pickups!

  • Thread starter Thread starter treymonfauntre
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treymonfauntre

treymonfauntre

Magic Bag Of Sounds
is there a good reference site for pickups?

right now i have a PRS santana se. i got it in 2003 when they first made them. i wasn't a huge fan of the pickup that was in it, which might have been because i had a strat before that? anyway, i ended up getting the bright idea of replacing the bridge pickup with an EMG H4. i was satisfied but probably just because i spent money on it and had to like it or else i'd be pissed.
nowadays i have better ears.
i don't like the sound at all. its very mundane and almost muddy. i imagine its supposed to sound warm, which doesn't work out at all for me when i'm looking for an almost single coil sound.
i was debating just getting rid of the guitar and trying to find another guitar i like, but then i looked at it over there and realized i really love playing that guitar. i'd much rather give it some sort of sonic improvement than replace it and never play it again because it doesn't sound good at all.

i don't really know much about guitars, i can get around with a soldering iron. is there a really popular pickup that will give me a very defined and crisp sound, or should i just put the stock pickups back in and live with it?
 
Well, you will never get a Strat quack out of it, but if you want a single coil sound you could try a Duncan PhatCat . It is a P-90 in a humbucker sized case. It is too wide to sound like a Strat pickup, but it would be brighter than a humbucker. A couple other companies are making similar products.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Lindy Fralin Pickups. I was just looking at his web page and I think you will find his pick ups match your single coil taste

Unbucker- is a humbucker with a single coil sound. If you wire the pick up correctly you can split the coil and get an accurate single coil sound.

P-92 is a obvious P-90 style single coil (probably the least of these three that have a strat single coil sound) that will fit in your humbucker opening.

Twangmaster is a a Fender style single coil that fits in a humbucker opening. If I had to venture a guess I'd bet it has a Tele sound.
 
ah i see, so a p90 is basically a single coil pickup in a humbucker body. why is the phat cat better?
 
The phat cat is just a P-90 that will fit in the space already routed in your guitar since it is the size of a humbucker, a regular P-90 will not fit.

Another option is to get a decent humbucker and wire it for coil splitting, so that you can get a single coil sound from it. Then you also have the option of using the big humbucker sound when you want. Check out the seymour duncan site, they have a return policy such that you can return it for a pickup of equal value or less value or pay the difference so long as you dont trim the wires too much.

My advice is go to a guitar store and try a guitar with p-90s, see if you like the tone from the pickups, making sure to seperate whats from the pickups and whats from the guitar/amp. If you don't like them but really want to use that guitar and you think you'll actually use the humbucker sound sometimes then go the second route, I'm sure seymour duncan has something that you will find to your liking unless you really just want a single coil.
 
Another option is Bill Lawrence

He has just replaced many of his 400 series pickups with the new 600 series. They are supposed to have the same sound but a new look.

"For Gibson-style guitars: L-49xG's offer Soapbar/P-90 character as a full-size humbucker retrofit. Take your 335-style guitar into Epiphone Casino territory with a pair of these beauties. For high gain players of Les Paul and SG-style guitars, check out the L-49xG-XL."

"if you want a more "Fenderish" direction (and what some of our customers have called a crossbreed of a P-90/Jazzmaster sound), then go with our L-490. If you're leaning more towards the straight "Gibsonish" soapbar P-90 sound, then the L-495 is your choice. A very popular combination, as xxxx stated, is our L-490N and the L-495L. Great for playing the blues!"

http://www.billlawrence.com/

Above discussion of these pickups here:

http://p082.ezboard.com/fguitarsbyfenderfrm8.showMessage?topicID=59.topic

Note that Bill designs his pickups with hum cancelling designs - they are not true single coil pickups but also don't have the single coil noise problems of pickups like traditional p90s or strat pickups.

Of course pickups are a very personal thing - YMMV

WRT the previous post, no that looks like a direct P90 replacement which will not fit in place of a standard humbucker.

Peace,
ST
 
Brian_MAy said:
how often should you change your pickups?
Click to expand...

i usually change them together with the strings, there's nothing like a well balanced set.
 
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