I must stop looking at ebay at night with a glass of wine in my hand as tend to wake up and find that just bought more guitars.
Well it came to pass that I now have two Ibanez semi hollows.
One is a highly unhip AS80 from the early 90s and the other is a fabulous looking, superbly built, Artcore AM103BM.
And wouldn't ya know it, the ugly duckling AS80 sounds like heaven and the AM103 sounds gastly.
Before I offend anyone I know some like the Ibanez Super 58 Custom pickups Ibanez put in the better Artcore guitars, but to my ears they sound nasty scratchy cheepy ceramic. Plus if you roll the volume down below 7 they just DIE, all the tone gets sucked out. These Super 58 customs are not the Super58s of Ibanez 1980s fame. This guitar deserves better.
The 1991 AS80 has Ibanez Super70s pickups. Not made anymore and not a cult pickup, you would have thought. But man, they are shockingly good! - very balanced and respond very well to the volume and tone controls. They are what I would call Modern/PAF - slightly hotter and less complicated than a classic Gibson type pickup. They are staying in the AS80.
So I was kind of thinking about what would be a good Ibanez semi-hollow stlye pickup for the AM103BM, to give it that 80s biting Schofield. sound. and a funky soulful jazz sound on the neck.
Some Wikipedia research shows the Super58s were Alnico3 and the Super70 were Alnico 8. Both were made by Maxon and had 7.5-8KOhm impedance.
What would you recommend for that 1982 AS200 sound? Dogs? Emerald? or a Mule/Emerald combination? Would the Diver be too hot for a semi-guitar and a non-metal player like me?
