I have a Warmoth Tele that I love, built about 10 years ago. I had a set of OC Duff Tele pickups in there, told Owen that I really liked Jimmy Page and Yardbirds era Jeff Beck. Guitar sounded great but after I picked the guitar back up the past couple months after a 8 year hiatus the guitar was weak on the unwound strings, especially the neck pickup. I suspect a fall the guitar took (fell out of the van while evacuating for Hurricane Michael…hence the guitar’s name, Michael) cracked the nut.
So this sent me down a rabbit hole. I’d had the guitar routed for a Strat middle and neck pickup just in case, but first tried cutting a new bone nut. Unexpectedly TOTALLY changed the guitar. Night and day. Still…I really liked the neck pickup but didn’t LOVE it. I like the punchy low/mids of a Tele neck pickup but I really haven’t tried a Strat(ty) neck pickup. So I got a Lollar Royal T to see if it sounds more better, and it does sound awesome, but it was out of phase with the Duff bridge pickup.
Seeing that I’m an idiot instead of adding a 3rd wire to the neck pickup to reverse the polarity I ordered a Lollar 52T bridge pickup.
Great sounding set. The Lollar 52T is wound a bit hotter than the OC Duff (about 6.7k vs the Duff’s 6.5k…both in my sweet spot for Tele bridge pickups) and sounds a tiny bit stronger in the mids with a smidge less but tighter low end but honestly they both sound great. More importantly the middle position no longer sounds like I’m killing a goose with the Duff in the bridge and the Lollar in the neck. Since the Royal T is brighter with less low end the middle is a bit janglier. So far it’s just different strokes, not sure if it’s an improvement over the middle with a standard Tele neck pickup or not but it sounds good. The Royal T is brighter, has more top end, and has a bump in the upper mids instead of the low-mid heavy Tele neck pickup.
Gonna sit with this setup through a string change before making my final verdict on this set, but it’s a very cool sounding pickup set in my tele!
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