Steel Pole 43 Tele
P90 Aggression for Telecaster®
$130 – $260
Stand out in the mix and transform your Telecaster into a P90 powerhouse with Steel Pole 43s for Tele. You won’t get a traditional Telecaster tone out of these pickups, and that’s the point! Featuring a high-output coil design and an aggressive magnet structure, this is as close to the famous P90 tone as we can get on a Tele. Don’t be afraid to get dirty – experience the expertly-crafted blend of P90 and Tele pickups, and discover what you’ve been missing.
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Tele Looks, P90 Guts.
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Features
Are you searching for the perfect P90 tone, but want to keep your Telecaster looks? We got you right here: Steel Pole 43s are the highest-output Telecaster Pickups we make and feature the thickest midrange and most aggressive attack.
Thicker and louder than our Steel Pole 42’s, The Steel Pole 43 leans even more towards the tone of a traditional P90. They are guaranteed to push your amp hard while still retaining all the definition and clarity you’ve come to expect from Fralin Pickups.
Features:
- Original Fender Size, Lindy Fralin Design
- P90 Tone in a Telecaster size
- Strong and bold – lots of midrange and snarl
- USA-made Ceramic Magnets for aggressive tone and output
- Compensated Bridge for even volume across all pickups
- RW/RP Neck pickup for a hum-canceling middle position
- Adjustable Steel Pole pieces for fine-tuning string balance
- Hand-wound with our “Sectioning” technique for unique, dynamic tone
- Hand-built for unrivaled quality control
- Backed by our 10-Year Warranty on manufacturing defects
Our manufacturing process allows us to achieve unparalleled quality control. The Steel Pole 43 for Tele consists of a precision injection mold, USA-Made Steel Screws, and USA-Made magnets to make this model scream. Each bobbin is carefully inspected and cleaned before winding, and checked three times before shipping for unparalleled quality control.
We wind each pickup by hand, one at a time using our proprietary “Sectioning” technique, which gives the pickup a sweet, clear tone. Finally, we wax-pot the pickup to prevent microphonics and preserve the pickup for years to come.
Sound
Steel Pole 43s are the closest we can get to a traditional P90 tone, with Telecaster looks. They are the perfect pickups to warm-up a particularly bright and thin-sounding guitar. If you play clean, you can expect a super thick and creamy midrange. You’ll instantly notice the warm tonal quality, round pick attack, and percussive character of the Steel Pole 43s.
When playing with distortion, you can expect a thick, aggressive top-end and midrange and a “chainsaw” grind, similar to P90s. Steel Pole 43s will hit the front-end of your amp hard and break up quickly.
The midrange is prominent on this pickup, which is suitable for all music styles of music, from Rock to Jazz, and sounds excellent on 500K pots. Finally, if you need the most output out of your Tele or are merely looking to give your Telecaster a unique voice, Steel Pole 43s are your go-to choice.
Sound Samples for Steel Pole 43 Tele:
About this Sound Clip:
All sound samples are played from Neck Position First and Bridge Position Last.
Tonal Graph For Steel Pole 43 Tele:
The tonal graph below for our Steel Pole 43 Tele features Lows, Midrange, Highs, and general Output.
Attack: Stiff & Percussive
Tech Specs:
See below for the estimated DCR and Polarity Information for our Steel Pole 43 Tele.
This pickup features a reversible coil direction. We can supply a 3-Wire lead which allows you to reverse the phase easily.
| SPECIFICATION | VALUE |
|---|---|
| Neck Ohm Reading: | 8.8K 1 |
| Bridge Reading: | 10.6K |
| Neck Polarity: | North To Strings, Counter-Clockwise Coil Direction |
| Bridge Polarity: | South To Strings, Clockwise Coil Direction |
| Wire: | USA-Made 43-Gauge Single Poly Nylon |
| Pole Pieces: | USA-Made Steel Screws |
| Magnets: | USA-Made Ceramic |
| Recommended Pot Value: | 500K* |
| Recommended Cap Value: | 0.02mfd 2 |
Additional Technical Info:
1 Ohm Readings can vary due to a multitude of factors, including ambient temperature, multimeter calibration, different wire batches, and other factors. Due to this, ohm readings are approximate. Learn more about Ohm Readings here.
2 We recommend a 0.02mfd Cap Value on most guitar and bass pickups. The exception is a Magic Cap, which Lindy prefers on the Bridge Pickup of Fender® guitars only. Learn More about Caps Here.
* You can experiment with pot values for a different tone. This pickup will sound very dark and warm on 250K pots
Polarity Information:
Here's how we wind and magnetize our pickups:
Note: We depict all our coil directions from Ground (Black Wire, or Start Wire) to Hot (White Wire, or Finish Wire).
Steel Pole 43 Tele Dimensions:
Get it prewired
Go the extra mile and combine our Steel Pole 43 Tele with a Telecaster Control Plate!:
Featured Reviews
Reviews We Worked Hard For, and Are Proud Of
Customer Reviews
80 Genuine Reviews for Steel Pole 43 Tele
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The most versatile Tele bridge pickup I’ve heard per delivering both beautiful, rich, chimey cleans and shimmery, warm, thick, ‘non-spikey’ (often a problem with standard Tele bridge pickups) overdrive tones. Can’t do without ’em.
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This is a fantastic pickup! It does exactly what I expected. Fat warm tone with that p90 punch the description for this pickup was spot on and I am glad I made the purchase. If you want to get serious about your tele tone, get a Lindy Fralin Steel Pole 43!
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I put the sp43 in a custom build tele that I put together and it absolutely kills, I never imagined it would sound so great. Because of the sp43 I’m probably going to find a way to build more guitars just so I can put fralin pickups in them!
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These pickups are extremely versatile but have a “bite” that I have not heard in any other Tele pickups. Not sure if a Tele tone purist would appreciate them as much as I do, but the obvious quality of build and sound is undeniable. I love these. *Full disclosure: I also have a complete set of Lindy’s Steel Pole 43s in a Strat, so I am a returning customer. If you like a bit of grit and bite to your tone, you will likely love these.
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These pickups meet the ear far more powerfully than the eye let’s on. I let them rip 1 good time when the build was finished and my eyebrows hit the roof and made an audible ping. Looks like a tele. Sounds like 10 teles all being played by jesus and driven through the heavens by dale Earnhardt. What power and tone. Unparalleled.
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Fantastic twangy crunch. Like a Telecaster on steroids. The combination of these pickups on a Glendale bridge is awesome.
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I bought these for a customer a while back. I had some work to do on the body of his guitar, which took awhile and I finally installed these and got them wired up not long ago with a few touches underneath. These have got to be some of the best sounding tele pickups i have ever heard. They break up around 6 or 7, which is perfect for this customer and absolutely sound incredible. I am building a few tele’s for blues/rock and i am hoping to get a Yardbirds/Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page vibe from them. I will be ordering these within the next month. Great pickups. If you feel that there might be another set that I should consider as well, please let me know.
Jeff Hughes
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Twangy and Dirty- In the Best Way Possible
The Steel Pole Tele bridge pickup sounds crazy. It’s so dirty on its own, with the familiar twang from traditional Tele bridge pickups. -
Pickups for everything
Clean to mean. 4th set of Fralins. Only pickups I will use. -
Just What I Needed. More than enough bite for my Tele. Cleans up nice too.
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Which of your kids do you love most? Both! Can say the same about my pickups!
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I blew a serious load, when I started using these pickups. I could hardly get it up, with regular pickups, but these got my shorts sticky, for sure!
I came like a camel! -
Best Single Coil ever! Impressive sounding single coil. Hot output, great bass, clean highs, excellent tonal quality.
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I installed a Steel Pole 43 Neck and Bridge in my maple neck tele. I love them. Sound wise they are about 60% P90 and 40% tele. Just the thing to thicken up the sound on an overly bright tele. They are louder than std. tele pickups, which is great, just roll a bit of volume off and you get regular tele output. I prefer setting the amp loud and controlling the volume from my guitar anyway.
I highly recommend these to anyone wanting to add a P90 type flavor to their tele.
Be advised these a slightly larger than some tele neck pickups. My original neck route was too small (the guitar is not a Fender, I made it.) so I routed it a bit deeper and expanded the size to that of a strat neck. The pickup is not as large as a strat neck, I just wanted a bit of room to work with. The magnets underneath make it a bit taller than stock tele, and the cover clips stuck out slightly further than the neck pickup that was installed. This may be no issue with a real USA Fender, but it is easily remedied if needed.
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Fixed my issue. I love teles with all my heart. The location of the control plate and the range of tones you can get make it such a versatile instrument. I really love the sound of standard tele pups for country and Americana type stuff, or for accompanying songwriters etc, but for the indie rock gigs where the band has multiple guitars I was having this issue where the neck pup sounded too hollow, didn’t sit in the mix of the band very well, and the bridge was too thin and bright if I tried to compensate on the amp. These sp43s solved that, brought the neck pup forward into the mix, added those mids that I needed, and beefed up the bridge too, which now has that p90 growl along with the typical sizzle you would expect. Kept the tele vibe for sure, so don’t worry about it totally changing the personality of the tele, it’s just alters it a bit. Couldn’t be happier!
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I play in an old school Rock and Roll, Jump Blues, Rockabilly band. These pickups give me the versatility to go from clean to pushed effortlessly. I was pleasantly surprised. The guitar I put them on went from being a reserve guitar to now being played more than these rest.
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This was the missing piece to my tone! I bought the bridge pickup for my thinline tele and it has brought so much more thickness to my tone without sacrificing clarity. To me this is how a tele should sound! Like others have said, you don’t loose the twang of the tele but it gives you much more clarity, punch, and power! No more thin, shrill tone on my tele! Could not recommend these enough!
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I have owned my bridge SP 43 for maybe 6 years now. I am not normally a tele player, so this pickup is a great trade off for my ears. I didn’t want that very thin (in my opinion) scooped mid stock tele bridge sound but I DID want that tele bridge sound! Ha! So if you normally play humbuckers, this is a great compromise to get that tele sound and still have some beef.
However…this still twangs and has that noted tele high end sizzle. Don’t be scared that it won’t sound like a tele. It will. Just with fatter mids, in my opinion. 5 stars for me! -
Epic tone. The high quality is obvious straight outta the box. Once you have it soldered in place the smile on your mug will grow ear to ear as you start playing. A great combo of clarity, punch, and power. You don’t loose twang with these, it sounds like a tele… but with the twang you gain depth. Stellar!
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I love these pickups. I have a set in my Standard Tele & in my Nashville Tele. I enjoy the utility value of a Tele guitar with the richer, warm, clear sound of SP43’s. More tone, less twang. I especially appreciate their ceramic magnet construction which enables raising the pickups close to the strings without any interfering string pull from the magnets. They are bright enough for my taste, with guitar tone wide open and amp tones near center. Plenty of room for more bass and/or treble. For me, they make a Tele a far more versatile guitar which is able to cover the tasks of solid, semi-hollow, and hollow body instruments, all in one. These great pickups, with the Fralin team support, make this my preferred source for pickups. I just ordered a set of SP42’s for my Strat clone.
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