Telecaster Pickups

[Jarick]

What's everyone's preference for Tele pickups?

I'm going back and forth between true single coils and Dimarzio noiseless. The single coils are K-Line Signature, which is an 8k A5 bridge and a 6k A5 neck pickup. It's supposed to be a little hotter bridge and a little clearer neck than traditional, but I still find the bridge a bit thin (neck is fine). For noiseless, I have the Dimarzio Area T Hot bridge and standard Area T neck. Sometimes I prefer the thicker bridge sound and sometimes it seems too mid-focused and dull. The neck is fine.

Thinking about checking out a Suhr Classic T bridge as I liked it previously (hotter and fatter than traditional), but specs are close to the K-Line so not sure how big a swing there may be.

Also, maybe worth trying the cheap Tonerider Hot Classic?

 

[Eagle]

It’s hard to look at Tele pickups without staring at the beginning.
A 43awg Alnico 3 bridge with slightly thicker poles and a steel baseplate. Also around 10k.

 

[andergtr]

i have several teles and all have different pickups and do different things. below are the ones i have and a brief description...

Fender	Deluxe Nashville Telecaster
Fender	Special Edition Custom Telecaster FMT HH
Fender	Telecaster (made from Fender parts)
Keith Holland	Tuxedo Tele
Squier	Classic Vibe '50s Telecaster
Squier	Classic Vibe '60s Custom Telecaster
Squier	Classic Vibe '70s Telecaster Deluxe

nashville tele is stock...on loan to a friend but i remember the stock noiseless pickups are traditional sounding, but with some loss of top end detail (as is the case with nearly every noiseless pickup design).

special edition tele HH...stock with a duncan 59 in the neck and a duncan pearly gates in bridge. this has a mahogany body and neck and it is a set neck design (maple top, probably a thin veneer), so it has more of a gibson kinda vibe to it. fender scale length, though, so more articulation and less of that midrange honk that gibsons have.

telecaster from parts...i made a brent mason-style one with a duncan mini humbucker in the neck, a duncan hot strat stack in the middle and a duncan vintage tele stack in the bridge. gets that strattish kinda in-between sounds in positions 2 and 4, but without any hum. the tele stack in the bridge is obviously tele and not strat, so a bigger, beefier bottom end and more lower-mid punch. the mini humbucker is way cool...thicker sounds than a single coil but still lots of articulation and top end.

holland tele...has duncan quarter pounders in there that are tapped so i can get the traditional tele twang in the tapped setting and a much beefier, chunkier sound with all the windings. super versatile. shitty soundclips here:

think power cables don’t make a difference? think again…

like i said in another post about cables, i used to think that just plugging into anything decent would result in the same tone. i figured that as long as the cable was wired with a decent end and…

andergtr.com

squier 50s CV...i put lambertones blondies in here, and they are bright and killer. a good example of how they sound is on this soundclip here:

lambertones pickups…

there are so many boutique pickup makers. do we really need another one? maybe not, but i really dig what kurtis lamberton is doing with his lambertones pickups.i met kurtis on a facebook page call…

andergtr.com

squier 60s CV...did a richie kotzen kinda thing with a dimarzio chopper T in the bridge and a dimarzio twang king in the neck. the chopper T does the traditional tele with more balls and output than a stock tele pickup.

squier 70s CV...this has fender's reissue wide range humbuckers with the real cunife magnets. definitely has a more bigger sound but lots of clarity and definition that you won't get from a standard humbucker, even a lower-output PAF. here is an example of it on a hillsong song that we are recording for my church:

A Thousand Hallelujahs (Rough guitars).mp3

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