Looking for Tele bridge fatness

[ratkent]

I have zero experience with Tele pickup swapping so be gentle.

I have two Teles. The first is a Fender Lite Ash Tele that I plan on leaving stock and that fulfills all of my traditional Tele needs. The other is a Tele parts guitar (ash with maple neck) that currently has a Rio Grande Muy Grande Twangbanger that is not doing it for me. It is basically two Tele bridge pickups in tandem and is supposed to be the best of both worlds, Tele when split and humbucker with both. It's not quite there. The humbucker tone is lacking in the mids and the single coil tone is very thin. My Lite Ash Tele bridge pickup kicks the **** out of the single coil of the Rio Grande. I have no need of the traditional Tele bridge tone on this guitar so I am thinking of something fat and chewy for the bridge. The other pickups on this guitar are outstanding. The Twangbucker neck is one of my favorite tones ever.

I guess I have no problem going with a humbucker but if there is a single coil sized, noise-free alternative I would like to give it a ride.

Any opinions are welcome.

Just for grins here is the guitar:

 

[stevie_bees]

Re: Looking for Tele bridge fatness

Maybe one of the lil's or a hot rails would do the trick.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Looking for Tele bridge fatness

are you planning on getting a new bridge for the guitar?

 

[ratkent]

Re: Looking for Tele bridge fatness

are you planning on getting a new bridge for the guitar?

Yes.

 

[MikeS]

Re: Looking for Tele bridge fatness

Hmmm... will regular humbucker tele bridge cover the route for the twangbucker?

 

[Mephis]

Re: Looking for Tele bridge fatness

I don't know if you're going to get a fatter tone from a tele lead pickup unless you get something sort of off the wall like a hotrails.

The muy grande is the fattest tele pickup I've heard, which is why I have one in the bridge of my tele. Not sure how different it is from the twang bucker split.

 

[jimijames]

Re: Looking for Tele bridge fatness

the guitarist from the black keys used a tele w/ hotrails pickups for rubber factory (I think), and he gets one of the fattest sounds I've ever heard. Also, a ts-808 or two wouldn't hurt, the midrange boost might be what you're looking for.

Edit: Also, by ts-808, I don't mean one of the vintage ones, those can run up to $400 a pop. Maxon makes a great reissue of it, and Ibanez makes one too, if you don't want to spend alot of money, www.buildyourownclone.com is a great site, but you have to build it yourself (hence the name)

 

[ratkent]

Re: Looking for Tele bridge fatness

Hmmm... will regular humbucker tele bridge cover the route for the twangbucker?

I just got a Tele humbucker bridge and it's the same footprint as the Twangbucker bridge. There would certainly need to be some routing so that's why I'm trying to go single coil size.