Anyone put a tele pickup on a strat? (2025)

I'm wondering if I put a tele bridge pickup on my strat, would it sound like a tele? I like that bite from a tele but I don't know how much of a tele's sound comes from the pups. Does the bridge play more of a role in the tone, or the strings through the body, different body mass, etc.?

I can't afford a tele right now so am contemplating a pickup change if it will do the job. Does anyone have any experience with this?

Gary

I had a Strat set up like that for a while. It didn't take much to get the Tele bridge pup to fit the body, just some very minor clearancing. It took more time to file out the pickguard to get the pup to fit than it did the body.

It sounded great, beefier than a Strat pup, but not quite 100% Tele. Most guys that played it didn't notice that it was a Tele pickup; they liked the sound, and wanted to know what kind of Strat pup it was. It was a fun experiment, but I doubt I would do it again... I'd rather just own two guitars!

Made a 3 pup Tele bridge pickup Strat and it was the closest I ever heard to SRV's #1.
BIG sounding, I may do it again, the pups were Van Zandt flat pole tele bridge pups.

I also have owned about 5 Strats w Tele bridge pups and a Strat pup or two, I make alot of different featherweight Strats and Tele, and wish I could post em...
maybe some one will post em for me, someday?

If you want to try a relatively cheap & easy experiment you could just start by adding a baseplate to your Strat's bridge pickup. Fralin makes a premade one which you can get through any number of online retailers & even on eBay. It's cheap, easy to install, and easily reversible. It's not quite the same as a dedicated Tele'esque pickup which was designed that way from the get-go, but it's something to consider.

Another thing you may want to look into is to wire up one of the tone controls to the bridge pickup. That'll give you more control over the tonal characteristics of that pickup as well.

But if you just want to go the replacement-pickup route & don't want to spend an arm and a leg Duncan just released one not long ago called the Twangmaster (I think) which is a Strat-sized Tele pickup. They're quite reasonably priced from what I recall and so far I've read great things about them, but haven't tried one yet so no personal experience unfortunately.