There's always one . . .

ICBM

DefaultM said:

I’ve got a PRS CE that’s like this. I’m not very good at describing sound but I’ve tried at least 5 sets in it and they all sound… rubbery? Mushy?

It's the guitar.

I know the anti-wood brigade will roll their eyes, but it really is... some guitars just don't resonate well and it doesn't really matter what pickups you put in, they will never sound right. It's not a "tonewood" thing - it can be a guitar made from perfectly well respected wood species, just that the exact pieces chosen just don't sound good. Or the opposite - some cheap guitars made from supposedly inferior wood sound amazing.

If you've got a dead-sounding guitar, I would consider EMGs - contrary to some opinions I don't think they sound 'sterile', but they do have their own distinctive sound and are more unaffected by the guitar than passive ones in my experience.

Paul_C

Update: I just had a brief play before my daughter started snarling at me   and I think it sounds a lot better with the Monty's in.

I'll get a better idea on Sunday (when I'll have the house to myself), but it's certainly an improvement.

Fez

I am with ICBM on this - some guitars just don't sound great and sometimes a cheapie Squier or summat will blow your socks off. You have tried some great pick ups in there so maybe worth looking at the wiring, new strings, different leads, you never know what might make a difference.

fretmeister

ICBM said:

DefaultM said:

I’ve got a PRS CE that’s like this. I’m not very good at describing sound but I’ve tried at least 5 sets in it and they all sound… rubbery? Mushy?

It's the guitar.

I know the anti-wood brigade will roll their eyes, but it really is... some guitars just don't resonate well and it doesn't really matter what pickups you put in, they will never sound right. It's not a "tonewood" thing - it can be a guitar made from perfectly well respected wood species, just that the exact pieces chosen just don't sound good. Or the opposite - some cheap guitars made from supposedly inferior wood sound amazing.

If you've got a dead-sounding guitar, I would consider EMGs - contrary to some opinions I don't think they sound 'sterile', but they do have their own distinctive sound and are more unaffected by the guitar than passive ones in my experience.

I had a really dead sounding Washburn N2 - the cheaper Nuno model, but still with the Floyd and the Bill Lawrence XL pickup. I thought that pickup worked really well even in a dead sounding guitar. 

Sporky

This seems like an excellent opportunity to try a Kent Armstrong M-bucker.

Or Q-Tuners. I liked them in my Parker, and they're pretty.

Filtertrons! 

Sustainiac! 

I'll stop eventually. 

Piezo bridge for spank? 

tony99

As long as you have the sterile in the neck and the ok in the bridge, I'd recommend wiring your tone control directly to your strings, flipping your toggle switch, and turning your tuning pegs anti clockwise until your guitar is back in tune the other way around.

All of this may take a while but it'll stop you fucking around with pickups!

ToneControl

Seziertisch said:

You’ve tried enough reputable pickups in it to establish that they aren’t the issue.

A change of bridge or saddle might be what you are looking for. Those block saddles can be a bit blah, a set of bent steel ones might be just the thing.

How about a change of ears?
Just joking, I'm not being flippant - maybe normal tele pickups just don't work for the OP in this guitar?

I'd recommend trying some kind of blade or a P90-type pickup:

Joe Bardens:
https://jbepickups.com/products/gatton-and-modern-t-style-pickups/


or maybe the Kinman P90 styles:
https://kinman.com/model-products.php?pid=5&products=Telecaster&linegroup=yes&modelid=6&model=Bridge+Blaster&group=Single Pickups

koneguitarist

I had a S8 Tele bought brand new in 1982 which I always struggled with. I eventually sold it then after quite a few other teles bought it back after a number of years. At the time I was using a Tokai tele with SD pickups. Comparing the two, the Tokai was far superior so swapped pickups. It was still far superior. Sold the old tele again. 

ToneControl

ICBM said:

If you've got a dead-sounding guitar, I would consider EMGs - contrary to some opinions I don't think they sound 'sterile', but they do have their own distinctive sound and are more unaffected by the guitar than passive ones in my experience.

Yeah, someone was telling me that EMGs sound sterile, I asked him if he thought all of David Gilmour's recordings sounded sterile from 1985 to 2000 or so.
I think he still uses the EMG guitar for Shine on you crazy diamond.

I would recommend getting the active EQ, either the DG-style EXG/SPC set, or active bass and treble

ToneControl

Fez said:

I am with ICBM on this - some guitars just don't sound great and sometimes a cheapie Squier or summat will blow your socks off. You have tried some great pick ups in there so maybe worth looking at the wiring, new strings, different leads, you never know what might make a difference.

Do any of the custom shop guys do tone-tap testing with the woods like the top acoustic luthiers?

Fez

I have heard that the Fender custom shop do tap testing on neck blanks. Don't know if it is true or a valid way of selecting the wood to make a "better" guitar .

guitarjack66

I think that what you hear to what,say a dozen others,would sound very different. I think this is both the joy and despair of electric guitar playing. This is why my acoustics outnumber my electrics as I feel the consistency of sound is better. Of course the joy of electrics is the plethora of pick up,amps and fx sounds available to yourself and others. Do you think you may be chasing your tail and expecting a sound that isn't really there?

Paul_C

I have dug out all the bridges I can find, I'm going to try the one on the bottom right with compensated brass saddles once I've heard what the Monty's pickups sound like.

Musical_Mystery_Tour

Sometimes it takes a few stabs at pickups in Teles to make them come alive, sometimes you need to go a bit more radical.

One I've had for years is my partscaster Thinline, which although it looked nice (surf blue/blue-green with a pearlescent scratchplate), never really floated my boat soundwise , until some recent tweaks which have transformed it from a hangar queen, to one of my favourites.

The original standard pickups were okay, but not great, so I'd swapped them for some Wilkinson ones, but they didn't bring it to life either. Thus I recently decided to do a more radical change to it...

Off came the maple Tele neck and on went a maple large Strat style headstock with abalone block inlays, on went some grover tuners and wide range humbuckers, necessitating a larger bridge plate to fit the humbucker as well as some body routing and scratchplate cutting and reshaping, plus the need to drill it for stringthrough because of that different bridge.

Of course I'd expected doing all that to alter the sound, but what I hadn't expected, was how much it would transform it into something which I now really love playing. I'd always liked how it looked, and now it looks even better  but it never really inspired me to play it until that recent revamp, which has really made it come alive sonically to the extent that it is now a favourite.

Paul_C

I've just given it a play and it sounds much more lively now

I don't doubt for a second that the Oil City, Bare Knuckle and Fender pickups will sound great in one of the others, but the Monty's will do nicely for this one. 

It's not as lively as some of the others, but that's fine as I'm not trying to make them all sound the same, it just means I'm more likely to pick it up than I was before. 

I may well still change the bridge at some point just to see what that does for future reference. 

Paul_C

Update: I've just put the Fender Cobalt Chrome pickups in my freshly painted US Tele and while there's a hint of the sound I was getting in the green one they sound wildly different (and very nice) in this.