Seymour Duncan Vintage Stack Tele Neck, STK-T1n

From the manufacturer:

application

Vintage-voiced Hum-cancelling pickup. Perfect for traditional country, country pop, chicken pickin', rockabilly, blues, and classic rock.

description
Vintage-voiced hum-cancelling pickup. Perfect for traditional country, country pop, chicken pickin', rockabilly, blues, and classic rock.

complete setup
Available for both rhythm (neck) and lead (bridge) positions.

guitars
For all well-balanced instruments. Works equally well with maple and rosewood fingerboards.

players
Brent Mason, Pete Anderson / Dwight Yoakam, Dale Oliver / Blackhawk & Reba McIntire, Ronnie Montrose, Matt Bellamy / Muse, Matt Hocking / Edgar Winter Band, Geoffrey Whitehorn / Roger Daltry Band 

Seth's picks for best videos/sound-clips:

This demo is pretty amazing. This is a great guitar player from Thailand named Vinai Trinateepakdee and he's playing a custom Thanakorn guitar with and interesting pickup arrangement. The neck and bridge pickups are the STK-T1n and STK-T3b, as you'd expect, but it also has an additional STK-T1n in the middle position, allowing for some cool wiring options. Vinai starts by playing a tune with a backing track. The guitar's pickup selector is in the middle position, but in this case, the 5 way switch has been wired so that the neck and bridge pickup are together just like a normal Tele in the middle position. After some tasty playing, he switches to what I would call position "4" on his 5-way switch, which is the STK-T3b played in conjunction with the middle STK-T1n. At 1:06, he switches to the neck STK-T1n alone, and plays some really great lines. He switches to the STK-T3b at 1:22 and plays a beautiful climbing lead, shredding it up with a cool descending sextuplet run at 1:34. At 2:00 in, he goes through each position of his switch alone, without the backing track, so we can get a better idea about the sound of these pickups. So, in order, it goes like this: 2:00 is the neck STK-T1n alone; 2:59 is the neck STK-T1n and the middle STK-T1n played in conjunction; 3:40 is the neck STK-T1n and STK-T3b together; 4:12 is the middle STK-T1n and the STK-T3b together; 4:30 is the STK-T3b alone. After that, he goes through each pickup selector position again quickly, playing some really great stuff from 6:24 to the end. Although these pickups are "Vintage" stacks, they really hold their own in a modern context. So tasty!

This video features both the STK-T1n and the STK-T3b in a custom made "parts-caster" with parts made by Musikraft played through a BlackStar HT-1 Amplifier. He begins in by playing with the STK-T3b, and there's some great playing from 0:25 to 0:49. At 0:49, he switches to the middle position and we hear the nice buzz-free vintage Telecaster sound. Listen for good stuff at 1:15. Finally, at 1:37, we hear the STK-T1n alone. He plays some amazing stuff at 1:45. Great feel and technique! 

This video is cool for lots of reasons: first, the STK-T1n and STK-T3b equipped Fender Squier Affinity Telecaster STK-T1n and STK-T3b this lady is playing has been outfitted with a special 4-way switch. This means that in addition to the normal Telecaster sounds, it has a position that allows the pickups to be wired in series, so it sounds much more like a traditional humbucking pickup than the normal Telecaster's middle position. This guitar has another trick up it's sleeve. The tone pot is a push/pull pot that grounds the hum-cancelling coils, giving a huge amount of tonal colors to a seemingly simple two pickup guitar. One more reason this video is cool is that she plays each position of her four way switch first with the tone all the way up, then with the tone rolled off in four steps until the tone is all the way off. Also, after playing with the pickup in a particular position, she pulls the the push/pull pot up and coil-taps the pickups. Then she does the same tone roll off routine with the push/pull pot in the tapped position. If you don't know how a 4-way switch works in a Telecaster, here are the positions, from closest to the lower bout (what we would think of as the normal Tele bridge position)to closest to the neck (what we would think of as a normal Tele neck position): 1. Bridge pickup alone 2. Bridge and neck pickups together in parallel (what we would think of as the normal Tele middle position sound) 3. Neck pickup alone and 4. Bridge and neck pickups together in series. So starting from the beginning of the video, from 0:00 until 6:15, she goes methodically through the pickup and tone control possibilities playing a clean strummed rhythm, starting in position 1 and moving through position 5. After she finishes with each pickup, she plays through it again, this time with the coil tap engaged. At 6:15, she does the same thing all over again, this time changing her rhythm to a fingerpicked figure. This video is great. Makes me want to make one of my Teles a "Swiss Army Knife" like this!

Here's one that has the STK-T1n in a Mexican made Fender Telecaster, this time being played through a Headstrong Lil' King Reverb amplifier. He starts the demo by playing a little on each position of the pickup selector switch, just to give us the general flavor of the different sounds totally dry before he adds effects. At 2:25, he starts a nice demo of the STK-T1n with reverb, comping some nice jazz changes. Again, I like the added output the STK-T1n provides, without that annoying Tele hum. From 2:57 to 3:28,  he adds some compression to the sound and plays some lead and some garage rock rhythm. Then he does some stuff with the bridge pickup, in this case the Seymour Duncan Lil' 59 for Tele ST59-1b. At 5:09, he returns to the neck pickup, adding some overdrive and delay. Then he ends the demo of the STK-T1n by playing it clean again, with just some reverb. I was surprised to hear how well this pickup sounds with distortion and delay. It makes a nice companion to the ST59-1b.

This one is interesting not only because it features the STK-T1n in a Fender Squier Standard Series Stratocaster. It's also interesting because there are 3 STK-T1n's in this Strat! The thing is, he only plays with the middle pickup for this entire video. He plays some pretty tasty blues though. I especially like the playing and tone from 1:50 to about 2:30. Tone without buzz! I have never considered putting 3 Tele pickups in a Strat, but this makes me want to try it.

I like this one because this guy first lets us hear the stock pickups in his Fender Mexican Telecaster before he upgrades them. He lets us hear the stock Fender pickups toward the beginning of the video, after an explanation of what he's going to have changed. We hear the stock neck pickup at 5:25 (though it seems to be mislabeled in the video), and at 6:09, he plays the stock neck and bridge together (though again, it's mislabeled in the video). At 7:07, we hear the stock pickups together through the TC Electronic Rottweiler Distortion pedal. At 7:14, we hear the neck pickup alone through the Distortion. Then the video resumes after the new mods have been done. He has put in the Seymour Duncan Lil' 59 for Tele ST59-1b in the bridge and a STK-T1n in the neck, changed the bridge itself, and changed the 3-way switch to a 4-way. At 10:27, we hear both pickups in parallel with a clean tone. They sound much stronger than the stock pickups. We hear the clean STK-T1n alone at 11:07, and at 12:01, we get the pickups together in series...and that's where it kinda ends as far as the neck pickup goes, as the rest of the video is just a demo of the ST59-1b with the distortion pedal. The STK-T1n sounds infinitely better than the stock pickups, and are noise-free. Nice illustration of how to make your inexpensive guitar sound like a boutique guitar.

This is a great demo video, because this guy plays really well and we get to hear the guitar alone through the amp without a lot of effects on it. He's playing his 80's Korean Fender Tele with the STK-T3b in the bridge (obviously), and the STK-T1n in the neck (obviously). He starts in the neck position, playing some cool "Hendrixy" chordal stuff before switching to the middle position at 0:38. He plays some more nice country open-string lines and chordal patterns until 0:46, when he switches to the STK-T3b alone, again playing some really interesting jangly open-string sequences and chords, including a cool pedal-steel type bent string lick. At 1:18, we're back in the neck position and he plays some really tasty and soulful stuff here. These pickups sound to me like a cool vintage set with a hair more output, and no 60 cycle hum, of course. He switches into the middle position again at 1:38, playing some sustained open chords a bit more. At 2:00, we hear the STK-T3b by itself again, and after some rhythmic open chords, he lets loose with some great chicken pickin' at 2:18, and this pickup sounds amazing for this. I was worried the stacked humbucking sound would make the guitar sound unlike a Tele, but this video proved that I didn't need to worry at all. At 2:27 he plays some amazing cascading jazz lines before ending with a really badass jazz chordal figure from 2:37 to the end. Great playing, great demo of the sounds possible with the STK-T1n and STK-T3b.