Pickups. I've never felt 100% satisfied with any I've had in my guitars.

Modulus_Amps

Sounds like it is time to buy a winder and start making your own prototypes, would probably save money in the veyr long run

octatonic

axisus said:

octatonic said:

This is what I refer to as 'majoring in minor things'.
Ignore it and go and work on your playing.

I agree with that up to a point, and it is generally the case as I can't afford to keep buying pickups, but unfortunately some of us are cursed with wanting things 'right'. 

How is that working out?
My point is it comes down to the hands and the ears, the gear is very much down the list.

I used to swap a lot of parts out on my guitars until one night when I teched for Larry Carlton at a guitar clinic- I'm pretty sure I've said all this before here.
I had to do a restring and a set up on an ES335 that came from the UK Gibson distributor.
I was given no information at all, so I put a set of 11's on and a medium action.

Larry had never played the guitar before and commented during the clinic that the neck was thicker and the strings a little slinkier than he usually played.
He also want straight into a Cornford amp that was set fairly high and fairly bright.

Unsurprisingly he sounded absolutely incredible- just watching him warm up was amazing.
With a full band it was one of the best gigs I've been to.
Since then I've pretty much stopped swapping parts out on my guitars- or at least tone chasing in that way.
Hands and ears.

p90fool

I almost always change at least one pickup in my gigging guitars, usually to at least fine tune the balance between them. 

I like a guitar where each pickup sounds absolutely at its best with the same amp and pedal settings as the other pickup, which is surprisingly elusive and takes a fair bit of fine tuning. 

I'm not just talking about a slightly overwound bridge either, I often need radically different pickups. 

My number one guitar has a Mojo Goldfoil in the neck and a pair of Kent Armstrong Firebird bobbins potted into the forward facing half of a standard humbucker baseplate at the bridge, and it all works perfectly together.

I'm not gonna find that in a guitar on a shop wall any time soon!

ICBM

guitarmangler said:

Isn’t this the problem with most guitars , though? You set up your amp/pedals to sound great with the neck, and then the bridge and middle only sound average. So you then set up the sound for the bridge , then the neck sounds not so good.

That's the whole point of having two quite different pickups. I prefer a clean, clear 'vintage' neck pickup and a hotter, more midrangy, 'modern' bridge pickup, so you can use the pickup selector almost as a channel switch. I've never found it much of a problem to get both sounding good, you just need to choose the right pickups.

For me, there's a simple rule though - which I know a lot of people won't agree with - which is that both should be from the same manufacturer. I've always found it much easier to get complementary voicings like that than from mixing different ones... each maker has their own ideas about voicing and I find it quite noticeable when they don't match.

Funkfingers

TTBZ said:

SG … stock 490R/498T have actually been the best overall match for the guitar (who'd have thought it eh).

Are you sure about the 498T? Most Gibson SGs get the 490T. (Approximately 10% hotter than the 490R.) 

I agree that the stock pickups can sometimes seem a little short on treble detail. This could be explained by the B300k volume pots. A change to A440k should help.

This weekend, I have mostly had custody of a March 2005 SG Special. This has confirmed what I found with a Chokai SG Standard fitted with covered PRS SE #7 humbuckers. Lower output pickups suit the guitar. It just needs plenty of gain and the tone control on the neck pickup rolling down.

Philly_Q

ICBM said:

That's the whole point of having two quite different pickups. I prefer a clean, clear 'vintage' neck pickup and a hotter, more midrangy, 'modern' bridge pickup, so you can use the pickup selector almost as a channel switch. I've never found it much of a problem to get both sounding good, you just need to choose the right pickups.

I like a lot of contrast between neck and bridge.  I'm mostly a humbucker person.  The bridge needs to be crunchy, snarly, edgy, but not thin or ice-picky bright.  The neck needs to be dark and warm - there's no such thing as a neck pickup which is too muddy or woolly as far as I'm concerned.

Philly_Q

Funkfingers said:

TTBZ said:

SG … stock 490R/498T have actually been the best overall match for the guitar (who'd have thought it eh).

Are you sure about the 498T? Most Gibson SGs get the 490T. (Approximately 10% hotter than the 490R.) 

SG Standard gets the 498T, SG Special gets the 490T.  I'm talking 1990s into 2000s, I'n not sure about recent models.

normula1

Try a lowly BurstBucker 2 in the bridge of your SG. Sounds really good in mine. I can't get the neck tone I'm looking for but that's more to do with positioning. I did find turning the neck pickup round improved things quite a bit though.

normula1

Philly_Q said:

ICBM said:

That's the whole point of having two quite different pickups. I prefer a clean, clear 'vintage' neck pickup and a hotter, more midrangy, 'modern' bridge pickup, so you can use the pickup selector almost as a channel switch. I've never found it much of a problem to get both sounding good, you just need to choose the right pickups.

I like a lot of contrast between neck and bridge.  I'm mostly a humbucker person.  The bridge needs to be crunchy, snarly, edgy, but not thin or ice-picky bright.  The neck needs to be dark and warm - there's no such thing as a neck pickup which is too muddy or woolly as far as I'm concerned.

I mostly always look for the pickups to have similar tonalities and in my HSS Strats setup a partial split on the HB to be as close tonally as the single coils. Some get closer than others though. A BK Mule can work great with Kinman Woodstocks.

viz

axisus said:

viz said:

I reckon there must be a stock guitar somewhere out there, that has the right combination of features for you, Axisus. That’s what you need to find!

Actually no, as I only play my self-built guitars these days!

Ah yes of course! Well carry on then

Actually I did do another pickup change when I had my fave guitar routed for humbuckers and swapped the Fender Lace Sensors for some Evos - made it growl and scream. 

Fiftyshadesofjay

I’d say unless you’re going to make a big change like low output to modern or EMG’s or a single to hot rails etc, swapping pickups is a waste of time.

You can achieve most changes with an EQ, hell I’ve managed to get great metal tones out of filtertrons and great tones out of a Bullet Mustang. 

TTBZ

Philly_Q said:

Funkfingers said:

TTBZ said:

SG … stock 490R/498T have actually been the best overall match for the guitar (who'd have thought it eh).

Are you sure about the 498T? Most Gibson SGs get the 490T. (Approximately 10% hotter than the 490R.) 

SG Standard gets the 498T, SG Special gets the 490T.  I'm talking 1990s into 2000s, I'n not sure about recent models.

Yeah mines a 2008, pretty sure it was a 498T - that's what the website said anyway and it seemed hot enough. One of my friends has a 490R/490T SG special and they're horribly mismatched, the neck needs to be really low and the bridge really high to balance their outputs.

ICBM

normula1 said:

Philly_Q said:

ICBM said:

That's the whole point of having two quite different pickups. I prefer a clean, clear 'vintage' neck pickup and a hotter, more midrangy, 'modern' bridge pickup, so you can use the pickup selector almost as a channel switch. I've never found it much of a problem to get both sounding good, you just need to choose the right pickups.

I like a lot of contrast between neck and bridge.  I'm mostly a humbucker person.  The bridge needs to be crunchy, snarly, edgy, but not thin or ice-picky bright.  The neck needs to be dark and warm - there's no such thing as a neck pickup which is too muddy or woolly as far as I'm concerned.

I mostly always look for the pickups to have similar tonalities and in my HSS Strats setup a partial split on the HB to be as close tonally as the single coils. Some get closer than others though. A BK Mule can work great with Kinman Woodstocks.

And there you have it - the reason why we change pickups. That's at least three of us who have widely different requirements, and there's no way a guitar manufacturer can sensibly accommodate all those options on the same model.

andy_k

I built a walnut bodied Esquire for my main gigging thing, with a Dimarzio tonezone, volume only, just to simplify my setup to allow me to concentrate on the songs, and I had a tricky time getting a backup that would sound similar.
First attempt was a Jim Root style with Bareknuckle VH2s, neck and bridge humbuckers, I think I got close with the output, but the body was so much lighter it felt strange, and the 5 way switching gave me some weird low output combinations-could have been embarrassing.
Second attempt was a tele with a Duncan hot rails in the bridge and a creamery P90 neck, which was interesting, the hot rails is loud and the P90 sounds weak in the neck, which it really isn't.
The final attempt was a revelation, I got another Walnut body and put a Duncan lil 59 in the bridge, but also put an old Mighty mite Motherbucker in the neck, which is something like 17k, and I thought I would hate it, the lil 59 is very hot so it matches well-I get 3 very usable tones, and with a coil split on the vol knob, I get 6 great tones. The split actually sounds good this time, not weak at all.
I still use the Esquire as the main gig guitar, but most of my playing at home is now with the second walnut one, I call it a Coronacaster, cos it was built during lockdown, and it sounds sick. ( haven't got any gigs now though )
The revelation was using a hotter neck pickup, for the first time-I usually use a weaker one to get a less muddy neck sound.
It works on my other dual humbucker stuff, but on the tele styles with the single coil sized bridge, the hotter neck was the answer.

Nerine

My opinion on this is thus (and I’ll try to keep it brief.)

Dont buy a guitar you don’t like the sound of. I’ve never changed pickups in any guitar I’ve owned. 
There’s more at play than just the pickups when it comes to a guitars fundamental tone. 

Some guitars have “it”. Some don’t. Some guitars (of the same make and model) sound drastically different to each other. 
We aren’t really dealing with an exact science. Wood is/was a living thing. It’s not all created equal.

Mine do have “it”. Because the search is exhaustive and every guitar I try is compared (in real time whenever possible) to what I already own. I know which of my guitars “work”. I will (whenever possible) try 10-20 of the particular guitar I am after.
If something new I’m after does not give me the same vibe or better as one of my outgoing instruments, I simply walk away. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve sold some belting guitars. But of the 17 (proper ones) I’ve had in the last 30 years, I currently have kept two. (A couple I foolishly bought online without trying. One was a Les Paul Classic and the other an SG. Both new. Both dogs. The other a Suhr Antique Modern, which was awesome) 
I would never rely on pickup swaps to “improve” a guitar, simply because maybe the pickups aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s the combination of the myriad other things that contribute to the tone of your guitar that is hampering you? 
Maybe the guitar you don’t like the sound of will never sound good regardless of the pickups in it. 

LastMantra

I got caught up in it for a good while, trying to mod guitars to make them "mine". I can't really be arsed now. It's good to know how to set up and maintain (basically) your guitar though. 

Grumpyrocker

Nerine said:

My opinion on this is thus (and I’ll try to keep it brief.)

Dont buy a guitar you don’t like the sound of. I’ve never changed pickups in any guitar I’ve owned. 
There’s more at play than just the pickups when it comes to a guitars fundamental tone. 

Some guitars have “it”. Some don’t. Some guitars (of the same make and model) sound drastically different to each other. 
We aren’t really dealing with an exact science. Wood is/was a living thing. It’s not all created equal.

Mine do have “it”. Because the search is exhaustive and every guitar I try is compared (in real time whenever possible) to what I already own. I know which of my guitars “work”. I will (whenever possible) try 10-20 of the particular guitar I am after.
If something new I’m after does not give me the same vibe or better as one of my outgoing instruments, I simply walk away. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve sold some belting guitars. But of the 17 (proper ones) I’ve had in the last 30 years, I currently have kept two. (A couple I foolishly bought online without trying. One was a Les Paul Classic and the other an SG. Both new. Both dogs. The other a Suhr Antique Modern, which was awesome) 
I would never rely on pickup swaps to “improve” a guitar, simply because maybe the pickups aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s the combination of the myriad other things that contribute to the tone of your guitar that is hampering you? 
Maybe the guitar you don’t like the sound of will never sound good regardless of the pickups in it. 

Wizzed. This is where I am too. Not just with guitars. I'll only buy another guitar I'm completely happy with. 

ICBM

Nerine said:

Dont buy a guitar you don’t like the sound of. I’ve never changed pickups in any guitar I’ve owned. 
There’s more at play than just the pickups when it comes to a guitars fundamental tone.

There is, but I’ve turned a guitar I loved to play but hated the sound of into one I love the sound of as well, by changing the pickups.

Sometimes pickups are all the difference.

octatonic

ICBM said:

Nerine said:

Dont buy a guitar you don’t like the sound of. I’ve never changed pickups in any guitar I’ve owned. 
There’s more at play than just the pickups when it comes to a guitars fundamental tone.

There is, but I’ve turned a guitar I loved to play but hated the sound of into one I love the sound of as well, by changing the pickups.

Sometimes pickups are all the difference.

Certainly.
But when some players swap the pickups in every single guitar they own, multiple times then it is probably not the instrument that is the issue.

carlos

octatonic said:

monquixote said:

octatonic said:

This is what I refer to as 'majoring in minor things'.
Ignore it and go and work on your playing.

That was what I was going to say.

My Tele and PRS are stock my strat has a Billy corgan set in it but that was just because I wanted something shreddy.

I've swapped pickups for other similar pickups and by the time you've done it you've forgotten what the old ones sounded like.

Yup- just play the damn thing.

I see this all the time, across different instruments and it seems to only really happen online.
Not a single musician that I know who isn't on the forums seems to be swapping pickups, or pedals or drum heads or clarinet reeds.
Most players seem to keep the same gear year in and year out and it seems to work.

I've gone through periods where I swapped out pickups but often you aren't making it better, you are just making it different.

All my favourite guitarists use stock pickups, except the ones that have signature guitars but those are rare.