Help choosing tele bridge pup to go with TVJ filtertron neck?

Hi guys, new member here. I'm building my first DIY telecaster, and looking for some advice on pickup choices. I tried to scour past threads for answers before posting. This tele will have a TV Jones classic filtertron in the neck (4.0K, 1.4H), and I'm looking for help with choosing a bridge pickup that will play well with the TVJ neck and be able to use 500k pots for the whole guitar (with a regular 3-way switch config). I'd like for the bridge pickup to be single coil sized, but I'm open to single coils, stacks, SC-sized humbuckers, etc. I play mostly clean or light OD one of my motivations for this tele build is to play more country-leaning stuff. Ideally, I'd like for the tele bridge pickup to sound like a SC and have a nice amount of twang by itself, but it doesn't need to be overly bright or have any particular output level. Noiseless would be great as well, and under $100 would be great. Going by some past posts and the Fralin article on mixing pickup types, I know that using 500K pots means I should choose a darker sounding bridge so that it doesn't get overly bright. I've seen the trick of adding a resistor to ground for the bridge pup, but the Fralin article says that this can make the middle switch position kind of dark so I'd like to avoid that.

So far I've been looking at a few different options for the bridge:
- Wilde L-290TL or L-290TL-E
- Wilde L48TL
- GFS Lil Puncher
- GFS 52 overwound
- SD Lil 59
- SD Vintage or Hot Stack Tele
- SD broadcaster
- Fralin blues output tele or split blade
- P90 style pickups in a SC size format

Any particular favorites from this list? Any other notable mentions? Should I be looking to match inductance and/or resistance with the TVJ, or should I just pick a warmer sounding pickup? Did I miss any past threads that already answered this completely?
Thanks for any help!

 

thanks for the suggestion. At first glance, the Cavalier pickups all look pretty interesting and I’d be happy to support a TDPRI active contributor. I’m new to teles, coming from a strat and an SG that I’ve left completely stock.

 

Thank you all for the recommendations and info. I think I'm going to try out a higher output SC first and maybe a noiseless stack type pup and see which one I like better. Worst case, I'll just finish this tele build with singe coils and have an excuse to build another one with a Filtertron/HB setup. I'm going to check out demos of the Muy Grande, the Fralin split blade, and the Cavalier pickups in addition to the ones I mentioned in my OP. Also, I e-mailed Rob from Cavalier earlier today and he gave me a great lesson on tele pickups. The Fat Lion sounds exactly like what I was looking for.

 

That's a fine looking guitar. I'm gonna end up building another one or two aren't I...

 

Just wanted to update this thread in case anyone comes along looking to do something similar.
Ended up contacting Rob from Cavalier and getting a Nashville Lion for the bridge. It’s awesome. Im still tinkering with pickup height to get the Tele bridge pup and TVJ neck pup balanced exactly to my liking, but so far I’m loving the combination. I can’t say the middle position has the same sound as a classic Tele middle, but 1) that’s not what I was going after and 2) the middle with this pup combo is a perfectly rounded sound for general chord work. If I roll off the tone knob a hair I can get some nice spanky sounds in the middle. But my main motivation for this Tele was to have a sweet sounding neck and a ripping bridge when I needed it. Both pups sound great through all of my pedals so far, too. I plan on leaving both knobs full up most of the time. I went with 500k pots and a 0.022 uF cap with a 3-way switch. no treble bleed but I might put one in. The volume pot falls off very quickly, so I might try another one at some point. I still have some fine tuning to do with the setup and nut (I’ll update my other thread about that). For now though, I’m pretty thrilled with it. I’ve been jamming on it unplugged during work conference calls while I’m on mute.

 

Ohhh yeah. Hoping for a big move in the next year and some more space for a workshop. Already planning a funky colored HH build, and either a Nashville or a thinline with a nice aged amber finish. I’m hooked.

pic of this build attached. Not perfect at all but I’m pretty proud of it. I remember looking at stewmac and forums many years ago when I first started playing and dreaming of building my own someday.