Question, reply in the comments please. What’s the best high output, true single coil Telecaster pickups you guy’s like?
I bought a Harley Benton TE-30 Tele just because of the awesome skeleton. One piece slab ash body, traditional 3 saddle ashtray bridge and maple fretboard with a must have 12” radius.
I wanted to be able to play anything on it from twang, to The Rolling Stones, to John Mellencamp, to Def Leppard, to RATT, to Iron Maiden, to Black Sabbath and the first four Metallica albums.
At first I added 500K DiMarzio volume and tone pots. Then I tried the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound Telecaster pickups but the neck pickup was useless (just a muddy boom fest) and the bridge was fine unless you really cranked the gain or volume and it would “mud” out too. Since my first choice was DiMarzio but they didn’t make any true single coil high output Telecaster pickups I thought I’d take a chance on Bare Knuckle pickups. So I bought a new set of their Boot Camp Brute Force and was blown away!! They can pull off everything except Djent and death metal, which I don’t play anyway. The neck pickup sounds so good, even better than almost every other name brand name humbucker neck pickup, active or passive I’ve played. It’s got so much top end it’s crazy. Ditto the bridge pickup! I can turn the tone all the way up and the volume about 65% and get Sabbath to Metallica. Then I can turn down the tone and volume and get that twang or a great blues tone.
So hands down for me the Bare Knuckle Boot Camp Brute Force Telecaster pickups are the best single coil, Strat or Tele pickups, I’ve ever played. They’re also up there with some of my favorite humbuckers.