Thought I would update now that I’ve had the pups in for nearly ten days. The PRS has been getting a lot of airtime and I feel it’s really come alive since the switch over from the 85/15s. This is the most transformative pup swap I’ve done to date. I liked the guitar before, but it probably checked all the negative PRS boxes: no personality / sterile, etc. I must say, the 85/15s really didn’t work for me. Far too shrill and lacking body / output. I think perhaps they were trying too hard to cater to the strat crowd with those. If I was doing it again, I would have gone for the HFS / VB combo, and then probably still swapped them out. In any case, I hear the 85/15s are doing well on eBay so I should probably get mine on there before PRS start selling them standalone.
The outcome of the swap has been really interesting as I’ve found myself using settings which I’ve never really spent any time on in my previous years of guitar playing, and in turn, ignoring some of my go-tos (though that is not necessarily a positive). As a reminder, here is the PRS 5-way switching:
Position One: Bridge humbucker
Position Two: Bridge humbucker with neck singlecoil, in parallel
Position Three: Bridge and neck humbuckers
Position Four: Neck singlecoil with bridge singlecoil, in parallel
Position Five: Neck humbucker
The bridge magnet on my set was reversed by BKP to work with the PRS switching.
Position One - Bridge humbucker: Brilliant. This is exactly what I was looking for. This pickup is really built to fix everything that is lacking in a stock Custom 24. Lots of gain, but not too much. Superbly balanced. The guitar comes alive and has a huge personality. Shrillness of the stock pickups is gone. Nothing more that I can really add, absolutely what I was after.
Position Two - Bridge humbucker with neck singlecoil, in parallel: this is an interesting one. I pretty much never used this position in the past but I am seeing a lot of new possibilities here. Not entirely sure how to describe it. Perhaps a more balanced / slightly lower level bridge HB, or a boosted high output bridge single. In any case, it has a lot of honk on this guitar so not good for leads (unless honk is your thing) but for distorted rhythm playing higher up the neck (D / E power chords or higher on the A string type stuff / or U2 gainy delays) where you are looking for more detail / string separation, this is a great option. Like I said, never really stopped on position 4 in the past, but this will come in useful, especially for recording.
Position Three - Bridge and neck humbuckers: similar to two, but slightly more balanced (read warmer), again, a good option for rhythms when you don’t want all out bridge. I guess that should not come as a surprise, but even on an LP, I don’t find this position useful as the neck pickup tends to dominate. With the abraxas, it’s a lot more balanced and I’m suddenly using it a fair bit. As with position 2, it’s honky as well but this one can be used for leads. Nice and creamy and exactly what a good intermediate should sound like. For rhythm, it’s a more balanced version of Position 2, slightly warmer but still best for rhythms higher up the neck. Again, I think it will be handy for recording where the bridge is coming in too harsh on the highs. Just switch over to position 3 and you may avoid having to EQ the signal.
Position Four - Neck singlecoil with bridge singlecoil, in parallel: As mentioned on another post. This one is proving to be a bit of a let-down for me. It’s not really a surprise given the nature of the pickups (I would not get better on an LP with 5 way switching) but I was hoping I would get something useful out of them. Back when I was gigging in an originals band, this was my go to position for clean sounds, usually with dotted 8ths or some other form of delay. With 5 way switching and 2 HBs, I could usually get a nice sound with good presence and definition in the highs. It’s really lacking here (I think due to the neck pickup – which I’m getting to). It’s also surprisingly weak and I have to put on a fair amount of compressor to bring it back up to a decent level (I believe the wiring is good and it certainly puts on a decent showing with distortion, though not really a useful position for a gain tone IMO). I just compared my similarly specced (though not a PRS but same wiring) RY loaded guitar and it definitely sounds much better in this position.
Position Five - Neck humbucker: This is probably why people buy Abraxas sets, though I actually prefer the bridge. The luthier who did the install was posting about the neck pup on Facebook after he put it in. He liked it. In a PRS, and into a Boogie, you immediately understand why these are called Abraxas. As per Tim’s note to me when I was considering this set as an option, it does seem this set was specifically built with a PRS in mind. The warm sustained lead sound is really something to behold and it takes you straight into Santana creamy sustain territory. It’s really impressive and I will admit that I’m enjoying it tremendously and will hang on to it for a while. It’s a warm pickup and yet it’s very “open” at the same time. If I were to compare it to an RY, I would say it is less “focused” and certainly has less presence given it’s warm character, which I am guessing is causing my problems in position 4 . With that said, I have a nagging suspicion that I may want to do swap out the neck (I’m keeping the bridge no matter what) for a more focused pickup in the hope of fixing Position 4 (though it’s not a given it will work out). Perhaps put in an RY or Emerald at some point. I have a strat and several other guitars that will cover this one deficiency just fine, but it’s a force of habit thing: i.e. not all that necessary and something I will probably end up regretting given I would lose out what are currently great and useful positions 2 and 3, but old habits die hard. Something to mull over in any case… Oh and I should add, clean neck is also very nice and does make up a little for a poor position 4. This is very much a case of: “But I don't want to think I've lost a son, so much as gained a daughter” (though somewhat better looking than Princess Lucky). Maybe I can learn to live with that. No rush in any case.
Final thoughts: I think it’s fair to say that while fixing a lot of the problems with a modern day Custom 24, the Abraxas also in turn does take away from some of its qualities, primarily its ability to produce crystalline cleans. However, I feel that PRS are a little too timid with respect to their flagship guitar and are effectively putting a damper on the guitar’s potential by trying to please a specific crowd that are really a minority of PRS owners (i.e. the strat crowd). As a result, I think it really lacked personality, especially with the 85/15s. With the Abraxas, it comes alive. It was a beautiful guitar before, but now it’s a really fun one as well. I should add that I do like relatively modern amounts of gain and play with a V’d Boogie EQ Mark V. I’m not playing classic rock (though nowhere near djent either). Obviously that will lead to a shrill sound with pups that are geared towards the highs, such as 85/15s. Some would argue I should turn the tone knob down, or EQ the amp differently, but that just doesn’t work for me, and in fairness, I didn't have this "shrillness" problem with my other guitars (7 of them). The amp has to be set a certain way to deliver the tones I am after and a change of pickups seems to have fixed a lot of my problems in this case.
Quite the diatribe. Hope it’s useful to someone.
