Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Talk about your Burstbuckers and Seymour Duncans....

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Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by Molly »

Share your pickup wisdom. What's your criteria and why?

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by Jay »

I don't understand the title... Is that Welsh?
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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by Aquila Rossa »

Seymour Duncan Whole Lotta Humbucker set.

Totally underrated pickups. Play a chord and can hear every note clearly. No mud. Bend a note and they sing with lovely sustain. PAF with rough cast Alnico 5 magnets. 8.7 bridge and 8.2 neck. Can sizzle, but also clean up. Tried so many pups. None have pleased me more. Maybe the name of them shoe horns them into a Jimmy Page thing, but they are just a good custom PAF with a classic sound. Give them more gain and they can easily do Satch etc. Some fuzz and they do Zep etc. They are fun. They produce overtones. Not sure how they would do with a strat or super strat, but for a LP, SG, or 245 they are very good. The split tone on the neck is nice too.

I may or may not keep the 245, but I am definitely keeping these pups

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by null_pointer »

Wot sorta guitar then eh?

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by Molly »

jvpp wrote:I don't understand the title... Is that Welsh?
What sort of pickups do you go for and why?

I suppose I ask because over time I convinced myself that the road to tone required strict adherence to a certain set of rules. Then I found myself with a set that broke all those rules but still sounded great.

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by Zaulkin »

If you want authentic traditional single coil tones, put up with the noise. Seymour Duncan SSL-1s are awesome for that 60's Gilmour tone.

Using the right value pots is important.

A Rio Grande BBQ bucker in the bridge position of a mahogany guitar is awesome for high gain Marshall moments. :)

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by Aquila Rossa »

ps. Before these Duncans, my favorite pups that I have actually owned were Japanese way back in the late 80s. I had a pre law suit Ibanez Les Paul that had unpotted HBs. They did the Beano sound quite well. But the pup that really stood out was on an old Aria Pro that got stolen. It was the single coil neck pup. The push pull pot did something to it that was just really sweet. Added thickness. Not sure what the pot was doing tbh, because I was not so clued up on tech back then. That was a great guitar.

Gibson pups have never been that great for me. Never tried a real PAF tho. 496R and 500T set is fun, but way too hot for classic LP tones. Classic 57s were okay. Much preferred Burstbuckers. Had a Gibson Elegant Series Custom Shop Les Paul too. Pups in that were meh.

Liked EMGs at times.

Seymour Duncan JB and Jazz is okay in the right guitar. In a Jap Dinky they were too bright and had to change caps.

Dimarzio Air Norton and Tone Zone combo was too bright in a Alder Super Strat too.

Oh yeah. back in 90s I had Dimarzio X2N installed in an Ibanez JS100. it was a big improvement on the stock pups.

Fender bridge pup in a blond reissue tele I played about 10 years ago kicked ass. Never expected a single coil to have so much grunt and rock hhard like that.

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by rickenbackerkid »

My all time favourite pickups are singles but not the weedy strat singles (please don't shoot me) but something with a little more meat on it's bones. Rickenbacker Hi Gain and G&L's epic MFD. P90's can be awesome too.

For me I like pickups with a lot of airy top end, but also pretty big in the midrange. Don't care about bass response, and I like them to be fairly low output. The high output pickups I've had are always kind of peaky sounding, unless I used a lot of compression or distortion.

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by TmcB »

Humbuckers - PAF/lower gain ones with good mids, not murky. Bareknuckle Mules & Black Dogs, Dimarzio 36th Anni's have been my jam.

P90's - Fralins, humbucker sized Harmonic Design Z90's. Needs enough gain to sound a bit snarly but not so much it's just midrange anger - I like a bit of swirl and depth to mine so they sound like the best of humbuckers and singles.

Singles - Tele I go for Keystones, Dimarzio Area T's, Rio Grande Vintage tall boys. I don't like too much beef, just a good balance with a bit of bite. Currently smitten with Keystones.

Singles - Strat Fender 62 set, Fralin Vintage Hot set,


Overall I like lower gain with tight lows and biting highs - I like things to sound pretty but have enough midrange to roar if required.
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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by rickenbackerkid »

after my previous post I looked up some pickup construction diagrams and realised that the pickups I like are single coil pickups, with the magnet floating below steel pole pieces, rather than a Start type where the pole pieces themselves are magnetic. Also the MFD and Ric pickups use ceramic magnets, rather than steel. Why these things add up to make the sound that I like, I don't know, but I found it interesting. Now to stop wasting time on Google and do some work

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by Aquila Rossa »

TmcB wrote:Humbuckers - PAF/lower gain ones with good mids, not murky. Bareknuckle Mules & Black Dogs, Dimarzio 36th Anni's have been my jam.
off topic for a second.

Hey Tony McB!. Need some fuzz advice. I like the Catalinbread Mosley Fuzzrite sound and the Iron Butterfly thing they do with it, I like MKII for its sustain and also its treble bite. I like Fuzzface because it seems to be quite fluid and has overtones, where as a MKII seems stiffer/tighter to me. I like lower gain fuzz I think. I like the sound of the Muff in the Keeley Dark Side for instance. I also like the Mooer Tri Buff. I like Bolin's fuzzface tone with James Gang (he switched later on to something else) Only going by demos and records. In other words i am stuck for fuzz choices for humbuckers.

p.s. I also like the tones your competitor from the Datsuns gets in his band in more recnt times. Gnarly LP, fuzz Marshall tones. Kind of want pedal that does it all as far as classic fuzz tones go. maybe. i dunno. Choosing a fuzz has got me all confuzzled.

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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by godgrinder »

Personally I found it really depends on the guitar and tuning. When I'm swapping a pickup I usually want it to provide some counterbalance to what's lacking (or excessive) in the current sound.
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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by TmcB »

Aquila Rossa wrote:
TmcB wrote:Humbuckers - PAF/lower gain ones with good mids, not murky. Bareknuckle Mules & Black Dogs, Dimarzio 36th Anni's have been my jam.
off topic for a second.

Hey Tony McB!. Need some fuzz advice. I like the Catalinbread Mosley Fuzzrite sound and the Iron Butterfly thing they do with it, I like MKII for its sustain and also its treble bite. I like Fuzzface because it seems to be quite fluid and has overtones, where as a MKII seems stiffer/tighter to me. I like lower gain fuzz I think. I like the sound of the Muff in the Keeley Dark Side for instance. I also like the Mooer Tri Buff. I like Bolin's fuzzface tone with James Gang (he switched later on to something else) Only going by demos and records. In other words i am stuck for fuzz choices for humbuckers.

p.s. I also like the tones your competitor from the Datsuns gets in his band in more recnt times. Gnarly LP, fuzz Marshall tones. Kind of want pedal that does it all as far as classic fuzz tones go. maybe. i dunno. Choosing a fuzz has got me all confuzzled.
Always willing to shoot the breeze about fuzz!
Humbuckers can be really hit and miss with fuzz - I get around half the problem with my Orion fuzz by putting an input trimpot inside so you can stop the input getting too overloaded with humbuckers. The other half of it is having some way to control the bass properly - my pedals use crazy powerful EQ to deal with this.

The Orion might be something you're after - it's got a bias control on the inside that takes it from splatty and Velcro to big smooth wall of fuzz. Might be worth a go? You can ask Darth Sabbathi, Polar Bear, or Bender about theirs too - all three of them have theirs set up completely differently.
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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by Single coil »

Dimarzio paf 36 is probably my favourite in a les paul. Super distortion good too, but desert island etc it'd be the 36.

50+ guitars and none of them have had p90s so can't comment.

Looking forward to pissing around with my tele even more; thinking hot rail this time. Just can't gel with the tele singles. Everyone else can make them sound good though. :lol:
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Re: Wot pickups is goodera than wot others is?

Post by jeremyb »

Another vote for low output PAF style humbuckers, 36ths are indeed fantastic, and GFS mean 90's in my telemaster are the bomb! Hard to believe they're so cheap!
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