Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: gila_crisis on January 16, 2020, 03:27:14 PM
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Hi,
I need a pickup suggestion for this guitar.
It's a custom made one (I had this built in 2007), losely based on the ESP stephen carpenter model, with this HHS configuration.
Woods are Alder body, bolt-on maple neck with rosewood fingerboard (the classic strat combo)
I was pondering a change in pickups and my idea would be:
- a Nailbomb Alnico for the bridge (I love this pu, and already have it in a pair of other guitars),
- middle a Stockholm or Supermassive (for this one do I need a neck pu with reverse winding?)
- neck singlecoil a Piledriver (to have a different flavor than that of a strat pickup).
What do you think or suggest? Musically I play between ambient, doom metal, experimental noise.
Thanks
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I don't think that you need a reverse wound humbucker for the middle, but a reverse wound single for the neck single coil i guess, but I'm not really sure. I have a A-Bomb set in an ibanezrg2620 i flipped the magnet in the neck pickup its really awsome. And 2 days ago i put a brute force bridge in a strat, i did not expect them to be this good really perfect cleans from a high output bridge pickup and incredible drives( the guitar is in drop c). Hope this helps
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In this guitar you might prefer a Juggernaut or Holy Diver over the Nailbomb
The Supermassive neck might work in the middle
Another Telecaster neck pickup you could consider is the Cobra neck
Actually a alnico Black Hawk (b) Impulse neck (m) and Cobra (n) combo could be interesting. I think you are wandering into strange waters here though
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I tell you, also the liuther was sceptical when I came with this HHS idea!
But I find you can achive some very interesting sounds.
And the idea to have a supermassive in the middle, will shift this HHS concet a bit toward a HSS setup.
That's also why I didn't considered a humbucekr for the middle position.
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Usually one parks the single coil in the middle and the humbucker in the neckposition. I hope you will find a good balance. In this case I would choose a tamer humbucker or P90 for the middle. Something like a VHII. Neck maybe a Cobra.
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On my reading this is humbucker / P90 / telecaster
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Finally I got my new pickups! I went with that Nailbomb/Supermassive/Piledriver combination.
I did also a new wiring for the switches (once it was a 5way switch as on a strat, and that 3way did split the brigde HB and flip the N&M pu to have also tele sounds): the 3way switch selects between the Nailbomb and the combination set on the 4 way telecaster switch for Neck and Middle (so that I can have N+M in series for a pseudo HB neck sound).
And i'm super happy with how it sounds now: After 12 year changing pickups brought new life to this guitar!