What pickup would you reccomend?

[ColdAsh]

I'm looking at getting a new pickup for my Maton Mastersound (Gibson type guitar, Australian made). It's a fairly good pickup but im sure i could do better. It sounds realy nice on heavily distorted (but not death metal sorts of distortion) and if that was all i used it one i wouldnt replace them. It sounds decent on clean but not realy great. And the light distortion realy sounds pathetic. So i'm looking for a pickup that will give me a nice sound overall. The most important sound would be heavy distortion then light distortion then clean. Please give me your suggestion on the best pickup and model for me. I know it wont end up sounding like a gibson but i want as good as possibe and i'll pay whats needed (withing certain limts). Oh yeah its just the bridge pickup i'll be replacing as i dont use the neck at all.

 

[crawdad]

Ideas:

Duncan pearly gates
Duncan 59
Gibson PAF reissue
Lindy Fralin humbucker

 

[Clive Hugh]

Maton make nice axes, they always have and having had a couple over the years I was always disappointed with the pickups, try Di Marzio, and (although I have never used them) Lawrence got an excellent review on these pages a week or so back. Are the Maton single coil or humbuckers these days? because if they are humbuckers it is usual practice to have 500k pots with them.

 

[Fangar]

I really like the Duncan Custom Custom. Great wide range of sounds works well for lots of dirt too. Be sure that you get the non F Spaced style if you guitar has a standard trem as the pole spacings will be different for the F spaced pickup. Just confirm you need a humbucker right? K.

Fangar

 

[OrangeGangster]

there are some pretty good options already made,(..59 is a very good overall pickup),but from intuition i would bet on Seymour JB from the discription you´ve made of what you want...it has defenition at all levels if you work a lot with the volume pot for expression...it has probably the most "head-room" frequencies of all pickups made..remenber it was made for jeef beck and he paints with his guitar:

 

[hongteck]

I second the SD Jeff Beck, nothing like it for the blues with good tone. Don't fall into the trap of getting high output humbuckers without tone or character.

 

[Richard Monroe]

pickups

Duncan SH-4 (neck) and SH-14 (bridge) with push-pull pots! Click- it's a Gibson Click-it's a Fender Click- it's a hybrid strat! Unfortunately, stock Gibson dial knobs aren't long enough to accomodate the push-pull pots, and the replacements we used have no numbers on them, which are needed for duplicating settings for punching. They're held in place by allen head screws, and you can use these for a reference point. In the end, I wound up contact cementing on a couple of small watch dials for reference, got them from a jeweler. Eat your hearts out, Spinal Tap! My dials go to 12- backwards!- Richie

 

[ColdAsh]

How much is the SH-14 (approx)?. I know its not going to sound exactly like a fender but how nice is it in split mode (im guessing thats what you mean). My guitar has a splitable bridge pickup but has a seperate switch for humbucker/ split single coil. Could it be wired (by a profesional) to do the same thing with the SH-14?

Clive, as above they are both. My bridge is humbucker/splittable and nick is single coil (and very muddy sounding). All the pickups are hand wound. But would that be a good thing?

 

[Richard Monroe]

The SH-4 and SH-14 are about $65 each, and for the neck, I'd recommend SH-4. Frankly, when tapped, they both sound great. They're about the same, but the 14 has somewhat higher output. Never muddy- Richie