE.

I acquired this pickup in Jan 2023, and installed it in an esquire-type build (single pickup), intending to use it for rock and blues.

Initially, I had utilised 250K volume and tone pots, but it did not quite give me the kind of top-end presence and spank I was hoping for; I swapped out the tone pot for 500K and there it was.

I’m super happy with this purchase, so much so that I wished Lindy would do a “split SP42-type, 5% underwound” pickup for the neck to complement this wonderful bridge pickup. I know you guys do something like this for Strats, so perhaps do a Tele version!

I’ve played pretty much every style of music on guitar for 72 of my 77 years, and regularly modify my instruments to improve or attain a spectrum of tones via pickup selection, wiring harness and/or pot changes.
I expected that replacing the stock bridge pickup with the Steel Poled P90 bridge pickup would make a difference. But I was very surprised by how dramatically different the tonal range was improved and has changed the personality of the instrument while eliminating the usual single coil hum.

I installed this pickup into my Fender Telescater “Elite”, replacing the original bridge pup. The sound is now full and powerful and has the authority I was looking for. Now I can stop playing with various EQ’s to achieve what I’ve wanted to hear. It seems to be noiseless as claimed
when used with my Fender Deluxe Reissue. A great product!

I have a tele with a P-90 in the neck…the contrast with the standard tele pickup in the bridge was too much…there was almost no way to have my amp and effects set up in a way where both sounded stellar. It I set up for the P-90 to sing, the tele pickup was so weak and thin. I have other guitars with a twangy single coil in the bridge, so the solution was to get the split steel pole pickup…what a perfect match. Does not quite have the color and tone of true P-90 in the bridge…but it gets more than halfway there. And that is just fine because really, this pickup has a character all its own: 20% tele twang, 60% P-90, and 20% just pure uniqueness resulting in a great tone. I love playing lead on this pickup…it soaks up distortion with exactly the right amount of bite and body! Playing with both bridge and neck gets that twang and chime, but again, with some uniqueness I cant get from any other guitar I own. And in the end, that was exactly what I was looking for. I don’t need to sound like anyone else…I need to sound like me. And this pickup did the job! And of course, with zero hum.

Wow!! This is the sound I’ve been trying to get out of a bridge pickup for years. Amazing pickup and it pairs perfect with a Split Blade (Blues Output) neck pickup. I did the 4-way switch mod and these two pickups in series produce a fantastic lead tone!!

Prior to installing the Split Steel Poled P90, I had always struggled to dial in a good bridge tone with other pickups. No problem with this pickup. It has the perfect balance of lows and highs, and the midrange is perfect to cut through any mix! I highly recommend both of these pickups!

Lindy,
Great job, again, on split pole p90 T bridge pu rec’d from ya! Woody tone and aggressive! Perfect!
Doubt ya remember me, but was one of the partners in Sandstrummer Vintage Guitars- we hung out with ya in your basement after Richmond guit show back in the ’90s! Interested in using your pups- besides promoting ’em heavily here in myrtle beach- in some of my RICH Guitar builds and high-end, boutique guit partner, Swamp Donkey Guitars. Interested in quantity price list if good for ya! Thanks, and, great job, again!
Rich

This was purchased as part of a mod for my main guitar, a switch to P90 pups and a few other upgrades. I wanted hum-cancelling P90s that would work with the guitar’s routing (there’s barely any options out there for a P90 in a Tele bridge housing, especially hum-cancelling). This fit the bill, so I went for it and I couldn’t be happier. The sound is articulate, warm, & versatile, whether as a clean signal or nice ‘n’ dirty. It works well with every one of my pedals as well as every combination of effects I’ve thrown at it so far. As of today, I’ve used it for blues, alternative, jazz, various forms of rock, reggae, nu metal, & even singer-songwriter/folk; I recommend it for pretty much anything!

Yeah, I know, everyone raves about that tele bridge traditional sound. I say forget tradition; get something better. Get this pickup!

The Fralin split Pole Tele noiseless bridge is a monster!
It is aggressive like a P90, and still keeps that Twang spank!

As others have said: This is not a conventional tele bridge pickup, although it can be “tamed” somewhat with judicious use of your volume control. This is mostly p-90, all the chankiness for sure. I got the stock wind and there’s plenty of girth on tap. No hum obviously which is miraculous. Solo your back pickup and it’s instant Les Paul junior. I think this pickup would be great with a noiseless p-90 in the neck, another steel pole, p-92 or maybe stock paf-style humbucker? I’m using a Novak DA/GT gold foil humbucker in the neck, and it’s not *as* good mixed as I’d like, there’s more tonal contrast than I was expecting, but I think I need to get a resistor into the circuit and/or tweak the “phase”. Thankfully, both pickups sound complete on their own, so the neck+bridge sound isn’t critical at this point. It’s currently wired up with 500k pots and a .022mf cap, with the neck pickup coil switching on a mini toggle.

Great pick up! The clarity of the tone and hearing the distinct string tones is awesome. Delivers the P-90 tone in a Tele pick up!

The split pole picked is fantastic ! Has the perfect amount of output and tone is great. Quiet with no room buzz ! So great that I put them into 2 tele’s and one strat !

Just got the pickups today, and set straight to putting them in after work.

I got a 5% underwound Split Steel Pole Tele bridge pickup and a vintage Split Blade Tele neck pickup for the bridge and middle positions of my Tele, which are combined with an existing low-ish output HB at the neck which I really like.

Holy frijoles, what a great sounding pair of pickups these two I just installed are! It feels almost like a lie not to precede ‘great sounding’ with an expletive multiplier! (Sorry, I grew up next to a Naval Air Station in NJ, so cussing is like breathing in my home town).

Ok, so the 5 way switch options:

By itself, the 5% underwound bridge pickup has the perfect blend of Tele and P90 – the tone of a great Tele bridge pickup mixed with the attack, cojones, and midrange presence of a P90. Absolutely killer tones with bite!

Add in the Split Rail neck pickup with that, and you get what a Strat’s bridge/middle pair would sound like after they’d been through an intensive body-building program – all of the cluck, with some serious muscle behind it.

Switch to the middle position, and the bridge/middle pair sounds good like a Tele should with the neck pickup’s default parallel HB setting. Oh, and grab your electrical-taped capo and grunt with your bends, folks, because it gets into Albert Collins territory when you pull that knob up to go series on the HB. It does a bang-up Micawber imitation, too.

Next up is not neck/middle like you’d expect, but neck/bridge with the famous Bill Lawrence 1/2 out of phase wiring. Nice, slightly nasal tone with the HB in parallel mode, and a little bit more nose when you put it in series. Very usable tones! Sounds great ahead of a hot, driven amp to get the GR-RRR! without the flubby lows you can sometimes encounter with overdrive.

Finally, for the sake of completing the 5 switch positions list, the neck by itself. It is great, but is not relevant to this review. 🙂

Oh, and the best thing of all? These pickups KNOW THE WORDS! Absolutely NO humming! 😀 I wish I could give them 6 stars!