Advice on upgrading pickups!

[hellomarcus]

hi... i'm thinking of upgrading the pickups on my MIK epiphone les paul as well as highway1 strat but am not very familiar in this area...

what do i need to take note of when upgrading pickups?

do i need to like..match different pickups' outputs? like those with diff power can't be put together on the same guitar?

how do i know which pickups to choose in which position?

yup appreciate some help here..

 

[theblueark]

From the duncan site:
How to pick a pickup
http://www.seymourduncan.com/images/how_to_pick_a_pickup.pdf

 

[BlackMoo]

Very popular topic... I'll just answer anyway.


The first thing would be : Do you really need the upgrade?
If you're a performing musician, playing outside rather regularly, proceed. Otherwise spending money on pickups on a home practice guitar sure isn't practical. Unless you've cash to burn .

When upgrading pickup, take note of the tone you wish to achieve. A vintage tone? Or a more progressive tone? You do not need to match pickups with the same approximate output. That can be achieved through pickup height manipulation at a later stage. Many people have balanced ultra high powered pickups with some weaker ones perfectly. Don't worry.

Normally, they will state what position the pickup is for. Example : Blue Velvet Bridge, Blue Velvet Neck/Middle . Cruiser Neck . There are no bounds to where you want to place your pickup, you can put a neck pickup in a bridge position, and vice versa, its your sound!

Again, what kind of sound are you looking for?

 

[ShredCow]

Alrighty... here we go again! 8)

what do i need to take note of when upgrading pickups?
You want tone above everything else. That's most impt... a pup can drastically change the way your guitar sounds so... be very very hardworking, go research as much as possible on the pups you are eye-ing. Tone is relative... but in general, for starters, you might want to go with the flow and choose one of them "safe" bets... eg Dimarzio Breeds. Then from there you can fine tune once you have a better grasp of what tone you want.

do i need to like..match different pickups' outputs? like those with diff power can't be put together on the same guitar?
Ideally, yes.. match the output... but there's no hard and fast rule. I matched a Dimarzio X2N (510mA output) with a Dimarzio Humbucker From Hell (226mA ouput) before... thats more than a 250mA difference and I balanced their clean volume output. The only problem with matching low ouput pups with hi output pups will be... when you switch from either one, you will note a change in saturation (only when playing with gain) but there will be no change when playing clean. So in the above case, i was rip roaring with the X2N , switch to HFH and it turned into blues.

SOmething to note, DC Resistance is quite impt when you are running pups in parallel... if you have a Dimarzio TOnezone (17k DC) with the Dimarzio Humbucker from Hell (5k DC), when you wire them both in parallel, you'll notice that you have bascially a HFH tone... why? Because current flows to the lowest resistance... So if thats a concern for you... match DC as best you can... like 10 and 17 or 12 and 14..


how do i know which pickups to choose in which position?

No rules to this. Generally pups will be labeled for neck or bridge.. but some ppl like neck pups in the bridge (like me, Dimarzio breed neck in bridge) and some like it the other way round. Some like the same pups in both positions.... Paul Gilbert has used Dimarzio Tonezones in both positions... PAF Pros too.

Have fun. Once you start on pups... be prepared to spend. The better tone is always out there.

 

[BlackMoo]

HA! - I knew ShredCow coulden't resist a thread like this!

and yup.. What music do you play?

 

[ShredCow]

Punk. 8)

He's gonna spend man... I can feel it...

 

[BlackMoo]

Humbucker from Hell and Breed Neck for Punk? Interesting...

 

[ShredCow]

Its a PAF Joe remember?

I will have to do up reviews of all the DImarzio pups I've tried... hahaha...anyway... still waiting for the thread starter to confess his tonal tendencies...

 

[nebo1981]

do i need to like..match different pickups' outputs? like those with diff power can't be put together on the same guitar?
Ideally, yes.. match the output... but there's no hard and fast rule. I matched a Dimarzio X2N (510mA output) with a Dimarzio Humbucker From Hell (226mA ouput) before... thats more than a 250mA difference and I balanced their clean volume output. The only problem with matching low ouput pups with hi output pups will be... when you switch from either one, you will note a change in saturation (only when playing with gain) but there will be no change when playing clean. So in the above case, i was rip roaring with the X2N , switch to HFH and it turned into blues.

Dude,
how'd you do it ???

 

[BlackMoo]

how'd you do it ???

With a screwdriver.

 

[ShredCow]

Match a X2N and HFH?

I had to lower the X2N and have the HFH pretty high up... to balance the cleans.

At first, I didn't adjust the X2N and started raising my HFH till i realised, when fretting at the 22nd fret, the strings hit the HFH! So I had to lower the X2N...

When it was done, all was good! The cleans very balanced (although the X2N still had the tendency to distort the clean; bloody powerful) and on distortion, the X2N was still thrashing while switching to the HFH would take the gain down 2 notches... thats it.

Some like it that way...for the neck to have less gain...

 

[hellomarcus]

hey thanks for the help so far guys! really appreciate it....
well i play mainly blues and rock...was kinda thinking of getting a JB(bridge) and 59( neck ) for the les paul... how bout that? need something that can go with subtle overdrive with blues...and like also can go with high gain ...

i dun really like the punk tone so i'm trying to avoid that really..

hmm...how bout the l'll 59 for the strat bridge position?

 

[BlackMoo]

a JB in a les paul will own. I'm on a JB myself. I can tell you the clarity is tops. It reacts very well to the tone controls and cleans up nicely. Even on high gain, notes don't mush up together. Its also relatively affordable. Sure, give it a shot.

As for neck, you might wanna try the SD Jazz neck too... very warm tone.

 

[phreeek]

Hey what do u think of the X2n? ive been on the fence about buying one

 

[BlackMoo]

For your strat's bridge, you might wanna try DiMarzio's Blue Velvet bridge. Its got plenty of highs.. suitable for your style.

 

[hellomarcus]

hmm...okok... great..was reading up on the SD site.. what's PAF tones?

 

[theblueark]

Classic Les Paul tone.

Think Jimmy Page.

 

[phreeek]

<a.

 

[hellomarcus]

but what exactly does PAF stand for?

 

[mero]

Patent Applied For. (PAF)

I kid you not