Hi, I have an epiphone sheraton (es 335 style guitar), and it currently has stock pickups.
I'm happy with the bridge pickup tone i can get, except for one thing, and it's gonna be really hard to put into words, but here it goes:
Sometimes with a good rig, when you play a chord (or anything more than one note at a time), you can count the number of strings being played and isolate out certain notes in your head. A good example of this is The Ocean by Led Zeppelin, and All Your Love by John Mayall with Clapton (right at the start of the solo where he plays those arpeggiated chords, count those notes!). When i try to do that with my pickups, it just gets all jumbled up
I'm trying to get a set of pickups that can do that, overdrive, but no mud, and I am convinced that BKPs can do that (generally, good pickups should be able to do that, no?). However, there's actually quite a lot of choice here for pickups, and this brings me to the main point:
Which set of pickups can get me the tone that Clapton gets on the Beano album? Note that I can already achieve this with my current pickups, and I want a set that can get me the same tone as well, just that with the ability to un-mud when playing more than one string. Being able to get Jimmy Page's tone at Led Zep's 1970 Royal Albert Hall concert would be cool too, but that might be a bit difficult, bearing in mind i have a semi hollow body guitar.
Speaking of getting slightly loud, i can also achieve Jimmy's tone with my rig, by virtue of cranking it up pretty loud (on a small 4 watt tube amp, the Vox ac4tv). But this would mean that im not getting as loud as the big amps, while still getting around the same kind of level of overdrive. Anyway, would i want to wax pot the pickups, if the max level of gain i go to is around jimmy page's level? I don't play anything heavier than that, and some say that unpotted pickups have better tone (also it's microphonic or something, and at a kings of leon concert, the guitarist was yelling into his pickup, and it was getting picked up. that was cool).
Another thing on potting, my stock pickups vibrate and put this low feedback (the bad kind) whenever i play too loud (ie 4 watts almost maxed, with an overdrive pedal with quite a lot of boost). I can kill the feedback by putting pressure on the pickup to stop it from vibrating. Just putting it out there, the more info the better, i guess.
Now back to tone: I only ever play with overdrive on the bridge, hardly ever play it clean. Neck pickup, well, the stock pickups are muddy as hell, to put it nicely, and thus i hardly ever play them. Don't sound good clean, but when i drive it a bit, i get this real woody/hollow tone which i like, and would love to be able to replicate. Also, rhythm playing on the neck aint cool, due to, once again, muddy pickups. This one once again references the point where you can 'count the notes', it would be awesome to be able to play crunchy rhythm chords without muddying up.
this guy (also a forum member) in this video also gets some good tone on the neck pickup, some less aggressive blues tone going on there, that's nice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0-nrNYdbp0&feature=relatedHe's got Stormy Mondays (A4 magnets) i think, those sound good, not too polite, but not too rough, especially in the neck. Sounds like it could cop some good jazz tones too, which is a plus.
I'm cool with mixing and matching pickups, so something like a mule in the bridge and a stormy monday in the neck sounds tasty, but would a pickup thats too hot in the bridge really mud it up? semi hollows traditionally work well with low output pickups, would a Mule work well in the bridge? I dont really care for preserving the woodyness or the acoustics in the bridge, as, like i said before, i use it mainly for overdrive.
So, with all the info above, imma summarise it:
1. what pickups for Beano tone, thats the main tone i'm trying to replicate
2. should i wax pot the pickups
