The Pearly Gates is close to a 59, with just a bit more high mids, which drive the amp in a bit more aggressive way. It’s like a PAF with a bit more bite, very suitable in bridge position.
If you’re buying a new humbucker, though there are arguments to the contrary, make sure it’s Fender spaced. The poles alignment shows up less in the sound than you think but it really does bother those with details in mind. The small humbucker like the Pearly Gates you showed will work but then you’ll want to change to 500k pots. SD jazz or 59 works great in the neck. Especially paired with a Duncan JB in the bridge. As others have mentioned, PAF output is lower and I like them for the dynamic range they have in both the clean and edge of breakup territory. But signal chain, amp/preamp will all be part of that equation as well. I hope that’s more helpful than confusin’!
BTW, @Wombat-metal - the J-Standard Iliad comes with Seymour Duncan pickups in it (single coils of course). I’m willing to bet they put decent pickups in the Boundary Iliad. I’d give the Fujigen pickups a chance before buying anything for swapping them out, too.
You see, this entire previous conversation is why I bought the Baja Tele. It’s got Custom Shop designed pickups in it made specifically for this incarnation of tele that the Custom Shop was building a bunch of by request.
What all that means to me is the pickups in it are good enough for a dope like me, and I’m not touching anything because I’d go insane choosing. Lolol.
Oh so do I - on bass.
Guitar is interesting fodder.
This Amplitube thing seems to be able to make my tele sound like a zillion more things than I’d ever care about.
So why do I need a strat let alone mod anything on the tele? Ya you can say the same for basses and plugins or super helix things too. But guitar tone is a giant landscape that I see best served by plugins ala @howard. Lol