Pickup Recommendation for Epiphone Les Paul

[darthphineas]

hey you cool cats.   

figured I'd check in again on this, with maybe a different take.  I now have 2 Epiphone LP PlusTop PRO/FX.  this is the one with the Floyd.  I understand it's not a top of the line Lester, but MF has practically been giving them away.

I have plenty of bolt-on FR-loaded shred sticks.  and I'd like these to be sort of an in-between, so that I can still lay out the 80s hard rock tunes, but have a quality of an open clarity to the voicing.  maybe something a bit modern and a bit hot-vintage.  would like to cover the range from Whitesnake to Def Leppard to Ratt and even from Boston to Motley Crue....keeping in mind that I'm not looking to copy each tone, but just something versatile that could handle that range, as if needed for an 80s cover band.  lol!

one of them already has a RY in the bridge.  another BKP I have that I can swap around would be a VHII.  I do have a bridge pup from another brand in the other one and it's cutting the mustard...but that doesn't mean I'm not up for suggestions.

the big deal is still the neck.  I've kicked around the idea of the Mule and the Emerald and then the Riff Raff was brought up and the description seems to really resonate: "more focus in the upper-mids and brighter highs. While the same build standard and components of the other vintage humbuckers in the range apply, the Riff Raff delivers a more aggressive vintage tone and unmistakable rock voice. The bottom-end is deep but very controlled and coupled with the extra cut in the high-end, allow for plenty of snap and a classic range of organic, clean and driven tones" and "a brighter, punchier r'n'r voice"

these both sound a little on the heavy side, and that sounds about right.  but will the RR have the drive to handle the sort of squealing sustained harmonics of Brad Gillis and Vai and Dime?

the Cold Sweat has always looked interesting, as a fan of mid-to-late-80s Sykes,  but I'm always leary of reduced mids...being a newb to Lesters, will the nature of the guitar address that?

since I have 2 guitars to fill, there are more options to work with here.


any opinions/suggestions???


thanks!

[Yellowjacket]

Some unsolicited advice:  the Rebel Yell neck is amazing, I have it paired with an A-Bomb bridge in my LP and it's super rad.  I'm going to try matching up a VHII with a Rebel Yell in my other guitar which is a lump of mahogany with a bolt on mahogany neck.  The Rebel Yell really is a great edge of modern / vintage HMB.

[darthphineas]

Some unsolicited advice:  the Rebel Yell neck is amazing, I have it paired with an A-Bomb bridge in my LP and it's super rad.  I'm going to try matching up a VHII with a Rebel Yell in my other guitar which is a lump of mahogany with a bolt on mahogany neck.  The Rebel Yell really is a great edge of modern / vintage HMB.

I have a RY neck in my sights to pair up with the RY bridge that's already in one of these guitars.  I have a boutique shop T-Top replica in there now and I like the upper mids and highs, but it's still giving me a tad of the 'boom' and 'woof' in the lows...not as much as some production models, but still enough for me to want to keep my eyes/ears open.

as such, is there anything more that anyone can say about the voicing of the RY neck?  specifically the low-mids and the lows?...when it comes to response and focus?

[Yellowjacket]

RY neck is a great pickup.  It has a similar sort of voice to the RY bridge in that it is really 'consonant' and clear sounding. I think this is because the coils are closely matched.  Both the RY Bridge and Neck have a really wide pick attack and do well with loads of gain.  Great pickups which seems to work exceptionally well for lead playing.

Personally, I found the RY bridge too bright / thin sounding (In a Les Paul) for the RY neck so I paired the RY neck with an A-Bomb bridge for a hotter and phatter bridge pickup.  My RY Bridge I paired up with a VHII neck.  Both of these combinations work well for my purposes but there ends up being a greater contrast between the neck and bridge pickups on both these guitars.  The VHII neck and A-Bomb bridge have mismatched coils so they sound more growly, hairy, and dissonant.  For me, I like the contrast but it may not work so well for everyone.

[Dave Sloven]

That might be why people like the NB/VH2 combo

[darthphineas]

The RY bridge seems to be doing the job in the guitar.

When it comes to the RY neck, how would you say the low end responds in dirty high gain settings? 

[Yellowjacket]

I think it would really depend on both your guitar and your amp TBH.  In my experience, I found that the low end was big and round which really accentuated the mid / upper mid focus of the bridge pup.  Of course, I attribute this to the specific guitar that I had the pickups loaded in.  (A Gibson LP Standard) 

That might be why people like the NB/VH2 combo

I think the VHII / A-Bomb combo would be a great in the proper instrument.  I can see it working very well. 

[Keven]

I have a RR bridge Mule neck combo in my epiphone les paul and to be honest the riff raff can handle everything, hit it hard and it's godly, back off and it cleans off, without any volume twiddling either, so it's a very honest pup that shows all your flaws but rewards when played right


with an OD pedal and modern amps the pickup's actual output doesn't matter much except for the voicing you want to go for.


that's my 2 cents on the matter :)


can't say i wasn't tempted by the RY but previously i had an holydiver set that was too dark for the guitar.

[darthphineas]

I get what you're saying about the HD. I tried it in a few guitars and it lacked the highs I wanted.

Because the exchange rate has jumped, the BKP cost in the US has jumped a bit higher than I'd like right now. the RR neck continues to appear to be the one I need to try for this application. I'll continue to watch and wait for one to pop up when the currency exchange rates go back down or when one pops up on eBay.

[darthphineas]

RY neck is a great pickup.  It has a similar sort of voice to the RY bridge in that it is really 'consonant' and clear sounding. I think this is because the coils are closely matched.  Both the RY Bridge and Neck have a really wide pick attack and do well with loads of gain.  Great pickups which seems to work exceptionally well for lead playing.

Personally, I found the RY bridge too bright / thin sounding (In a Les Paul) for the RY neck so I paired the RY neck with an A-Bomb bridge for a hotter and phatter bridge pickup.  My RY Bridge I paired up with a VHII neck.  Both of these combinations work well for my purposes but there ends up being a greater contrast between the neck and bridge pickups on both these guitars.  The VHII neck and A-Bomb bridge have mismatched coils so they sound more growly, hairy, and dissonant.  For me, I like the contrast but it may not work so well for everyone.

Someone else just recently suggested the VHII neck for this application.   I've thred the VHII bridge in basswood and alder and I can sort of see the thought behind the neck suggestion. My concern is how so many neck pickups can be much more flabby sounding in the low end than the bridge counterpart. Do you have any thoughts on how the VHII fares in this area.

Options like the RIff Raff and the Mule and the Emerald are interesting as far as the EQ, but they seem a little lower output and when I've tried lower output in the past they don't seem to handle gain very well and flub out.

[darrenw5094]

I have a RR neck paired with a Painkiller bridge and they are not a mismatch at all. Obviously lower gain with the RR neck, but volume wise they are fine and never heard a RR nec to flub out or the VHII or HD neck either.

[darthphineas]

I have a RR neck paired with a Painkiller bridge and they are not a mismatch at all. Obviously lower gain with the RR neck, but volume wise they are fine and never heard a RR nec to flub out or the VHII or HD neck either.

Thanks for the feedback.

I admit I've yet to try a BKP neck model and that I like the bridge models I've tried so far. I think that there are so many flabby neck models out there by some companies that I'm sort of like Pavlovs dog when it comes to rolling the dice with neck models. lol!

[Slartibartfarst42]

You can't go wrong with an Emerald neck pickups. It does pretty much everything.

[darthphineas]

You can't go wrong with an Emerald neck pickups. It does pretty much everything.

thanks for that.

after continuing to review the options, I'm torn between the Emerald and the RR...so I'm thinking about grabbing 1 of each and giving them a go.

[Kiichi]

I´d say start with the Emerald. Thing is that it has the classic character from the magnet, but also the modern cut from the wire. That means it can sing you the blues all day long, but if you turn it up it shreds with the best of them while not sounding the same, retaining it´s soul. No generic modern shred here. Cleans are brilliant too as they are sweet but up front, in the way a brilliant live tone sounds recorded well. When you said Boston I thought of More Than a Feeling the Emerald could nail that imho. Ratt sound too, especially combined with a RY bridge. Crue? I see no issue.

The Emerald is so brilliant because it is in my mind the most versatile neck PU ever without being generic or boring. The mastery is that it has a character that is not diminished by the range, but rather enables it. It is always the Emerald, but the style and gain enviroment changes what that means. If that makes sense.