Bare Knuckle Pickups Piledriver Tele Single Coil Set

The Bare Knuckle Pickups Piledriver set is a take no prisoners set for the Tele. These aren’t your daddy’s Tele pickups. These are meant mostly for those who play metal but are using a telecaster for whatever the reason may be. On the outside, they look like a normal tele set with the standard pole pieces and covered neck pickup. They feature Alnico V magnets and come in two conductor wiring.

These don’t sound like normal Tele pickups at all. Instead, they turn your tele into one of the most crushing sounding metal guitars out there. The pickups are that insane. The bass on these is very big sounding, but more importantly, it’s super tight. It handles those fast triplets like no tomorrow. The midrange on this is boosted, so they help overdrive the amp and give it one nice kick in the ass. The treble is strong like in all teles, but it’s not too piercing like so many other tele pickups out there on the market. The in-between position with these sounds awesome for clean passages, too.

If you’re a classic tele player, don’t get these. They really don’t deliver that classic sounding telecaster sound at all. However, if you’re a metal player, you’ll absolutely love these. They’re extremely hot, but they also clean up pretty nice once you start rolling down the volume. But let’s be honest, if you’re getting these, you’ll most likely be running them at full boar and destroying small animals within a 10 meter radius.

If you’re looking for a more classic sounding tele, check out the vintage hot and vintage series that Tim offers. Those should suit you a lot more than these will. These are basically the equivalent of the Sinners or Painkiller for the telecaster. It’s not something for classic blues guys.