IMHO the Wilde/Bill and Becky Lawrence L280 noiseless pick ups are the best drop-in replacements for the sake of fat tone and clarity.
The Dimarzio Area T pickups are a close second. They might get you closer to the classic Ed Bickert pre-PAF tone, if that's what you're looking for, than the Wildes. Having used both extensively, I prefer the Wilde pickups.
Both of those have a bit of humbucker compression; if you really like the true single coil sound, the Wilde Microcoil pickups for the Telecaster are outstanding. While they are a true single coil, they pick up less noise due to the smaller coil not offering as much antenna. There are two versions, one with I presume a ceramic bar magnet and one with alnico polepiece magnets; I prefer the sound of the ceramics (the alnicos are a little too Stratty for my tastes).
In my case, I have found that I like adding a resistor in parallel between the hot output of the bridge pickup and ground to sweeten/round off the highs just a little bit and make it less spiky. There are wiring diagrams on the Wilde website and also Lindy Fralin's website has a very nice page on this. Basically, this makes the bridge pickup think it is seeing a lower resistance pot, say 100K, while the neck pick up thinks it's seeing 250K. Folks who belong to the icepick school of Telecaster bridge pickups would probably hate it.
Thought I would share. Aerodyne Telecaster. Stock pickup replaced with CC in P-90 case and upgraded bridge pickup. Both by Pete Biloft at Vintage Vibe pickups.
Well again that's not what I said. The materials affect the sound to the degree that they change how the strings resonate. In solid body guitars especially, which are purposefully less resonant to...
Look, if I went to Guitar Night and Mike Stern was there I wouldn’t leave. But at home, with access to literally everything else
in my life to pass my time with. I’ll pass.
I can’t hear his...
Thank you all so much for these thoughtful responses. What a great welcome. It's true I'm an acoustic/fingerstyle guy at heart, I'm not - and definitely don't pretend to be - a jazz musician. But I...
By all means that's a good idea; I have my own treatment of the tune also, but I haven't notated it and likely won't!
We'd all love to hear you actually play the piece, since this is a playing...
Actually there are a good many jazz players who have a tone something like yours. Lenny Breau comes to mind, a very harp-like sound that lots of jazz guitar fans love. I have a Princeton Reverb as...
After reading this sentence from your post I got a sillly image of two cavemen sitting around beating drum rhythms on logs. "We use pine logs, not those weird alder logs like you're using. Not...
I'm going to disagree with those here saying that the tone is paramount over the feel. There are alot of jazz tone out there... not everyone has to sound like Wes Montgomery. Jazz tone can be on...
If we leave the ad hominem attacks at home, why would anyone have to feel compelled to listen to things s/he does not appreciate for pleasure? It really doesn't matter how acclaimed someone is or who...
Please try it again...
Guitar tones full up, volume down a little from full up
Only an instrument chord between the guitar and amp
Princeton set with both tone controls at full minimum (1...
Since you said 'it does not sound jazzy'... .
I think 'jazzy sound' aesthetics (not in terms of sonority but overall sound)... it is about to make kind of 'wrong' things sound 'right' and 'kitchy'...
I’ve not noticed much of a correspondence between how well I think I played on a gig and how well I actually played.
For example, you might not have played how you wanted or what you’d been...
Guitar purchases Reverb - EMG pickups
Today, 08:26 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos