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Making Strat bridge pickup sound like a Tele...

Spud said:
stratamania said:
rick2 said:
Actually, I'm intreguied by the red devil, but I haven't gotten to play one yet.

I have a Red devil neck...which reminds me I have a project to finish and then I can try it.

Single coil sized humbuckers can sound great and very convincing with a bit of overdrive, but fall well short compared to their full sized counterparts when playing clean.

Given that I actually have one and have found it to work very well clean or with gain individually or paired with a full size Pearly Gates I don't agree. They sound very good. YMMV.
 
Harmonic Design Pickups makes a strat bridge called the STP which is supposed to be tele like. I have one but have not yet had a chance to install it.
There is also this vid on a particular David Allen set
 
For the D. Allen pickups, I'm curious if there is anything on the product that mentions the country of manufacture. I remember there was a controversy about that 5 years ago, where that was called into question. It may not be terribly important if you like the sound, but personally I'd like to know before buying their product again.
 
To be honest, it would need the pickup mounted to a steel Tele bridge and string through body to get any closer. I had it with a Strat neck and middle pickup for a while.

This will infuriate those here who like to argue about EVERYTHING they're deaf to or which they are NOT sensitive enough to hear the difference. {Or maybe they just need to leave their FULL METAL MONDO FUZZ off once in a while...} But eliminating the middle pickup reduced the string pull from the magnetic polepieces and the guitar sustains more like a Tele now.

Not saying it didn't sound good with three pickups. It did. But I get closer to the sound i was looking for with two pickups. Fralin "True Vintage" Strat pickup. Just under 5.9K...although DCR is not a measurement of output.
 
2025 January 30th: update.
I installed a Filtertron neck pickup some time ago but was never really happy with the sound of the guitar.
I compared it to the 30 year old cheap Chinese Tele copy that is my test-bed for faffing about with different parts.
The Chinese Tele sounds better both unplugged and through the amp.
Um.
I have a wonderful Warmoth Thinline body and Warhead wide neck with a Seymour Duncan humbucking Tele bridge pickup with brass base plate, the Filtertron - and an Aluminium Babciz FCH Tele bridge.
The Babicz bass bridge is best described as bloody wonderful so the guitar version is going to be stunning too! No. Nothing wrong with it but it doesn't have the same whizzo effect on a guitar.
Today I fitted a Wilkinson by GOTOH Steel Tele Bridge with 3 brass saddles and clever intonation setup. Can't fit the bridge pickup in it until I make the pickup cavity bigger...
Nevermind, the guitar came alive both unplugged and with the neck Filtertron through the amp! Great happiness.
Now I have some woodworking to do to make it all fit nicely.

The moral of the story is: do NOT stray too far from the standard Tele bridge and pickup to get a good Tele sound!
I'm not going anywhere near 'best' or 'authentic', that just leads to arguments...
 
Thanks for the update. It’s no surprise that saddle material and design affects the tone, but it’s good to hear your feedback about these two bridge designs and the perceived difference. It important to confirm the action height of the strings is the same in both before / after when making a comparison.
 
I did no setup. Took the Wilkinson by GOTOH out of the box, mounted it held in place only by the through-body strings. No screws holding it down.
And it still sounded a lot better!
 
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