Pickup advice please

[Sailor Charon]

I'm currently saving up for a custom guitar.
The plan is for a Les Paul DC style guitar: maple set neck, ebony fretboard, swamp ash body, walnut cap and either 3 individually coil tappable humbuckers or 3 P90s.

I'm mainly into things like Rainbow, Deep  Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, and was wondering what sort of pickups folks would suggest.

BTW, thanks for the advice before. They sound great through my valve amp. (My practice amp really is not as good as I thought though...)

[maverickf1jockey]

with a bit of tweaking the Nailbomb should do the trick...
or, if you really like the tone of Iommi, i suggest Warpig.

[BloodMountain]

^ +1

but i would have thought that a pickup that has a sound that was designed for that time in music would be better, like the holy diver or something.
any thoughts?

[Sailor Charon]

Thanks, folks. I was considering Warpigs, but I thought I'd get some other opinions...
I had another one of my daft ideas after I posted it. (I read some comments about the difference between coil-split humbuckers and strat style single coils - it's the magnets apparantly.)  What do you folks think about paired (say) Trinity Suites (obviously one reverse polarity, or whatever so that they act as a coil-splittable humbucker).

[maverickf1jockey]

how do you feel about doing it with ceramic Pig-90s?

[gingataff]

I'd probably go for H-P90-H, maybe a Mule or Rebel Yell set with a Mississippi Queen as the meat in the sandwich

[Philly Q]

What do you folks think about paired (say) Trinity Suites (obviously one reverse polarity, or whatever so that they act as a coil-splittable humbucker).

Just as a split humbucker never really sounds like a single-coil, two single-coils in series never really sound like a conventional humbucker.  It's those magnets again - instead of one bar magnet and 12 steel polepieces, you have 12 individual rod magnets with their own magnetic fields.

I used to own a Yamaha Pacifica 604 which had 4 single-coils, 2 of them wired as a bridge bucker.  I can't remember exactly what it sounded like, but it was more like a thick woolly SC than a "normal" HB sound.  It was great in split mode though.  

I think maverickf1jockey's idea of wiring 2 P-90s as a humbucker actually might work better, because the magnetic structure of a P-90 is more like a HB than a conventional SC.  It would sound huge though, not something you'd use every day.  Not for 70s hard rock anyway.

Are you a Scorpions fan by any chance, Sailor Charon?

[BloodMountain]

rebel yell isn't really an old school metal humbucker (led zep, black sabbath, deep purple, etc.) is it?

i agree with mississipi queen for the middle.

[Philly Q]

rebel yell isn't really an old school metal humbucker (led zep, black sabbath, deep purple, etc.) is it?

i agree with mississipi queen for the middle.

+1, I agree about the RY.

With all that maple, ebony, swamp ash and walnut (are you sure you want to hide that lovely ash grain under walnut?) the guitar should be pretty bright.  For 70s/80s sounds you could probably get away with Painkillers, Cold Sweats, Holy Divers, Crawlers, Mules - just about anything, really, depending on how much output you want.

[Sailor Charon]

I think maverickf1jockey's idea of wiring 2 P-90s as a humbucker actually might work better, because the magnetic structure of a P-90 is more like a HB than a conventional SC.  It would sound huge though, not something you'd use every day.  Not for 70s hard rock anyway.

Are you a Scorpions fan by any chance, Sailor Charon?

Y'know I considered using P90s, but when I asked on another board the response I got was along the lines of 'Are you mad?' :)

No, I'm not a Scorpions fan, not especially anyway. Why d'you ask?

[Sailor Charon]

With all that maple, ebony, swamp ash and walnut (are you sure you want to hide that lovely ash grain under walnut?) the guitar should be pretty bright.  For 70s/80s sounds you could probably get away with Painkillers, Cold Sweats, Holy Divers, Crawlers, Mules - just about anything, really, depending on how much output you want.

Well, it's just with it being that shape, really. I thought that a Les Paul-alike should have a cap on it... The alternative was an SG-alike (I like the shape, I like the Les Paul DC shape too, but the weight... :) ) without the cap.

As for the output, as long as it isn't too too much...  :)

[Philly Q]

No, I'm not a Scorpions fan, not especially anyway. Why d'you ask?

The Sails of Charon is a track on Scorpions' Taken By Force album, featuring some awesome guitar work from Ulrich Roth.  I thought with you being into 70s Euro hard rock...

That was inspired by the Greek myth of Charon, who ferried the souls of the dead across the River Acheron to Hades.

Is it also some kind of anime character?  That's something I know next-to-nothing about, I'm afraid.  :oops:

[Sailor Charon]

No, I'm not a Scorpions fan, not especially anyway. Why d'you ask?

The Sails of Charon is a track on Scorpions' Taken By Force album, featuring some awesome guitar work from Ulrich Roth.  I thought with you being into 70s Euro hard rock...

That was inspired by the Greek myth of Charon, who ferried the souls of the dead across the River Acheron to Hades.

Is it also some kind of anime character?  That's something I know next-to-nothing about, I'm afraid.  :oops:

Ah...  I think I'll have to check that out.
It's not really an anime reference, except in a sort of roundabout way to Sailor Moon... :) [Charon also being the moon of Pluto - which is mixing mythologies but never mind]

[zigmund]

aka the River Styx...an oft-alluded-to image in rockography: cf, Who Pays The Ferryman, etc;
...Brian Ferry...
..Ferry Cross the Murky...
These last 2 are merely meaningless adjuncts to provide inter-postal levity.

[Philly Q]

aka the River Styx...an oft-alluded-to image in rockography

That's what I thought too, but I learned this today:

In Greek mythology, Styx (Στυξ) is a river which formed the boundary between Earth and the Underworld, Hades. It circles Hades nine times. The rivers Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron and Cocytus all converge at the center of Hades on a great marsh. The other important rivers of Hades are Lethe and Eridanos.

The ferryman Charon is in modern times commonly believed to have transported the souls of the newly dead across this river into the underworld, though in the original Greek and Roman sources, as well as in Dante, it was the river Acheron that Charon plied. Dante put Phlegyas over the Styx and made it the fifth circle of Hell, where the wrathful and sullen are punished by being perpetually drowned in the muddy waters.

...It is often said that he [Charon] ferried souls across the river Styx. This is suggested by Virgil in his Aeneid (book 6, line 369). However, by most accounts, including Pausanias and, later, Dante's Inferno, it was the swamps of the river Acheron.

It's not really an anime reference, except in a sort of roundabout way to Sailor Moon...

I don't know Sailor Moon, I'm very old.  But I do remember Button Moon:



We're off to Button Moon, we'll follow Mr. Spoon,
Button Moon, Button Moon.  :band5:



I think this is what they call off-topic... way off-topic.