What about a Missisip Queen in the neck of my tele?

[AndyR]

I've got MQs in an Explorer, and Blackguard Flat 50 and Yardbirds in teles.

I have a feeling that the MQ might be pushing the BG or Yardbird bridge a bit far, but I couldn't say for certain as I've never tried pairing them. I did love the MQ/Piledriver clips from Andrew W, it sounds like you can get a reasonable balance from that pairing...

BUT! I'm going to throw something else into the pot:

If you're prepared to go for the visual look of the standard tele neck pickup, consider getting a set of Blackguards with a 4-way switch. This gives you the standard tele tones plus a superb "extra" of bridge and neck in series.

All my teles have a 4-way switch, but the two with Blackguard Flat 50s really shine in position 4. It's not dissimilar to an MQ tone, and it pushes the amp in a nice fat way with all the bite of the BG bridge. Most of the time I use a Les Paul or an SG (or the MQ'd Explorer), if I want that sort of tone. But if I'm wearing one of the BG teles already, there it is in position 4 :D

The Yardbird set does the same, but not quite as fat and growly as the BGs do.

[gaex86]

Thanks Andy. This seems a nice option!

[Philly Q]

Also I got to figure out if it's better a 500k or 250k for volume and tone.

Here's a tip I got from HTH on this forum:

If you're using a single pot shared between a humbucker (or P-90) and a single-coil you can use a 500k volume pot and add a 500k resistor from the "hot" end of the single coil to ground.  That way the single-coil effectively "sees" a 250k pot when it's selected (I guess you'd still have to decide on 500k or 250K for the tone).

[Andrew W]

I think the MQ and Piledriver balance well in terms of output, i.e. you don't feel a huge change in volume when you switch from one to the other.  That said they are very different beasts tonally: the MQ is very fat and can be quite dark as you'd expect from the "Mountain" reference in its name.  It is still quite vintage voiced though which cannot be said of the Piledriver.  The Piledriver is very modern sounding, huge output and lots of compression, you can turn the volume on the guitar down but the output is so great it pushes my amp into overdrive even at lower volume settings.  It's a great pickup though and balances well with the MQ if you want a vintage tone option AND a modern one in the same guitar.  I should also say that my Tele is a weighty pine Mexican number which never sounded that Tele-ish in the first place so your mileage may vary.  If you want any kind of twang I'd choose something other than the Piledriver.  You could get a Blackguard Flat 50 or Boss in the bridge and perhaps a slightly underwound MQ in the neck - that would preserve more of the Tele quality I'd have thought.  My two cents anyway.

[gaex86]

Thanks Andrew. This is exactly my thought. I want to preserve the vintage sound of my tele and listening to your demo the piledriver seems too modern.
Maybe an underwound MQ will do the trick! I gotta ask Tim!

[BigB]

If you're prepared to go for the visual look of the standard tele neck pickup, consider getting a set of Blackguards with a 4-way switch. This gives you the standard tele tones plus a superb "extra" of bridge and neck in series.

FWIW, same pups and wiring here, and I can testify the series position is killer. I can't say how it compares with a P90, but by itself it's fat and warm,  crushing on power chords riffs (can do hard rock just as well as a humbucker), singing on leads, gives kind of a "best of both worlds" mix of SC and 'buckers.

[dheim]

Thanks Andrew. This is exactly my thought. I want to preserve the vintage sound of my tele and listening to your demo the piledriver seems too modern.
Maybe an underwound MQ will do the trick! I gotta ask Tim!

no need at all to "underwind" the MQ... neck unit is alnico IV, and sounds sweet and vintage. try to play with pickup height and you'll get everything from the cleanest cleans to sligtly broke up tones...

[gaex86]

So I've sent a mail to Tim and he told me that many customers have an MQ in the neck and a BG in the bridge of their tele and are very happy with this combination. Tim also thinks that the yardbird bridge will easily partner with an MQ neck. He said that the MQ neck is underwound compared to the bridge and I won't have any problem of jump in volume switching from bridge only to bridge+neck to only neck! For the pots problem Tim adviced to use a 500k volume and tone.