I have a freind who wants to put some sort of active electronics into his Tele. I know that if it's 'inside' the guitar it's not technically a 'stomp box' but.. has anyone tried anything? Any recommendations?
I guess you have to ask what's the motivation for putting the active electronics in in the first place. A simple JFET preamp might be good enough, like the Alembic Stratoblaster for example.
You should read "pickup simulation" at AMZ fx, and there was that "vintage cable simulator" thread at this forum at the end of last year somewhere. Someone posted this nice link recently (thanx, I found Gibson L6S schem somehow from there), http://www.gitarrenelektronik.de/index.html, some info may found there.
Well, I have not tried myself to put a preamp in a guitar, but I think there is a risk if you just stick a mega high impedance fet preamp in your axe with normal pickups, you may lose your traditional Tele tone. I believe with some info you can tailor suitable loading for your Tele pickups *before* the built-in preamp or something. I guess it might be necessary to do some testing.