New Pickup Day - Rio Grande Greasegunner in a Tele

[Niloy63]

Guitar: Fender American Standard Telecaster w/ Rosewood neck and Broadcaster(b) and Twisted Tele pickups.
Pickup Swap: Rio Grande Greasegunner (Ceramic, High 8K/Low 9K DC Resistance, dual carbon steel blade, 4 conductor wire)

I'm extremely happy with this bridge pickup. And the fact that Rio Grande is in my hometown of Houston, Texas makes it all the better! No bias here at all... I promise!

Their webpage description is spot on... fuller mids, slight reduction in the top register, VERY pedal friendly, cleans up amazingly well, and can roar with dirt thrown at it. I kept the stock 250K pot in (I'm guessing it was designed with that in mind, but I'm not sure). I'm running it into a Mesa Triple Crown 50W head into a 212 Avatar Cab w/ a Celestion V30 and a T75.

The only issue now is the stock neck pickup (Twisted Tele). It's SOOO weak comparatively. When switching pickups within a phrase, it seems like I'm going from Floyd Mayweather (Twisted Tele: great sound, efficient in its class, can duke it out with the best of Tele necks) to Mike Tyson (Greasegunner: coming in for a first round head bob-body hook-upper cut combo knockout!). Right now I'm leaning towards a Rio Grande Dirty Harry Super Classic https://www.riograndepickups.com/dirty-harry-super-classic. But I'm also debating a Tele neck Quarter Pounder. Any opinions/suggestions?

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Re: New Pickup Day - Rio Grande Greasegunner in a Tele

I love RioGrandes. First turned onto them by a McNaught that came with the Texas/BBQ humbuckers; got another set of those for a different guitar. Then I got a Muy Grande Tele set. They're great - big but still pretty articulate. I bet a Muy Grande neck would match pretty well with your Greasegunner.

I also have a QuarterPound Tele set. Neck is definitely much beefier than the Twisted Tele (which I find sorta Stratlike), probably even bigger sounding than the Muy Grande. Fat, punchy, a hair less spanky - the QP was born to rock. And it can still give some singlecoil bite when you dig in. Great pickup for neck tone lead work.

I've never played a Dirty Harry so I can't compare it to the Muy Grande. P90 neck tone has attitude though - Dirty Harry's probably great.

 

[Niloy63]

Re: New Pickup Day - Rio Grande Greasegunner in a Tele

I love RioGrandes. First turned onto them by a McNaught that came with the Texas/BBQ humbuckers; got another set of those for a different guitar. Then I got a Muy Grande Tele set. They're great - big but still pretty articulate. I bet a Muy Grande neck would match pretty well with your Greasegunner.

I also have a QuarterPound Tele set. Neck is definitely much beefier than the Twisted Tele (which I find sorta Stratlike), probably even bigger sounding than the Muy Grande. Fat, punchy, a hair less spanky - the QP was born to rock. And it can still give some singlecoil bite when you dig in. Great pickup for neck tone lead work.

I've never played a Dirty Harry so I can't compare it to the Muy Grande. P90 neck tone has attitude though - Dirty Harry's probably great.

Thank you for responding! So the Muy Grande (MG) is big but articulate, which is awesome! And the QP is fat, punchy, great for lead work, and might be bigger sounding than the MG? Even more awesome!

Being P90-esque, I'd suspect the Dirty Harry would be somewhat chimed and spanky and grunt pretty well under high gain... right? I've never played a P-90 equipped guitar.

I really like your description of the QP. Hmmm