NZGuitars.com

Telecaster - tuned C# - play blues, prog, rock - this is my go to guitar.
Bridge - single coil, Alnico 5, 6.5K
Neck - humbucker, Alnico 5, 7.8K
Pots - STD 250K
Cap - black candy .047

Issue = humbucker slightly muddy with tone on 10, happy with bridge pickup as is. SO ... to have the humbucker "more usable" i.e yes I use the tone knob, but not sacrifise "to much" of the bridge, should I go for 500K pots?

500K pots would probably make your bridge SC too shrill. Maybe change the 1V/1T control configuration to 2 separate volume knobs for each pickup? That way you can have the HB seeing 500K and the SC seeing 250K.

Or maybe swap to a HB-sized P90 for neck position.

Yes, go 500k for the neck pup. If you search eBay you can find the stacked 250k 500k pots. Expensive but problem solvers!

I hate the idea of losing a tone control for a pickup, but i've never turned the tone down on a neck humbucker. So my first suggestion would be to bypass the tone control for the neck humbucker.

Or get a stacked/concentric knob as Grant said, more fun wiring combos to be had!

if you can't get a 250k/500k pot you can cheat a bit and put a resistor across a 500k/500k... which i haven't tried yet myself. Some people say it's not a good enough substitute.

If it's a 4 wire humbucker you can also try wiring it in split or parallel. That'll cut some of the bass out

There a few things you can do and Grants suggestion is a good one! here are some others I've used to good effect: use a 500k volume pot with a resister going between the hot wire and ground of your bridge pickup so it sort emulates a 250k pot.
Wire up a bass roll off knob for just the neck pickup or if you find a good capacitor value just wire it direct inline with the neck pickup to shave off some bass. This way you don't have to add any pots. Look up Reverend bass roll schematic and you should find something.

Is it a covered pickup? covers suck treble

Thanks for the comments guys. I dont want to add any extra knobs on this thing, trying to keep the original look.

I found some SH Tele wiring examples on Fender website:
https://p4.zdassets.com/hc/theme_assets ... A_SISD.pdf
https://p4.zdassets.com/hc/theme_assets ... B_SISD.pdf
They both have 500k pots and a 22 Cap.

You can see they both have a 270K resistor, in the diagram do they have the resistor soldered between the bridge PUP position on the switch to the top of the volume pot? If so I might give this a go as it makes sense to me, I may get 2x 500k pots and a 22 Cap just in case it dont go as planned.

Ive also thought of 300K pots for Vol and Tone with no other mods.

Another possible (cheap) option could be to rewire the humbucker in parallel. That will brighten it up a touch, and also drop the output a little to get closer to the SC output level.

In addition to the humbucker rewire being a workaround for your problem, parallel humbuckers can be just as pleasant as series. At least going by the couple i've done in my LP's

Think Im gonna get 2x 300K vintage CTS pots and see how that sounds first, then may consider the resister for the bridge PUP.

On a side note, our tech guy here at work just showed me these tiny variable resistors, theyr are about 5mm square, they have a small flat screwdriver slot so you can dial up whatever resistance you need.

So... last night I installed CTS 500K volume pot, CTS 300K tone pot with a 220K resistor for the bridge pickup. Suprised I didn't cock it up either. On plugging in, its definitely brighter all round and had to readjust settings on amp to suit. Ive not quite made my mind up if its better or worse yet so will need to play it more HAHA

So, finally got half hour to myself (busy lad), grabbed said Tele, dialed in my newly acquired Bandit 112 "Teal Stripe" and I can now say Im happy with the mods to the Tele. I now have that Tele sounding bridge and barky neck humbucker. The centre switch position give me a nice sweet tone also. This guitar coupled with my Les Paul (P.G Modded) gives me a good variety. I dont used pedals much, instead use the guitars Vols/Tones and pickups to give me what I need. In saying that got some effects out and was happy with how it all sounds.