Tele bridge HB recommendations

JohnPerry

Looking for recommendations for a Tele bridge humbucker. By which I mean Tele bridge-sized. Something that will slot straight in. 

Nothing too overpowered, just with some toneful beef and no s/c hum. 

Anyone got experience with these?

Dimarzio Chopper T seems well liked but maybe our various UK makers have an alternative (can't see one on the Mojo site though) 

Funkfingers

Chopper T is good if you don't adjust it too close to the strings.

Seymour Duncan Li'l Pearly Gates For Telecaster is nice. The BG1400 stacked coils pickup has power but needs partial coil split to twang.

OilCityPickups

Marc isn't the only UK maker :-) 
https://www.oilcitypickups.co.uk/product-page/the-redneck

ICBM

OilCityPickups said:

I love the offset poles on the bridge pickup - I don’t think I’ve seen any other maker do that, and it’s so much more *right* when the pickup is angled under the strings.

TeleMaster

I always use a Lil 59 in my Tele bridges. 

JohnPerry

OilCityPickups said:

Marc isn't the only UK maker :-) 
https://www.oilcitypickups.co.uk/product-page/the-redneck

PMd you! 

Thanks for the suggestions so far, all

earwighoney

OilCityPickups said:

Marc isn't the only UK maker :-) 
https://www.oilcitypickups.co.uk/product-page/the-redneck

What pots do you recommend you use with those? They look superb.  

I reckon the bridge would work well in a Tele with a HB in the neck. 

paulnb57

Lil 59 works for me

Svartmetall

The Little '59 is great - I have one in a Mex Tele and I love it, it goes really well with a full-size neck HB too (I have an Iron Gear Blues Engine in mine).

JohnPerry

OilCityPickups said:

Marc isn't the only UK maker :-) 
https://www.oilcitypickups.co.uk/product-page/the-redneck

Bought one of these and got Ash to wind it a little hotter (I'm used to Broadcaster spec) and it is perfect. Great output and clarity, no hum. Very much recommend

Funkfingers

JohnPerry said:

… got Ash to wind it a little hotter (I'm used to Broadcaster spec) 

Fender 1950/51 Broadcaster pickups are not vastly "hotter" than 1953/54 Telecaster pickups. Their D.C. resistance meter readings are higher to compensate for the weaker A3 magnets compared to the A5 that became standard later. There is also the matter of the different copper wire gauges and the rod magnet diameters. 

IMO, how fat a Blackguard T-type guitar sounds has more to do with how chunky the neck is.

JohnPerry

My experience of them is Mojo's Broadcaster bridge pickup (I have six I think) and they are certainly beefier than the stock Tele pickups they have replaced. 

OilCityPickups

earwighoney said:

OilCityPickups said:

Marc isn't the only UK maker :-) 
https://www.oilcitypickups.co.uk/product-page/the-redneck

What pots do you recommend you use with those? They look superb.  

I reckon the bridge would work well in a Tele with a HB in the neck. 

They should work well with 250 or 500k ... will really depend on your guitar.  

ICBM

It's actually not as big a difference as you might expect, although the devil is in the detail sometimes - the extra top-end bite from a 500K can really stand out, even though it's not huge...

If in doubt, a higher-output pickup usually sounds less bad with a 250K than a lower-output one does with a 500K, if that makes sense.

andy1839

I love the SD Red Devil for strats and have them in both of mine.

They're now doing it for Teles.

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

It's actually not as big a difference as you might expect, although the devil is in the detail sometimes - the extra top-end bite from a 500K can really stand out, even though it's not huge...

Agreed, it's the kind of thing that once you notice it, it's hard to un-notice, even though it's pretty subtle. That Vintage Tele I got recently, it seemed to have the same Wilkinson bridge pickup as a Fret-King Tele I also have- I never really liked it in the Fret-King, it didn't have enough twang. (It's relatively hot vintage output, ~7.6k or so.) But I could have sworn it sounded quite a bit better in the Vintage- it wasn't perfect, but sounded much more like a Tele bridge pickup, it was fairly twangy. (I wasn't able to compare the two directly as I'd taken the one out of the Fret-King and it was too much bother to put it back in just for a quick comparison.) I couldn't wait to replace it in the Fret-King, whereas the one in the Vintage you could have worked with just fine.

Anyway I thought all this before I knew what pots were in the Vintage- I just assumed they were 250k. Eventually I got around to measuring them, and they're 500k. All of a sudden it made sense!   (The Fret-King had 250k pots.)