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I'm selling all of my guitars and downsizing to just one. (Buy them! viewtopic.php?f=44&t=45836

I've decided on a Tele custom. I found a beautiful swamp ash body on ebay for $80. I'm thinking natural with a tort guard. I bought a VMJM neck for it because I love them. Since this is the one guitar to rule them all, I'll get a bunch of fretwork done and a new nut. I'll probably go bigsby eventually but not right away.

Where I'm at now is pickups. Definitely regular tele bridge and I'm thinking hb-sized p90 for the neck. I'm leaning towards the GFS Mean 90 because I had one in my baritone and loved it. Any thoughts on bridge pup? I really want to keep the tele twang, but I need something that mixes well with the Mean 90. I like Earth and Swans a lot. But I still want to be able to play Chet Atkins licks. I'm likely going to do single vol, single tone, switch, and either out-of-phase or series-parallel switch, or both.

I was going to say series-parallel, but you've got that angle covered already. I don't have any experience with traditional tele bridge pickups, but I'll be interested to see what others have to say. Good luck on the downsizing though - I've been working with just one electric since last year, and it feels good.

My favorite Tele bridge pickup is the Bareknuckle Flat 50.
It's a little higher output than most Tele pickups so in should hang with the Mean 90.

MEC wrote:My favorite Tele bridge pickup is the Bareknuckle Flat 50.
It's a little higher output than most Tele pickups so in should hang with the Mean 90.

Flat 50 is superb.

I wish I could afford the Bareknuckle route. I'm really trying to keep the bridge under $100. Right now I'm looking at the GFS Retro 60s, the Zhang Paul Bunyan, and the Rose Alba.

Bareknuckle Flat 50 bridge would be close to your budget. The pair was around $210 when I ordered direct so a single should be half that. The prices on their website include VAT tax which you won't pay in the States so keep that in mind when pricing.

Hmm I'll dig deeper. Any thoughts on blade pickups? I'm not opposed to an HB in the bridge, I just don't want to lose the twang.

I really like Dimarzio pickups. I've heard good things about the Pre B-1 for classic tele with a bit more output and alot of people really like the Dimarzio Chopper in tele bridges but you'll loose some of the twang in exchange for mids.

check out the SD quarter pound as well, I'm going that route in my Esquire, they also make a dual tapped version for low/normal output and high output modes.

The SD and Pre B-1 are around $55 and chopper is like $70...

i'll beat the dead horse: another BKP flat 50 user here. hot damn, what a great pickup. mixing the bridge with that mean90 should be a pretty sick sounding guitar.

colossus wrote:I wish I could afford the Bareknuckle route. I'm really trying to keep the bridge under $100. Right now I'm looking at the GFS Retro 60s, the Zhang Paul Bunyan, and the Rose Alba.

Of those, no question, I'd go with the Zhang.

GFS is hit and miss - I love my Mean90, but have been underwhelmed on outright hated the rest of their pickups I've tried. I've heard nothing but good things about Rose, but have no personal experience. Zhang makes top notch stuff, above reproach.

That said, if it was me and I was buying from the specials page, I'd consider the SuperChimeCaster - I like the 1/4" mags.

I've got a set of Porter Pickups in my tele. They're pretty good, do exactly what I need, but not so magical that I don't occasionally consider changing them.

I ended up going with the Zhang Paul Bunyan. We'll see what happens! Thanks for your help, everyone.

for other readers, check out onamac windery. dude sells on eBay for very reasonable prices, he gets super reviews over on TGP.

For bridge HB on a tele I really liked the Dimarzio Chopper, but it did lose bit of the twang. For more twangy but hum-cancelling, I'd take Dimarzio Area T any day - had it before the Chopper back in my tele days

Handled hi-gain without excessive noise and twanged really nicely but still had enough mids to not be too brittle