Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: H13 on March 07, 2023, 02:04:52 AM
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YO!
I've got a SD Hybrid 59 in the bridge of my Les Paul. I want this Les Paul to cover a lot of ground tonally but for chugs, it's just a bit too flubby down the bottom end. I also keep trying to get a bit more "fizz" and attack out of it.
Overall the tone is great when not doing chugs and I like how the pickup behaves, but I am after something a bit tighter and more aggressive for a bridge pickup. I don't want to go completely balls-out and having enough dynamic range to clean up well is important to me.
In fact, clean-up is vital for me. So I'm in that enviable position of wanting a pickup that chugs well, without being TOO hot.
In terms of details of my guitar:
It's a big chunky Les Paul. Typical Mahogany\Maple woods, and pretty heavy. Overall, I'd describe the sound as pretty damn thick.
The Neck pickup (A2Pro) is basically spot on in this Les Paul. It's thick sounding, but real liquidy and it's got a nice bite to it. Love the dynamics and how it cleans up, and the best way I can describe it as smooth. I can almost BB King with it. REAL pretty and awesome for leads.
On Low\Medium Gain, I quite like the 59 Hybrid. The overall tone is pretty great, and doing a big upstroke with my Marshall on mid-gain gives off a suitable beefy AC\DC-ish kerraannngg which is very fun. I like the upper half of the response.
But as I increase the gain, the bottom end goes out of control. Instead of going "chug chug chug" it starts sorta going "blug blug blug". Also with my Marshall JVM on high gain, it gets super thuddy, but in a way that when recorded, you'll filter all that thuddyness out and just end up with a murky sorta bottom end. I'm tending to push up the treble\presence a bit as well to try to compensate for the slow\excess bass. That way I get a bit of extra attack. Also bumping up treble\presence always gives an illusion of more drive, which is good 'cos I'm often tempted to reach for an OD pedal to boost the chugs properly.
(Extra note: I'm not exactly playing Death metal here, but I do enjoy Thrashy vibes)
The bass is my main concern 'cos I reckon I can tweak the amp to get everything else I want to happen, but the bass I haven't been able to out-tweak.
SOOOOOO.
Normally I'm a Duncan guy and I'm leaning towards dropping in a Duncan Distortion. HOWEVER.
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I've got an Explorer with a set of Nailbombs. I love those pickups dearly for chuggy fun times. Since I love those Nailbombs, I wouldn't be doing due dilligence if I didn't investigate dropping a Nailbomb into the bridge of my LP instead of a Duncan Distortion. ERGO: I have the following questions.
#1) Would a Nailbomb pair well with a Duncan Alnico 2 Pro?
#2) Is there a massive difference in level of output between the Ceramic and Alnico versions?
#3) Is there a massive difference in the level of output of a Nailbomb vs. a Duncan Distortion?
#4) How well does a Nailbomb clean up? Especially compared to a Duncan Distortion? (Note: In my Explorer, the Nailbombs don't clean up at all, but I think the pot is cr@p)
#5) Is there any other BKP I should consider if I'm considering a Duncan Distortion?
Thank you kindly for your advice :)
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1) Possibly - I've not had them in the same guitar but the characters are quite different to my mind. The obvious thing to do is to take the Nailbomb out of your Explorer and try it!
2) Can't comment, but there's an excellent video on the BKP YouTube channel comparing the two, which might give you an idea.
3) A Distortion is more compressed and hotter, yes.
4) Very well indeed! I've never spent more than 20 minutes with a Distortion and I remember it cleaning up better than I'd expected, but the Nailbomb cleans up really well.
5) Closest to a Duncan Distortion is probably a Painkiller, based on other threads on this forum - have a search for "duncan distortion".