Humbucking singlecoil-size bridge pickup for a Thinline.

Ace Flibble

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I just snapped up a black korina Thinline Tele from the showcase. Looked too good and was too much of a bargain to pass up.
Thing is, I'm a bit clueless on what bridge pickup would balance well with such a body. I've always liked the idea of a korina body but I've never actually owned or played one enough to really know what the tone will be like.

The three things I really need from this pickup are:
- It needs to be totally noiseless, preferably a single-sized humbucker style pickup though I'd consider stacked singles too (though I've used the Fender Vintage Noiseless before and thought it was pretty crap, so I'm not entirely sold on the stacked single coil thing)
- It needs to have good clarity and note definition, since I use quite thick strings and I find a lot of pickups don't seem to cope with that well.
- It needs to have a pretty balanced tone with this sort of body. I like my pickups to have even balance between bass, mids and treble in relation to the body.

At the moment, the only models I know of that might fit the bill are the Seymour Duncan Little '59 and Hot Rails, but the resonant peak of each is pretty low so I'm thinking they might just get very muddy with the combination of thick strings and the semi-hollow body. I've heard DiMarzio make a few similar style pickups too but I've tried DiMarzio's full humbuckers before and was always very disappointed.

Additionally, the guitar's not going to have any tone control so whatever pickup I get will be 'wide open'. I've also not gotten a neck for it yet, but it will almost certainly be a maple back /rosewood fretboard combination.

Any suggestions are very welcome.
 
I have a korina strat with rosewood neck and a full-sized '59 in the neck.  It's not muddy, and I used to have 12s on that guitar.  A little '59 in the bridge with maple neck will be WAY brighter.  Don't worry about the resonant peak, you can't tell anything from staring at a frequency response graph.
 
I know they are a bit pricey but you may really want to look into those Kinman bridge pickups that are used in the Woodstock Plus sets. Seriously, I fell in love with my strat all over again after I threw Kinmans into the mix.  Best single coils on the planet, IMHO.

-T
 
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