What is it about Teles?

The bridge is part of it, I use the old style folded edge bridges, those are cold rolled hard steel. Saddles can be rolled smooth steel or knurled, I prefer smooth as string bending can cause the string angle to rub and loose sustain. A also have one with brass saddles, a far less twangy tone. New models now use a flat bridge plate and six Strat vintage style saddles.

The steel plate used to mount the bridge pickup spreads the magnetic field out underneath the pickup. It does little to effect the tone as the strings are located on the other side of that field. What it does do is create the nagging squealing under higher gain. That is the plate actually moving at that frequency. Dipping it in wax helps but removing it solves the problems of microphonics if you use the latex/lockwasher technique. The neck pickup cover can also be a location for mechanical feedback, all of my pickups are wax dipped, the ones with the metal cover are dipped assembled to create a solid piece that can't vibrate. I also use latex hose to mount it, no springs are those are also magnetic and will vibrate/squeal at higher gains. Early Hendrix recordings and live shows had him play 1965 era Strats that also used latex hose to mount the pickups. Later CBS Strats switched to steel springs, you can hear Hendrix struggle to control the squealing of those guitars.

The secret of the Telecaster bridge pickup spank is the geometry of the coil. It is a larger bobbin than a Strat pickup and that focuses a narrower magnetic field under the strings than you get with a Strat or Jazzmaster pickup. That is due to the windings, it's a rather narrow stack with cotton string used to fill out the bobbin after winding. If you look at a Jazzmaster pickup, it's a flatter bobbin with the windings spread out further away from the magnet poles. That grabs a wider aperature of the string's field making for a fatter tone.

The magic of the Telecaster is found in the player's hands. With that ability to create a wide pallet of string tones from the player, it's as individual a sound as the player wishes to develope. Compared to Gibson humbuckers that double the fundamental frequency, those tend to make the player sound more anonomous and alike unless the player developes a unique way of attacking the strings.