Vintage Tallboy Tele® Neck

Vintage Tallboy For Telecaster Sound Perceived output level: Slighly more than stock. Tone: Very balanced and articulated- Sonic evaluation: I have a pile of guitars but for evaluation a Yamaha Pacifica tele - several amps (Carvin, Peavey and Marshall) The best combination out of my gear for putting out articulated singy blues lead stuff is The Peavey Classic fifty with the Carvin 4x12 cab. Primarily because the Peavey is very quiet, usable tone, ant the Carvins are detailed. and hence is a good match for the RWRP setup on the Vintage Tallboys. The Pacifica is a great guitar to get and upgrade - they have very good necks and general craftmanship. Want to try this with an old JBL 12 however. For which styles and positions is this pickup (un)suitable: Probably not what you want for metal - I play Hellecaster, Police, Alternative Comments: I've been playing for 30 years and have turned into a tone junkie. I have eleven guitars and these pickups are as good as I've had. Great tonal range and very responsive. I've had 54 Custom Shop strat pickups, Texas Specials and played all range of Seymour Duncans (which are also very good pickups). I have not "head to headed" the Rio Grande Vintage Tallboys against other [replacement] Tele setups at home but I will say that these pickups put you in that magic state where your hands speak. You can play 'em for hours. Dynamically, pick soft or hard and with pretty much any tone or pickup variation and get a good sound once you find the tone hole from your amp. Its hard to translate some of the sonic stuff about these pickups. (I never did know what glassy meant) but they are just so damn expressive. I recorded a piece with the Peavey/Carvin combo with a SM57 into an ADAT (was surprised about how well the ADAT did on the recording) and the tone was finally, after years of trying, exactly what I wanted. Very detailed ( I do a lot of pick stuff on the string with these stainless steel picks), steely, singing tele sound - and it all comes through - the sonic equivalent of a something nasty whispered in yer ear in the dead of night. No mistakin what's been said. If there is a shortcoming it may be that the pickups are so on the edge that once in a while they touch on being peaky. If you run them through just a touch of compression - no problem or you can just back off somewhere on the amp EQ. I am putting Rio Grande pickups in two other guitars, A Big Bottom Strat set in a Strat I'm building with a warmoth neck and a Fishman Power Bridge and another Tele for a friend. If the Big Bottom set performs as well as the Vintage Tele I'll replace the humbuckers in my 335 with Rio Grandes. This is the first time I have been satisfied with a pickup set and have the feeling last for six months. The only thing I can say succinctly about these pickups was said by another reviewer who compared Rio Grande strat pickups against some other pickups "They sound like someone took the cotton out of your ears" On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this pickup a: 10 Fantastic value Submitted by: Leonard Czajka

Dave - The Tallboy and Half-breed I recently received have been installed into my G&L Legacy S500....making it a truly fine piece o' biz-ness! Impressive by anyone's standards, I believe. I've hooked up the VTT neck (purchased for Christmas by my brother, Eric) and the VTT for bridge I bought subsequently.... I don't have a better way to say this: these f**kers rock! I have never been more pleased than the moment I got the 1st humming twang out of my previously lack-luster Tele.... I thank you all for doing what you do. Awesome work - as always... Matthew