Seymour Duncans gain in different guitars

[davenz]

Hi there,

I'm new on this forum and have a question about pickups.

I have 2 guitars with the same pickups (Seymour Duncan JB/'59) and am getting different results in terms of the amount of gain in each guitar.
I initially bought a Schecter Blackjack 006 with those pickups and loved the sound, so I looked for those pickups in another guitar I bought, an ESP Eclipse.
While the ESP Eclipse sounds great, it has noticeably less gain when compared to the Schecter.
I tried moving the pickups closer to the strings on the ESP, which helped a little, but the difference is still quite noticeable.

So my question is, what are the other factors that will determine the amount of gain you get out of a given set of pickups? Are there any more variables I can change apart from adjusting the distance between pickups and strings? Or is it more down to the exact guitar and wood etc? They are both mahogany body and neck btw. I've never had 2 guitars with the same pickups before, so I've never been able to compare. I should probably note that I use the bridge pickup (JB) almost exclusively on each guitar.

Any advice would be welcomed!

Cheers,

Dave

[Ironbird13]

Interesting to hear of guitars coming out of the factory with different pickups than on the spec sheet. I wasn't aware that might be a possibility.

never worked in a factory before huh?

[davenz]

Hi all,

I just thought I would post my findings about my pickups and the varying gains.
I finally got time to pull the pickups out of my ESP Eclipse and wouldn't you know it, the pickups were not what I was lead to believe!
They were actually Seymour Duncan APH-1N (neck) and APH-1B (bridge) rather than the '59/JB combo I thought was in there.
Once I found that out some google searches show that these pickups were definitely available as stock pickups for this guitar, so they will be the factory pickups.
This explains the reduced gain, as the APH are moderate output pickups and not as hot as the JB.
So, lesson learned, don't believe everything you are told.
I may try swapping the pickups out for '59/JB, but for now it's just nice to know that my ears weren't lying to me and I can be happy with the fact that all my gear survived the earthquakes in Christchurch today unharmed.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who helped me out in my diagnosis - it was very helpful.

Cheers

Dave

[Capt. Black]

Hey Dave, good to hear you're ok after the quakes today.

Regarding the pickups. Now that you know what you have, before changing things, why not live with them for a while and re-evaluate whether you like the sound or not. Sometimes getting used to the idea that stuff is not what we expected takes a little time. It might be very useful to have that noticeable difference in tone and gain character between the guitars.

[davenz]

Yup, good advice Capt Black! I've actually just been in the studio in the weekend and I actually found myself leaning towards this guitar over the ones with the JB/59 pickups. Partly because I don't need quite as much distortion in a studio environment, but also because the ESP Eclipse is just a really great sounding guitar. Also, as you say, especially for studio work it is great to have some different tonal options to use when recording.

It's looking like these pickups could be keepers after all. Thanks for the advice!