Fender Nocaster Clean

Pickup features: Single coil
Impedence or other specs: 9.8k

Model of guitar or bass: home-assembled ash 'n' maple Tele
Position: bridge
Pickup being replaced: Texas Special
Other pickups on guitar: Texas Special neck
Artists using this pickup:
You musical style(s): blues & jazz
Reason for pickup change: boredom

Perceived output level: warm, in the upper 80s
Tone: full
Sonic evaluation: The Nocaster definitely harkens back to the days of country swing. Pedal steels dueled with fiddles and even saxophones back in those days, so the new-fangled "electric Spanish" guitars had to be fat to get solo time. The Nocaster is a solo pickup and it can be pretty versatile as to style with the right touch. Vintage Country, jazz, blues, it's all good. It's pretty useless for rhythm purposes or for Bakersfield stuff or "Today's Country"; it muds out. It's a pretty revealing pickup, so it'll make you keep your chops up.

For which styles and positions is this pickup (un)suitable:

Comments: This is a good pickup if you own more than one Tele. Between this one and the Seymour Duncan Antiquity 1 you can have most of the Tele palette from 1948 to 2004 with just two instruments

Pickup features: Single coil Tele bridge
Impedence or other specs: Almost 10K ohm d.c. resistance

Model of guitar or bass: Telecaster Plus
Position: bridge
Pickup being replaced: Rio Grande Muy Grande
Other pickups on guitar: Rio Grande Tele Tallboy neck pickup
Artists using this pickup: Me and ????
You musical style(s): Blues, rock, some country
Reason for pickup change: Let me start by saying the I liked the Rio Muy bridge pickup, but the lure of having a Fender Broadcaster type of pickup with a zinc bottom plate no less was too great. Besides, I wanted a bit more open and chimey sound than the Muy was giving me.

Perceived output level: Definitely hotter than the stock Lace pickup thatwas originally in the guitar, and less than the Muy or a Texas Special. But then that's what I wanted.
Tone: Twang, twang, and more twang - but FAT twang. No mud just beefy twang.
Sonic evaluation: I play this guitar thru either a Fender Blues Junior or my baby - a Peavey Delta Blues 210. Y'all can check my review of that amp. It's an oh yeah, just like this pickup.

For which styles and positions is this pickup (un)suitable: I play the blues mostly and have been HEAVILY influenced by Roy Buchanan. Hence my choice of pickup. I believe tha this gets me close (to my ears anyway) to that raw, dirty, Buchanan blues tone than anything before it. There may be another out there that does it too. The fun is in the experimenting but I'm about done for now. My Tele plays teh BLUES!!!!

Comments: I've been playing about 38 years and I'm pretty happy with the combination I've got now. If some crazed pickup thief were to unsolder the pickup in the middle of the night I'd probably replace it with the same one but I might think hard about a Fralin too. That's a story for another day though kids. for right now I'm happy as I've had a bunch of pickups in here from stock Lace to Duncan '54 and Donahue, Muy Grande, and Texas Special. This is the best so far. I really think that the Tele sound is partly due to the plate on the bottom (imho) so I really wanted that. The sound thing is elusive and maybe it's the journey rather that the destination. That being the case there will be more experimentation in the future I'm sure but NOT because there's anything wrong with this one!
NOTE: If you do use a Fender with another brand you may have to swap the leads on the neck pickup if you're out of phase. (Watch out fo cover ground - that's another good reason to choose the Rio for the neck: no metal cover!)