Best Scooped (ish) Telecaster Bridge

[freefrog]

Another Q filter demo. Not a Tele but might give a clearer example of what the thing does.

https://youtu.be/zmwZC_loYSc?si=pI1OLYKTTCDe6doC&t=72

 

[playas]

I find the SD vintage tele sounds quite scooped fwiw.

 

[beaubrummels]

I guess I have tried a bunch of different tele pickups and they either seem to not have enough low end or have too much midrange for my taste and sounds for lack of a better word "congested". I tend to like bright pickups but I would like just a little more low end. When I eq my rig for my bridge it sounds the closet to what I want when I scoop the mid range. Problem is I mostly play on the neck and it does not need anymore low-end and I am not looking to adjust eq every time I switch pickups.

Sounds like you might better focus on getting a thinner, brighter neck. While I haven't used these, going by specs on paper and sound clips available, a Lari Basilio neck, which is A5 under the wound strings and A4 under the plain strings might work well, or the Vintage Tele neck which is all A5 and low wind, or the Rhythm for Tele with Strat Tone from the Custom Shop.

Short of that, I don't know what Tele bridges you've tried, but I've been using a Duncan Broadcaster bridge for 10+ years in my ash Tele and it's as bright and scooped as I've heard. All the others I've used (Fender Twisted Tele bridge, Fender Tex-Mex bridge) or heard push more mids. There are a number of Jerry Donohue users/fans on here, but I don't have experience with that one. Also I have a Duncan Antiquity II Tele set, but haven't installed them yet, so can't comment from experience, but on paper they should be thinner and brighter than 50's types and other models.

Personally, I'm surprised you're having difficulty finding a scooped Tele bridge. Makes me think something else is the problem, like amp or speakers. As far as breaking the bank, things cost what they cost. You either solve the problem, or you compromise and spend the rest of your time struggling and fighting with your equipment.

 

[freefrog]

Might be helpful to recall how much the tone of passive pickups can vary, not only according to the guitar and its pots + amp + cab but also because of things like capacitive load and input impedances... I've a ltd edition Fender Tele USA whose bridge pickup has flat poles and a high inductance for its DCR (4H for 7.5k). If I play it plugged in a standard 1M input through 10 ft of Sommer LLX cable (= the lowest capacitance on the market and not even expensive), it sounds bright, precise, detailed, with a lot of sparkle and... scooped mids. That's even more the case if I enable a Stratoblaster preamp directly @ the output of the guitar. But if I play the same Tele through a cheap long cable + a non-true bypass wah pedal plagued by a 100k input impedance, it gets a lot thicker and flatter sounding, with an added compression due to parasitic capacitance.

That's why I've mentioned the Q filter, which is a simple and cheap way to compensate tone darkening factors by "unwinding" virtually the pickup(s) with which it's paired (and it can be associated to only one single pickup if needed).

Anecdotically, I've checked my previous statement this afternoon by comparing quickly my aforementioned Tele with a vintage one (1968, ash body, maple neck, stock pickups) AND a Squier with a cheapo bridge PU: plastic baseplate, ceramic mag, 5.4k, a bit more than 3H [NOTE - The inductance to DCR ratio is noticeably higher with a magnet + inert slugs than with AlNiCo rod magnets. It's normal and has to do with magnetic permeability. It's also another proof that DCR is absolutely not a reliable spec when it comes to guess the output and EQing of a passive PU] . As I remembered, the cheap Squier PU had the same output and high range but more bass and scooped mids compared to the other two (through the same rig, of course).

FWIW. YMMV.