First, to put this in context, you might want to refer to the "zigmund-Mules" thread and mp3 on the Players forum, where I've tried to let the Mules breathe a bit.
A couple of stray subjective thoughts on the Mule humbuckers I had fitted in my SG2000 at the weekend here: shouldn't be too many surprises!
The SG is a late 70s/early 80s original that had never left Japan until last year; you know the score with these: thick mahogany capped with maple, totally neck through. This one has push-push coils splits that in conjunction with the top-notch pots gave a wide tonal range.
Same old story: the stock pups were what they were and gave the guitar its distinctive sound. Neck: lovely, creamy, yet quite soaring in the high notes; a little woolly perhaps in the lower reaches. Bridge: inclined to shrillness and a bit thin on its own, didn't quite manage the top 2 strings very well..however, on mix position both in bucker and split mode, judicious tweaking of tone pots gave some lovely throaty sounds, and overall very responsive to pick nuances. Both had gone microphonic.
Once the Mules were in, I made the initial error of thinking they would make the guitar "same yet better"..something like a Yammy pup without the uneven response I suppose.
I had to adjust bridge mule height quite considerably to get things balanced: I mistakenly thought that the wrong unit had gone in the bridge, as I felt it was underpowered in relation to the neck. I 'fess up here that it was everton_fc who reflected that a personal adjustment period works wonders: so, once I'd told myself that in effect I had not a "better Yamaha" but a new sound machine, I started to fret less(er, more actually, if ya know what I mean 8) )
Generally it's now in the same park in some sense, naturally enough, as a well-crafted Les Paul with the pickups you'd always thought should be there but usually weren't. I found that with my style of playing, whereas I started to "feel Santana", it started to come out like Jeff Beck. Oddly, they are ever so slightly more noisy than the Yamahas, but only noticeable at 24 bit through decent monitors.
Both pickups give the guitar a tighter bottom end, both well-potted, though I fear I'll lose the gold off the bridge as I've had to get it very close to the strings to get it to balance with the big warmth of the neck. Strange as it may seem, my usual "lead" setting is in mix position or neck, the former with constant tweaks of tone and vol controls: I began to find new pleasures in the most subtle of control changes: what had been swells with the Yammy pups were now measured soars of sustain; a rolloff of tone and quite vocal responses were wanting to be shaped...in fact, if I play quicker I can miss out on many things that the guitar is now naturally capable of doing. I'm not one to emotional flights, but can honestly say that I feel the combo of these pups in the Yammy is actually nudging me to shift my style and phrasing in order to "go with" what they suggest.
More specifically, I reckon there's a "transparency" in these Mules: for me at any rate they seem to want to work with the guitar's natural voicing rather than impose their own personality; they split fairly well...but again I'm conscious of still residually comparing them to the stock pups. I think were I to lower both pups, the range of tones would shift again.
As you can hear on the mp3, the Mules are very responsive to pick attack and can carry sustained notes quite purely, without having to resort to "compression"-type overdrive in order to push the notes out. Consequently, the Mules kind of work with me rather than me having to fight my way into a phrase.
If I were forced into a comparison(and you'll get the idea I find this an inappropriate thing to do), I'd say:
Mule neck: warmer yet clearer highs than the Yam; oddly a mite less responsive on the D string; round and tight bottom(oo-er, etc;)
Mule bridge: clearer and more balanced than the Yam, much better at embracing the E and B strings; snarly without being shrill like the Yam, if closer to the strings...no interference beats thus far or else I'd be having problems, as I do feel a little more power would help it balance more easily with the neck.
Phew; I know I've gone on here, yet I wanted to be as detailed and as honest as I could. In some ways it may be still too early for me to be fully balanced and informative. I don't know about the rest of the range of BKPs, but I feel that these are a very good pup(and I'm not easily pleased) that would work in many a decent guitar but in quite different and individual ways. I can see that these would be ideal, as many of you have said, in a Les Paul..leaving me further annoyed that Gibson can't pursue excellence in this department.
Awbugger. Where did I put that PRS? (They told me this would happen! :roll: )
