What Pickups HELP!

Chris-Mason

I have a tele made of solid Paduak, with birds eye maple cap, birdeye maple neck.
Pickup in it are Wilkinson Hot rails. Bridge pickup is a humbucker.
Guitar well made but heavy, tone really crass/harsh also a bit thin compared to other teles I have.
Option 1 change to standard tele pickups, means I have to find a chrome Black standard Tele Bridge plate.
Option 2 fit a standard Tele pickup in the neck or a Seymour Duncan Lipstick in the neck, dilemma is what Humbucker would go with this. Looking at a Blues configuration.
Saddle and still Nuts

Chocklit_Thunda

Why do you have to change the bridge plate? The Tele bridge pickup is black... Black matches anything ?

If your tone is thin then I think a lipstick tube will be a tad harsh or bright.

Maybe a Seymour Duncan 5-2 set would be good? Added warmth on the high strings and thicker sound from the wound strings.

If you want a humbucker then perhaps something with an A2,3 or maybe 4 magnet would give you a nice bluesy sound. I'm partial to A2 mags myself. SD has the AII pros or the Seth lover set which do blues well. The pearly gates bridge is apparently bright but the neck model has warmth with a bit more sack ?
Otherwise, I'm really a fan of the Broadcaster pickup with A3 mags and 43awg coils. It's not as twangy but has a throatyness to it that I love ?

MikeM

Ok so just to clarify, it's routed for a bucker in the bridge, and a single coil in the neck?

Perhaps try a much longer or much shorter cable first. Our ears are quite weird in the sense that a resonant peak of 4/5k sounds harsher than 5/6k. When doing this, fiddle with your eq controls on your amp. I have a strat that would sound thin and ice-picky in most situations, but I have a shortish low capacitence cable paired with a no-load tone pot and if I set the treble and bass to around 2 each, it sounds fantastic.

AlanRatcliffe

How does it sound unplugged? The wood combo suggests more mid centred like a Les Paul, but with a higher mid peak and more/faster attack. To be honest, I've always preferred padauk by itself, without hard wood caps and mated with a padauk/rosewood neck.

Rails are already hotter and darker, full humbucker even more so, so if it's still too bright, you'd have to go really hot and dark to balance it out. Trad Tele bridge pup will likely make things worse. Maybe A2 magnets to tame the attack a bit too...

Chris-Mason

All quite confusing. Thanks for the advice.
Reason for a new bridge plate the one on it is configured for a humbucker and having a silver one on will detract from the overall looks on the guitar.
Saddle and Nut

studmissile

What about TerryD, he's got black, I got a chrome off him a while back. Same quality as Mighty Mite.
http://terryd.co.za/gptsbrie.html

P.S. Screws are separate.

http://terryd.co.za/gptsscre.html

chris77

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: How does it sound unplugged? The wood combo suggests more mid centred like a Les Paul, but with a higher mid peak and more/faster attack.

+1

Have you considered something like a P90 perhaps? Harmonic Design make P90 flavoured pups in traditional Tele pup shapes and sizes ( http://harmonicdesign.net/allpages/teles.html ), but I'm sure there are others as well.