blackguard telecaster pickup advice

[darcym]

Hi all,

I'm obviously going to call bareknuckle directly for some advice too, but thought I'd open it to the people using these pickups.

I use bareknuckles for pretty much all my strats and they work well, so now I'm swapping out the pickups in a new tele project but I'm a bit lost as I've only ever used "the boss" set on a previous tele.

I've had a blackguard 50's spec tele built with a few minor tweaks for my personal taste.

it's a 1 piece swap ash body with a maple neck.

What I'm looking for is the classic 50's blackguard voicing, so the obvious choice are the blackguard / vintage tele pickups. The bit that's making me question what to buy is

1.) the blackguard pickups look hot ! I want the sparkling clean chimes that only breakup when hit hard on a hard pushed amp, the spec I'm reading suggests they are a bit hotter than that
2.) the set I like the description of, suggest a slightly strat voicing on the neck pickup, I play a lot of strats so want to keep away from this and have the classic tele tones as I'm fully voiced on stats already.

The set which did appeal to me was the country boy, the sound clips on that are pretty good.

Very open to your thoughts / suggestions.

thanks,

Matt.

[Telerocker]

Blackguard 52-set, neck is quite stratty. They sound full, but twangy if necessary. Use the vol.knob to clean up things.

[Gary_Goo]

I have this exact set up in a tele with Flat 50's. It's a great sounding set and they still have twang and bite like a good tele should and still have beautiful chimey cleans, but you get a much bass and mids and a bit more output. I'm pretty sure you'd like the Flat 52 set and it would do exactly what you've described. Don't let the specs fool you either. Neither the Flat 50 or Flat 52 are stupidly hot or over the top in output.

[BigB]

I have a BGF52 set on a 62RI Tele, and it's pure magic. The bridge is hot enough to not sound weak and ice-pickey but it's 101% classic Tele twang - BTW don't get fooled by DC resistance, it's only one of the factors that impact the output level and tone (the others being wire gauge and type, magnet type, bobbin size and shape, etc). The neck indeed has a stratty feel to it but it's by no mean a Strat neck, just clearer / less muddy than the average Tele neck, which is a GoodThing(tm) IMHO.

[Roboten]

Regarding the stratty neck: Now, I didn't use the stock pickups long enough to really get a feel for how stratty they we're, but the bg52 neck certainly doesn't sound like a strat neck to me. I have a 63 veneer board strat set and the neck tones are worlds apart. The bg52 neck is a lot dryer, less high-treble and a kind of midrange that really barks when driven. If anything, I would compare the neck to a p90, with the same pretty raw texture, albeit with lower output. I use them for a lot of strat stuff, true, but that's just because they are so versatile. If I could only keep one guitar with one set of pickups, this would be it, they can handle most of the stuff I throw at them, except maybe for detuned grind.

Regarding whether they sound authentic or not, I'm no expert in vintage teles, but if I understand the timeline of tonal changes correctly, teles went from being hot and dark, to less hot and brighter, to not hot at all and very bright. In that case, these would be of the less hot and brighter variety, ie early 50's.