Three pickups, two guitars. About the setup: I have all of the pickups set to 2mm distance from polepiece to string, when string is pressed from the last fret.
2002 PRS McCarty: Riff Raff bridge, Mule neck.
This guitar previously had the Cold Sweat set. The reason for the change that I’ve fallen more and more in love with lower output pickups and the more dynamic, woody tone they provide. BUT, I didn’t want to sacrifice the bite I want for rock. The CS set was and is awesome for hard rock (think Sykes), but for my current tastes, this is more versatile. I also bought the Jensen cap and a 550k pot for this guitar from BKP.
Riff Raff: surprising amount of volume! The guitar itself sounds big, it has always had this certain thump in the low mids and makes itself heard. A dynamic pickup, awesome clarity (can’t state that enough) and bite. Great cleans too. There is a certain percussiveness to the tone which I love. The low end stays tight, chords are clear as day even under distortion, it’s touch sensitive and responds very well to the volume knob. More on that later..
Mule: warm, but not in the least muddy. Cleans are warm but clear. Even under distortion, the pickup (at least in this guitar) doesn’t turn to mush, it’s awesome how it holds together. It always has this warm but clear and woody tone, but is also aggressive when you want it to. It sings, but is not compressed.
All in all, it’s a great combination. Like I said, I also upgraded the electronics. I already had a treble bleed installed in this guitar and didn’t remove it. I don’t know if it is needed, but the guitars electronics work so well now that I see no need to touch it. You can roll the volume back, it cleans up great and maintains a very clear tone. Awesome. If you split the pickups (mccarty has that on the tone pot), roll back the volume and switch to middle position, you get and awesome, warm, clear tone. Woody, but the highs still ring very clearly, and changes in volume knob/attack translate great. Expressive is the word here.
1991 Tokai Les Paul: Black Dog bridge with a Seymour Duncan Pearly gates neck.
I bought this guitar pretty recently from the husband of our bands keyboard player. A rare Les Paul, it doesn’t have the muddy, nasal hump that LPs often have. One of the brightest and clearest LPs I’ve ever held in my hands! It has the usual LP wood combination of mahogany, rosewood and maple.
Black Dog: this pickup replaced a -78 Dimarzio super distortion that the guitar had. It didn’t sound bad at all, but it drove the clean tone to distortion and I feel it had a pretty strong personality on the tone, meaning that it masked the guitars own tone quite much. Now, to the BD. A much woodier tone, big but not nasal midrange (the guitar doesn’t have nasality either). Sounds brighter than I initially expected, but the guitar is also bright. Not harsh by any means though! Touch sensitive, dynamic, woody and big. This guitar doesn’t have a same amount thump in the low mids than the McCarty, but the I feel the Black dogs low end extends further than the Riff Raff. That is probably also the guitar, as the low mid bump is not there masking the lowest lows from the tone. The end result is big but tight low end, big but not nasal midrange and very clear highs. Really growls when you lean into it. Lovely 8)
The SD Pearly sounded fine in the neck, so I didn’t replace it least now. It balances fine with the BD. It sounds brighter than the Mule (that’s probably the guitar too to some extent), but I feel it misses some of the clarity the Mule has. But it sounds fine and work for now.
Two great guitars, that sound different; the pickups in both guitars let through the personality of the guitar they are in. But I don’t need to change amp settings between them, so I have a win win situation :)
-Zaned
