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Best Tele bridge pickup to pair with an original WRHB neck pickup?

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  • Best Tele bridge pickup to pair with an original WRHB neck pickup?

    Hey everyone, new to the forum, but not guitars or pickups! I use the same handle over at TDPRI, where I've been a member for a loooonnngggg time...

    Anyways, my question is this-I picked up a frankentele recently that happened to have a pair of original Fender pickups (along with what I think might be a DiMarzio hot strat pickup) a '76 WRHB in the neck (9.76k dc resistance) along with what appears to be a '69-71 Tele bridge pickup (reading 6k on the dot). There's not much info on actually dating Fender pickups out there (PickupMatch.com?) so I'm not totally solid on the dates, though they're pretty close and definitely original.

    When I rewired the guitar, I mistakenly put 250k volume and tone pots in-the bridge sounds fine, happy and bright, but not ice-picky. The WRHB sounds dark and velvety, but not like what I was expecting (think Tab Benoit). Apparently, the WRHB wants to see a 1M volume pot, which in turn would make the bridge pickup into an instant ice-pick, something I really don't want, obviously!

    Sooo, what would be a good pickup to stick in there? First thought goes to a SD Broadcaster, or similar, but maybe something that's a bit hotter? It was mentioned to me that part of the charm of the WRHB paired with a low wind bridge pickup was the great middle and neck only sounds, but lousy bridge tones. I naturally want all 3!

    So what say ye, of the great pickup hive mind? I'm not in a huge rush to get this finished (the guitar needs a refret, among other things). I'm open to most ideas, as long as it doesn't involve heavy routing...

    Thanks in advance,
    Franc Robert aka backalleyblues

  • #2
    Welcome to the forum!

    I can't really recommend any pickups to you, this is out of my ballpark, but others might. However, while reading your post I thought maybe you could sacrifice the tone knob and have a tele with 2 separate volumes for the two pickups, unless of course you prefer to have the tone knob to hand (or there's something I've overlooked). I personally don't care for them too much so that's what I think I would try in this case if I were in your position.

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    • #3
      if you are going to put 1M pots in, youre gonna want something pretty thick for the bridge or its gonna be very bright. can you deal with the look of a qp tele lead? you could get a tapped version to have the lower output option mixed with the neck pup

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      • #4
        Maybe just pull the tone control off the neck, and go for something like a 300k vol pot. That will make the neck pickup brighter a little due to the vol pot reading as well as having no tone circuit loading. The bridge then gets a tone circuit load plus the ability to roll off to suit.

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        • #5
          Yeah, I'd recommend the QP if you are using 1 meg pots for sure.
          Administrator of the SDUGF

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