Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: Dr. Vic on June 02, 2009, 05:11:12 PM
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Back again with the idea of this topic, trying to put it differently this time.... So, my question is :
What are your good and bad experiences of guitar / BKP matches. Describe the specifications of the guitar and also your rig, in order to explain more largely why you considered it as a good or bad match regarding the tone you wanted.
The purpose is to figure out what are the best combinations and the ones to avoid, (especially to understand the woods / pickups « alchemy », each time it's possible).
It would be great to use this tread as a little reference guide for all BKP users !
Start your input with the name of the pickup you've tested like « NB do » or « BD don't ».
As a result it will make it easier, at the end, for everyone to quickly look at what he his looking for....
Cheers! :drink:
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CS Don't Do! (neck)
Swamp ash body, maple neck, pau ferro board, Floyd. Waaaay too much harsh treble.
MQ Do!
See above guitar^^^
Krank Revolution Series One, Clean clean tones up to modern rock, not too "metal"; standard tuning.
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Interesting topic, I can't really chime in because the pickup change my guitar is going through is the first time for me (changing to BKP obviously!).
I'm putting a Cold Sweat, MQ, and Riff Raff, into a Les Paul...mahogany body, rosewood neck...
I'll let you know.
I'll keep an eye on this thread for future ideas.
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Les Paul + Cold sweat = Amazing!
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Les Paul + Cold sweat = Amazing!
what type of lp though? (weight how much maple to mahog etc.?)
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Miracle Man + les paul style guitar = Amazing
Metal/ hard rock i play through a pod and it sounds awesome but i played through a friends 5150 and it sounded amazing
Solid mahogany body
mahogany neck
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Les Paul + Cold sweat = Amazing!
what type of lp though? (weight how much maple to mahog etc.?)
Any les paul to be honest!
Even in a les paul custom with a huge maple top it sounds amazing.
Mines a studio though.
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There is no best. Only what is best for you. Even a terrible combination can sound perfect in certain circumstances.
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Black Dog Do = Swamp Ash Body. Maple Neck. 7 string optional.
very creamy balanced tone in the mids/mid high. powerful but soft low end, soft high end that chimes when you pick harder. nice cleans even at the bridge. so much response to pick attack and color i've changed pick materials (from ultex to nylon) :D
from my limited experience. this is the best advice i can give. i have a mule neck but that can pretty much sound good anywhere so my opinion doesn't matter
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NO: NAILBOMB BRIDGE in an All Mahagony Flying V with Ebony board > muddy and dark tone can't cut through an all mahagony guitar! I guess it's the same with a Holy Diver but it's no problem with A-Pigs...
YES: NAILBOMB in mahagony guitars with a maple cap and/or a maple neck. Miracle Mans in a Les Paul Standard. Warpigs in a SG style guitar
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VHIIs - Don't Do!
PRS McCarty, solid rosewood neck, mahogany body, maple top. Around 8lbs in weight, light coloured rosewood neck, very resonant guitar.
VHIIs were too bright and cutting, almost like a Tele. Just too thin and scratchy sounding.
HD's - Do!
Different PRS McCarty, solid rosewood neck, mahogany body, maple top. Again around 8lbs in weight, darker coloured rosewood neck, not quite as resonant as the guitar above but almost identical.
HDs are superb here both full coils and split. Quite fat sounding but tight enough for classic rock and heavy gain. This is my current #1 for gigging.
HDs are Zebra, VHIIs are double black:
(http://www.doppelganger-rock.com/Twinfan/McRosies.JPG)
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<<BD do>>
Wez Venables custom baritone 6 string, multiscale 26.5" treble to 28" bass, bubinga wings, wenge topped maple-bubinga-wenge-bubinga-maple neck-through, strung-through body and with 14-68 gauge strings in drop A.
Hope that's not too specific for anyone.
Roo
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DO -- make up your own mind instead of expecting a bunch of 1s and 0s to spoon-feed some magic formula to you.
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Twinfan, do you think a MQ Neck and Crawler Bridge would work well in those guitars?
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There is no best. Only what is best for you. Even a terrible combination can sound perfect in certain circumstances.
DO -- make up your own mind instead of expecting a bunch of 1s and 0s to spoon-feed some magic formula to you.
I'm getting a vague feeling that you might be a teensy bit sceptical about the usefulness of this thread. :wink:
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Twinfan, do you think a MQ Neck and Crawler Bridge would work well in those guitars?
Yeah, I think they would :)
DO -- make up your own mind instead of expecting a bunch of 1s and 0s to spoon-feed some magic formula to you.
Not everyone can afford to buy a whole bunch of £90+ pickups just to find the one they like best. This is a discussion forum and we're discussing some examples of what has worked for us and what hasn't.
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DO -- make up your own mind instead of expecting a bunch of 1s and 0s to spoon-feed some magic formula to you.
Not everyone can afford to buy a whole bunch of £90+ pickups just to find the one they like best. This is a discussion forum and we're discussing some examples of what has worked for us and what hasn't.
110101011110101010 PDT_008
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I dont think I have a dont (yet) but
Pig 90 bridge /MQ neck - DO
Got these in an all mahogany Les Paul and it sounds/feels so much better than my Mule'd Epiphone :) Makes me want a guitar with the "proper" Les Paul woods to put the Mules in, though..
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DO -- make up your own mind instead of expecting a bunch of 1s and 0s to spoon-feed some magic formula to you.
Not everyone can afford to buy a whole bunch of £90+ pickups just to find the one they like best. This is a discussion forum and we're discussing some examples of what has worked for us and what hasn't.
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completely agree with that... i dont really see this as any different to advising someone what pickup to choose its just a broader spectrum of other peoples experiances.... if your going to tell people to see what they like the best you may as well say that to anyone who asks what pickup in this guitar for this style...... which is $%&#ing ludicrous because as twinfan said not everyone is loaded.....
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DO - Calibrated set of Painkillers in an Ibanez RG321 with an all mahogany unlaquered body, maple bolt on neck with a bound rosewood fingerboard , fixed bridge and through body stringing - Master volume and tone controls replaced with dual concentric pots so each pup has its own volume and tone - 5 way pup selecter switch replaced with a 3 way output selecter - so wired as per a LP apart from a mini toggle to reverse phase and another to switch tone pot caps from .022 to .047 (particularly noticable tone spectrum shift when pups are switched out of phase) fitted with 11's and mostly tuned to ..umm drop D flat I think (strings 1 - 5 down half a step and string 6 down a step and a half)
Simply superb
NOT SURE - Calibrated set of Nailbombs in an Ibanez RGT42 - 5 piece mahogany/walnut through neck mahogany body wings - thick laquer on body and back of bound rosewood fingerboarded neck- locking nut and floyd and again wired as per a LP - and weighs nearly as much :( - standard tuning on 10's
Although the Nailbombs sound great, with excellent dynamic response and a breathing organic fluidity and definition, they do tend to emphasise the natural "middyness" of this guitar a little too much for my liking and I'm thinking of replacing them with a set of C-Bombs for a little added sizzle, and putting these A-Bombs on a recently aquired secondhand Ibanez RG1550 Prestige I'm refurbishing. I think the combination of its basswood body, all maple neck and fingerboard, locking nut and floyd and controls and pups all mounted on a pickguard as per a Strat, will allow the Nailbombs to breath and sing unfettered.
I'll report back if this thread is still going by the time I get things sorted 8)
So - good but not as good as they could/will be on other tone woods
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Holydiver in an alder guitar. My favorite pickup ever, sounds amazing in both strats and teles.
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I can't really make specific-pickup-in-specific-guitar suggestions, but as very general observations:
1. A pickup that's voiced with a lot of bass/low mids will be muddy in an all-mahogany set-neck, but can sound great (and totally different) in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck.
2. A pickup which sounds bright in your all-mahogany set-neck probably isn't going to work in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck. Unless you really like the sound of chalk on a blackboard.
3. If your mahogany set-neck has a (thick) maple top, it balances out the natural tone and gives you a much wider choice of pickups which will work in that guitar.
IMO, of course. All a matter of taste.
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I can't really make specific-pickup-in-specific-guitar suggestions, but as very general observations:
1. A pickup that's voiced with a lot of bass/low mids will be muddy in an all-mahogany set-neck, but can sound great (and totally different) in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck.
2. A pickup which sounds bright in your all-mahogany set-neck probably isn't going to work in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck. Unless you really like the sound of chalk on a blackboard.
3. If your mahogany set-neck has a (thick) maple top, it balances out the natural tone and gives you a much wider choice of pickups which will work in that guitar.
IMO, of course. All a matter of taste.
+1
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I can't really make specific-pickup-in-specific-guitar suggestions, but as very general observations:
1. A pickup that's voiced with a lot of bass/low mids will be muddy in an all-mahogany set-neck, but can sound great (and totally different) in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck.
2. A pickup which sounds bright in your all-mahogany set-neck probably isn't going to work in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck. Unless you really like the sound of chalk on a blackboard.
3. If your mahogany set-neck has a (thick) maple top, it balances out the natural tone and gives you a much wider choice of pickups which will work in that guitar.
IMO, of course. All a matter of taste.
Most logical post yet.
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I can't really make specific-pickup-in-specific-guitar suggestions, but as very general observations:
1. A pickup that's voiced with a lot of bass/low mids will be muddy in an all-mahogany set-neck, but can sound great (and totally different) in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck.
2. A pickup which sounds bright in your all-mahogany set-neck probably isn't going to work in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck. Unless you really like the sound of chalk on a blackboard.
3. If your mahogany set-neck has a (thick) maple top, it balances out the natural tone and gives you a much wider choice of pickups which will work in that guitar.
IMO, of course. All a matter of taste.
Great post. I would like to add to it:
You can usually go towards your general wanted tone from several directions. For example, if you have maple-bodied guitar, the bottom is very tight. If you combine that with a pickup that has a tight and pronounced bottom, like the miracle man, you'll get a thick but tight tone. On the other hand, if you have guitar with a loose and warm bottom, you can combine that with a pickup that has a less bottom and a bright top, you'll have approximately the same amount of bottom between the two guitars. But the results are still very different.
This kind of thread has been tried before..it's a good thought, but definitive answers cannot be given :? Ultimately, there is no good tone or bad tone..there is only a need for a certain tone.
-Zaned
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There is no best. Only what is best for you. Even a terrible combination can sound perfect in certain circumstances.
definitive answers cannot be given :? Ultimately, there is no good tone or bad tone..there is only a need for a certain tone.
Yes that's very true but the aim of this topic isn't to ask for permanent rules as we know it has a lot to do with your context. Indeed I think the review of twinfan is very interesting : having two similar guitars giving differents results speaks a lot to me !.
Which is why I think it's interresting in this thread to share personal-unique-experiences of what pup/axe combination(s) did or didn't work for you. And the more you comment on the description of your rig and the tone you were after, the better.
I can't really make specific-pickup-in-specific-guitar suggestions, but as very general observations:
1. A pickup that's voiced with a lot of bass/low mids will be muddy in an all-mahogany set-neck, but can sound great (and totally different) in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck.
2. A pickup which sounds bright in your all-mahogany set-neck probably isn't going to work in a guitar with a bolt-on maple neck. Unless you really like the sound of chalk on a blackboard.
3. If your mahogany set-neck has a (thick) maple top, it balances out the natural tone and gives you a much wider choice of pickups which will work in that guitar.
IMO, of course. All a matter of taste.
Most logical post yet.
I think, for instance, that it would have been great to illustrate the general observations above with the pickups you found bassy/muddy and the one you found bright in your mahog guitar, still regarding the tone you were after..
And btw thanks guys for the nice review you started to put here....... 8)
To be continued.... :D
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I think, for instance, that it would have been great to illustrate the general observations above with the pickups you found bassy/muddy and the one you found bright in your mahog guitar, still regarding the tone you were after..
The reason I didn't mention particular pickups is that it really was a general observation based on many years of trial-and-error guitar-and-pickup swapping. I made some really bad choices, but slowly learned to make better ones.
I mentioned mahogany guitars and traditional bolt-ons because most of my guitars have been SGs (or similar), Strats or Teles, plus a few LPs. I've never owned a neck-thru, or anything made of exotic woods, and I've only owned a couple of superstrats so I can't say too much about them.
And most of the pickups weren't BKPs, so they wouldn't be too relevant to this discussion. I've tried loads of different DiMarzios, Duncans, EMGs, Bardens, Kinmans, Armstrongs plus stock Fenders and Gibsons so my opinions are mostly based on those, plus the 10 or so BKPs I've had.
For personal BKP observations: I love Cold Sweats in an SG. The Rebel Yell worked well enough in a thin-body LP, but ultimately I didn't really like it. I found Crawlers very dark in a fairly lightweight Edwards LP (but others have said completely different - even that they're bright!). But as for other combinations, I'm guessing - I can say, for example, that I wouldn't put a Crawler in an SG or a Riff Raff in a Tele..... but I haven't actually tried them, because I'm 100% sure they wouldn't work!* :P
(* for ME, that is!)
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would avoid painkillers in a graphite board&neck/maple bodied axe unless you like a uber bright attack
even EMGs won't totally blot out a guitars natural tone.. so sensitive pickups like BKPs need to be used carefully
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Do - listen to the acoustic sound of the guitar.
Do - make decisions on what pickup goes in what guitar on a guitar-by-guitar basis
Dont - make decisions on what pickup to put in what guitar on a wood-by-wood basis. On paper the speicies of wood in a guitar are guides to how it sounds, theres a lot of variation within the species and the only fact of how it sounds is how it bloody well sounds when you play it. If your all-maple guitar has a tonne of low end, DONT blunder along like a T72 tank thinking "but maple bright must use dark pickup" when your guitar doesnt fit that trend.
Do - use the knowledge and experience of others. People that have done similar things are the best guides youre going to get short of laying out the cash to experiment yourself, and its why we all joined here in the first place; those of us that have stayed try to help and continue to learn about guitars and ascociated stuff from one another.
Do - experiment, if you can afford it.
Do - Trust your ears
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would avoid painkillers in a graphite board&neck/maple bodied axe unless you like a uber bright attack
even EMGs won't totally blot out a guitars natural tone.. so sensitive pickups like BKPs need to be used carefully
Thruth-y!
The best guitar tones I've ever had are BK-powered.......and so are the worst!! BKs are very sensitive to the guitar they're in. The story of one mans miracle man - in an alder dean with a floyd and a maple neck; bright and crunchy as hell, tight bass, but not that much of it - in an epi LP; thick, chewey, muscualar, heavy but clear, in a ply-body fake-maple-neck Hondo (my first guitar) - shockingly thin, grating, obnoxious shallow evil tone. The story of a similar miracle man - 23k, double screw pole, in the same dean, similar to before but more low end, power and compression. In a maple neck basswood body FR jackson, much fuller, more open, smoother, thicker, bigger, tighter low end and more cutting top end. On paper the specs of those two giutars are very similar, in practice their acoustic tone is quite different, and in much the same way as the amped tone is different with the same BK in each
Similarly I've had NBs sound shite in a dean ZX (that ended up sounding best with a swinsehead in the bridge....sorry!) but PKs sounded great in it, and later I installed some NBs in a customers Epi LP and it sounded fantastic.
There are more where those came from too!
BKs are NOT turd-polishers. DO - remember that.
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Do - listen to the acoustic sound of the guitar.
Do - make decisions on what pickup goes in what guitar on a guitar-by-guitar basis
Dont - make decisions on what pickup to put in what guitar on a wood-by-wood basis. On paper the speicies of wood in a guitar are guides to how it sounds, theres a lot of variation within the species and the only fact of how it sounds is how it bloody well sounds when you play it. If your all-maple guitar has a tonne of low end, DONT blunder along like a T72 tank thinking "but maple bright must use dark pickup" when your guitar doesnt fit that trend.
Do - use the knowledge and experience of others. People that have done similar things are the best guides youre going to get short of laying out the cash to experiment yourself, and its why we all joined here in the first place; those of us that have stayed try to help and continue to learn about guitars and ascociated stuff from one another.
Do - experiment, if you can afford it.
Do - Trust your ears
I'd agree with all of that - and following on from it, I'd add:
Don't - decide what pickups you're going to get before you even have the guitar! I'm amazed how often that situation crops up in "what pickups" threads.
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I'd agree with all of that - and following on from it, I'd add:
Don't - decide what pickups you're going to get before you even have the guitar! I'm amazed how often that situation crops up in "what pickups" threads.
..unless you have a custom guitar ordered :lol: Of course, the ideal solution then would be to listen to the guitar acoustically, and then decide on the pickups. However, this is not often easily done.
But this thread IS useful.
-Zaned
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Yes, if you have a custom guitar ordered, I'm sure you can rely on the expertise of the luthier to point you in the right direction. And it's pretty easy to change pickups once the project starts taking shape.
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Do - listen to the acoustic sound of the guitar.
Do - make decisions on what pickup goes in what guitar on a guitar-by-guitar basis
Dont - make decisions on what pickup to put in what guitar on a wood-by-wood basis. On paper the speicies of wood in a guitar are guides to how it sounds, theres a lot of variation within the species and the only fact of how it sounds is how it bloody well sounds when you play it. If your all-maple guitar has a tonne of low end, DONT blunder along like a T72 tank thinking "but maple bright must use dark pickup" when your guitar doesnt fit that trend.
Do - use the knowledge and experience of others. People that have done similar things are the best guides youre going to get short of laying out the cash to experiment yourself, and its why we all joined here in the first place; those of us that have stayed try to help and continue to learn about guitars and ascociated stuff from one another.
Do - experiment, if you can afford it.
Do - Trust your ears
I'd agree with all of that - and following on from it, I'd add:
Don't - decide what pickups you're going to get before you even have the guitar! I'm amazed how often that situation crops up in "what pickups" threads.
i did it once - USM hornet/holy divers - and got the worst possible combination...
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thanks for the inputs guys ! And thanks Philly Q for having developped your general observations !
I honestly would consider that kind of general-observations-post (from MDV and Philly Q above) to be important, so much so that I would even support the idea to throw them in another STICKY « general recommendation for pickups purchasers » topic, at the beginning of this section...
That might also help people like me, who didn't try out (or own) all the BKP range, not to speculate in the non-experienced situations of the « what pickups threads », even if it is done with the aim to help as much as possible, (with at the end the result maybe of non being that helpful. :( )
Anyway I'd keep this :
Do - use the knowledge and experience of others. People that have done similar things are the best guides youre going to get short of laying out the cash to experiment yourself, and its why we all joined here in the first place; those of us that have stayed try to help and continue to learn about guitars and ascociated stuff from one another.
and say that's the exact purpose of this topic !.
....But not this :
Do - experiment, if you can afford it.
because, what twinfan said !
Not everyone can afford to buy a whole bunch of £90+ pickups just to find the one they like best. This is a discussion forum and we're discussing some examples of what has worked for us and what hasn't.
So which is why I think it would have been great for this topic to comment on your good/bad experiences of pup/axe matches, like, for example, the Legra PK'd you mentionned in the "what if you'd have got just one guitar?" thread.
My legra, PK'd.
The best for the metal style I need it for and good enough for cleans etc.
Note that this "what if you'd have got just one guitar?" thread is somewhere close to the DO experiences of this topic, :lol:
to be continued..... :!
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the thing , and i agree completely with MDV, is that you can't always predict how a guitar will sound starting from its materials... les pauls don't sound like SGs, for example, so the general rule to test single guitars acoustically and then evaluate what pickups will or won't adapt to it is very true...
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I will add, in the circumstance that you have a few guitars and a few decent pickups (BK or otherwise), a situation I think most of us are in, even if you have a *good* sound out of all of them -
DONT settle for the first acceptable combination. Try different combinations. Move your pickups between your guitars to find what works best in what.
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Do - listen to the acoustic sound of the guitar.
Do - make decisions on what pickup goes in what guitar on a guitar-by-guitar basis
Dont - make decisions on what pickup to put in what guitar on a wood-by-wood basis. On paper the speicies of wood in a guitar are guides to how it sounds, theres a lot of variation within the species and the only fact of how it sounds is how it bloody well sounds when you play it. If your all-maple guitar has a tonne of low end, DONT blunder along like a T72 tank thinking "but maple bright must use dark pickup" when your guitar doesnt fit that trend.
Do - use the knowledge and experience of others. People that have done similar things are the best guides youre going to get short of laying out the cash to experiment yourself, and its why we all joined here in the first place; those of us that have stayed try to help and continue to learn about guitars and ascociated stuff from one another.
Do - experiment, if you can afford it.
Do - Trust your ears
I'd agree with all of that - and following on from it, I'd add:
Don't - decide what pickups you're going to get before you even have the guitar! I'm amazed how often that situation crops up in "what pickups" threads.
:drink:
And I agree 90% - the other 10% being as said before - customs. I suppose you could get the guitar built without pickups ifyoure really at sea as to what to put in it, but its better to go with the luthier and Tims advice for a starting point. Then if you dont like it or want to change it you have a reference point of what it sounds like with a certain pickup in, which helps massively.
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Agreed 110%.....
............but still not what expected ! :shock:
what about talking here about experienced combinations of guitar and pickups ?
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Give it up mate - it's like herding sheep isn't it? :lol:
Just for reference by the way, I put a set of Mules in a Gibson Les Paul Standard and it sounded like ass. Really thin and horrible. That's supposed to be a default option isn't, but it didn't work for me and that guitar......
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Give it up mate - it's like herding sheep isn't it? :lol:
Just for reference by the way, I put a set of Mules in a Gibson Les Paul Standard and it sounded like ass. Really thin and horrible. That's supposed to be a default option isn't, but it didn't work for me and that guitar......
You mean herding cats.
Herding sheep is easy.
Herding cats....well, I used to have 6, and getting them in the same place is like reciting the bhagavad gita while spinning 12 plates and juggling basketballs.
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Agreed 110%.....
............but still not what expected ! :shock:
what about talking here about experienced combinations of guitar and pickups ?
I answered your question....just not how you wanted!
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Just for reference by the way, I put a set of Mules in a Gibson Les Paul Standard and it sounded like ass. Really thin and horrible. That's supposed to be a default option isn't, but it didn't work for me and that guitar......
Exactly, which is a great example of how specific experiences can be much more confusing (and possibly less useful) than talking in generalities.
(Actually, I've always remembered Dave's story and to some extent it's put me off trying Mules - which may or may not be a good thing)
Sorry, Dr. Vic. :lol:
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Give it up mate - it's like herding sheep isn't it? :lol:
Just for reference by the way, I put a set of Mules in a Gibson Les Paul Standard and it sounded like ass. Really thin and horrible. That's supposed to be a default option isn't, but it didn't work for me and that guitar......
You mean herding cats.
Herding sheep is easy.
Herding cats....well, I used to have 6, and getting them in the same place is like reciting the bhagavad gita while spinning 12 plates and juggling basketballs.
:lol: :oops:
Trust me to screw that up...
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I know herding cows, and dogs, but that's it :fouet:
I answered your question....just not how you wanted!
If anything, we started here herding the sheeps, then the (british) cats, and now I'd say it's more like herding silent swordfishes. :lol:
Well, it's not really for me..., this topic is more to share what you want to share with other people who *might* be interested in hearing experiences.
Imho having twinfan saying here he had an issue with mules in his LP standard is more interesting than any of the general *obvious* rule above.
:na:
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Blimey, Dr. Vic, you are making this confusing. :? :P
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Yes, if you have a custom guitar ordered, I'm sure you can rely on the expertise of the luthier to point you in the right direction. And it's pretty easy to change pickups once the project starts taking shape.
Unless you're ordering parts, then you would really like to have some sort of expectation, or even a general "formula" for at least what not to do.
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Yes, if you have a custom guitar ordered, I'm sure you can rely on the expertise of the luthier to point you in the right direction. And it's pretty easy to change pickups once the project starts taking shape.
Unless you're ordering parts, then you would really like to have some sort of expectation, or even a general "formula" for at least what not to do.
Agreed. I have a few parts guitars and usually have a rough idea what pickups I'm going to use, but I have loads of spare pickups to experiment with (or I "borrow" them from other guitars). I must admit I sometimes buy pickups with no particular guitar in mind, just because I want to try them, but I can usually find a home for them.
Sometimes you can have happy accidents. I once built a cr@ppy superstrat with a Floyd and got a DiMarzio MegaDrive for it, which sounded horrible, completely unusable. But when I moved the MegaDrive to a mahogany Hamer Vector, it was awesome.
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I will add, in the circumstance that you have a few guitars and a few decent pickups (BK or otherwise), a situation I think most of us are in,
You lucky guys... I started playing guitar in 1979, got my first _real_ guitar in 1989, and only had a second one a few weeks ago. And I had both for dirt cheap (not much more than a BKP set each...).
even if you have a *good* sound out of all of them -
DONT settle for the first acceptable combination. Try different combinations. Move your pickups between your guitars to find what works best in what.
Given that one of my guitars has humbuckers and the other one single coils, I may have a hard time following this advice :wink:
More seriously: it's surely a good advice for those that can afford that much gear - and I would add : then post here and tell us common mortals about your experiences...
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Give it up mate - it's like herding sheep isn't it? :lol:
Just for reference by the way, I put a set of Mules in a Gibson Les Paul Standard and it sounded like ass. Really thin and horrible. That's supposed to be a default option isn't, but it didn't work for me and that guitar......
You mean herding cats.
Herding sheep is easy.
Herding cats....well, I used to have 6, and getting them in the same place is like reciting the bhagavad gita while spinning 12 plates and juggling basketballs.
Try 500 hill type sheep. They are $%&#ers.
No more aminal talk please!
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I will add, in the circumstance that you have a few guitars and a few decent pickups (BK or otherwise), a situation I think most of us are in,
You lucky guys... I started playing guitar in 1979, got my first _real_ guitar in 1989, and only had a second one a few weeks ago. And I had both for dirt cheap (not much more than a BKP set each...).
even if you have a *good* sound out of all of them -
DONT settle for the first acceptable combination. Try different combinations. Move your pickups between your guitars to find what works best in what.
Given that one of my guitars has humbuckers and the other one single coils, I may have a hard time following this advice :wink:
More seriously: it's surely a good advice for those that can afford that much gear - and I would add : then post here and tell us common mortals about your experiences...
I dont mean to be a dick, making fellow members that dont have as much stuff feel bad, but going by discussions here and the various 'what stuff you got?' threads, its true. Most people here do have a range of gear, and I was tailoring my advice to the largest proportion of the audience.
p.s. the means to aquire what you want are rarely achieved by good luck! Such is the nature of good luck - it favours so very few frequently. I have a good job and a make no apologies for it, I've earned it and earn my wage. But if youre insinuating that we're rich and youre not so we've got stuff - there are guys on here that dont earn much but save it all for gear. We're gear whores to the point of religious zealotry :twisted: As an example, theres a chap here, superb guitarist, whos a barman with a vh4, elmwood, 2 blackmachines and a nathan sheperd, that I know of. I dont imagine this is atypical of the board. We're just obsessive :)
But, yeah, more seriously :) I'm reluctant to divulge too much about my experiences with different guitar/pickup combos because my experience, of some mere dozens (not all mine ;) I do guitar teching as a small sideline) I can only relay the broadest generalities, and I have already done so. I dont want to go into too much detail lest my isolated and limited experience be contsrued as anything resembling a 'rule', because there arent any. There are, as Ive said, guidelines that you can use as starting points or best guesses. I've given advice to people here on what pickup to get and they've returned later saying that its not quite right. (Not all my doing and not singling me out, but my recommendation being one of many and not being right for the persons requirements). I know how poorly transferable one persons knowledge of tone is to another. Its the same with any subjective experience. We do our best, and I think most of the time it turns out well, but I dont really like the basic objective of this thread because if it all went to plan and we had a list of wood/pickup combo dos and donts then it would do as much harm as good. These things are not so ridgid.
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Will, I've never tried :lol: But I have seen it, and one man and a dog can handle dozens to hundreds of the walking meals. One man and a dog will not have anything like the same degree of sucess with so much as two cats :D
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i agree with MDV, on the main topic and on the sheep/cat argument.
there's no way to gather cats unless it's exactly what they intend to do themselves. and this points clearly that cats are way more clever than sheeps, men and dogs who loose their time trying to gather them.
AND, going back to topic, general tone guidelines are easy to put down, with a bit of experience and some clear idea on woods... it's much more difficult to extract useful informations from single experiences, because guitars are all different and - most of all - individual tastes are often COMPLETELY different.
for example Twinfan could say that his experience with the Mules has been less than satisfying... mine has been much better and in general Mules seem to be very popular among LesPaul players (but not just among them)... who will you believe?
i bought an LTD EC1000 (with EMG 81/60) on the web after having tried a Duncan equipped model... when i extracted it from its case i saw it's flawless satin black finish, its sexy shape and i thought WHOOOO! :)
i started playing it unplugged, had the first acoustic and tactile impressions and thought WHOOOAA! :D
then i amplified it and heard the dry, thin and screechy EMG 81 i thought URGHH! :x
i could describe the painfully sudden change of facial expression just using some sexually related example but, being a gentleman, i won't (lately there's been some talk about guys looking like girls and... ok. stop it.) (no personal experience, anyway)
so i changed the little black bar-steward in a week or so with a much MUCH better EMG 85 (just for information, Painkillers are coming to kick their active asses out of it... :))
i know some idiot who would have sold it after a couple of days without even trying a pickup change... i actually bought one of my favourite axes from one of those...
but the point is that a vast majority of players praise the 81s and 81 equipped ESP/LTDs as the ULTIMATE metal gear.
so who's right?
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ANYWAY i could say that...
DOs
Cold Sweats are awesome in my Gibson SG61
Nailbombs were awesome in my Ibanez S320 (thin mahogany body, bolt-on maple neck, rosewood fretboard) and are awesome in my Ibanez SA2020 (medium sized mahogany body with quite thick maple top, set-in maple+don't know... bubinga? wenge? 5 pieces neck, rosewood fretboard)
Warpigs sound very good in my Ibanez RGR321 (basswood body, bolt-on maple + rosewood) and awesome in my Epi LesPaul Goth, that happens to be a very middy guitar. so no overkill due to heavy mahogany body.
Painkillers work very VERY well in my Ibanez S470
Mules sound great (a bit on the trebly side but great nonetheless) in my Gibson LesPaul CA with chambered body and no maple top
DON'Ts
Holy Divers sounded definitely bad in my USM hornet (thick and heavy SG styled guitar, woods like a Gibson SG)
the fact is that, apart maybe Cold Sweats, i don't know if these are the best possible pickup/guitar combinations... but as long as i'm happy with them i won't try any pickup swapping!
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Well i have a general idea what works and what not, but i dont think it works like that for everyone.
For instance the mules i have dont sound half as good in my '73 SG but do sound perfect in my maple neck '76 custom LP.
In general i think hotter pickups sound better in a darker sounding guitar, older (PAF) type pickups sound generally bad in all-mahagony guitars IMO.
I think it has to do with the way i balance the tone of the wood with the characteristics of the pickup. Also with a very resonant guitar i tend to prefer higher output pickups (which makes the combination sound a bit warmer and smoother). To me very resonant guitars have a 'dirty' quality soundwise, at least to my ears. Using a pickup that brings out that quality always worked for me.
If one would consider mayor changes in guitar history some general idea would be.
All mahagony- P90's
Gibson LP - PAF, lowish output HB
Fender and other more recent choise of (resonant) tonewoods- single coils or high output HB
Pretty generalised, but among the older Gibsons (pre 1980) i havent played any guitars that i would call very resonant. The older japanese guitars i have/had which seem to resonate like crazy, probably the density of the tonewoods matter in this respect. At least as i understand it, resonance occurs when sound vibrations move trough layered wood(or body/neck combination) with different densities(or air chambers obviously).
Still, if i like the idea of a certain combination of wood and pickups, my curiousity wins often enough, allthough i often end up buying another guitar for the pickups. :P
Greetings Henk
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I dont mean to be a dick, making fellow members that dont have as much stuff feel bad,
You didn't make me feel bad - I was kidding (and mostly about myself - 15 years without playing music, what a waste...). Sorry if that wasn't clear.
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I dont mean to be a dick, making fellow members that dont have as much stuff feel bad,
You didn't make me feel bad - I was kidding (and mostly about myself - 15 years without playing music, what a waste...). Sorry if that wasn't clear.
:drink:
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I dont mean to be a dick, making fellow members that dont have as much stuff feel bad,
You didn't make me feel bad - I was kidding (and mostly about myself - 15 years without playing music, what a waste...). Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I don't get how you could go 15 years... 15 days and I'd start clawing my way up the walls...
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I don't get how you could go 15 years...
I wonder too... :roll:
:drink:
:drink: :drink: :wink:
Ok, nuff said 'bout my life, rather unintersting and totally OT - sorry... :?