anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

[Masta' C]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

Yup. I was back and forth...I decided it was wiser to spend my cash on a custom shop 'bucker that MJ was winding to do EXACTLY what I wanted.

You can do that any day of the week, any time of the month, any month of the year, any year of the...you get the point. Glad you got what you wanted. Now, stop cr@pping on this poor thread!!!

MISTERWHIZZY- What kind of gear are you playing these through? Just curious. Let me ask...would you buy them again if you had the chance?

[0v3nm4n]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

I think my neck PU is a little crooked as well....what can I do about that?

[timhatimay]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

I replied in the original Fugly thread, but since there is a new one, I'll just add my thoughts. Despite what some people mentioned, these were a major PITA to mount. I had fairly big holes in my pickguard, and could easily accommodate more than a covered humbucker. I still had to do significant filing and sanding to fit through the guard. Likewise, I had to modify my triple shot to fit, because I wanted to easily access all the positions. It still doesn't fit right, and while it seems to be pretty dialed in, I have very limited height adjustment due to the tight fit. Mine was a little crooked too.

Being this was supposed to be an articulate, moderate output, crunchy pickup, I pulled out a Full-Shred. The FB has much less bite, less articulation, and is very much underpowered by comparison. However, with that out of the way, I do like the pickup. It still does have some of the characteristics I liked with the Full-Shred, and it really is pretty tight with nice clarity. The bass is not as tight, so you have to dial it into your equipment a little differently. The positive aspect to this is the great harmonic character and almost soft vintage-y vibe it has. So most of all I enjoy the versatility.

With one single you can get some tele-ish kind of bright ballsy sounds. With the other you get a little strat-y (slightly thinner) but nice sparkly single sound. Which combines nicely with a p-rail (or probably any other single). There is more disparity between the two coils, so I like the flexibility this gives, and you can get some additional sounds. Parallel mode is pretty lackluster and has no power, so thats the only basically useless position. I said it before that it was like taking a P90 and full-shred and layering them on-top. It has two personalities, probably from the very different coils. Here is my quote from before, and I still feel essentially the same way:

plugging in and playing a bit made it worth the trouble. It sounds really nice clean and with some drive. It's pretty bright, but not harsh or sterile. It has a sound that is hard to describe. It's really tight yet it's still rounded. It's got a hifi quality but it has some squish and compression too. It's almost like double tracking a p90 and a full-shred together. It splits really well too. I'm still trying to get into the differences between the two single coils, because they have a different feel. I'm not wild about the parallel setting so far. It seems a bit thin. I only played a bit, so I still have more to do. So far so good though. It's a really cool pickup with a unique sound and feel.

It works best I think clean or with a touch of drive. If you like distortion or lots of drive, its better with a nice tight distortion I think. It can get a little loose with some fuzzes. Much better than the Full-shred at this type of playing. Works great boosted into a Marshall type amp too! Somedays though, I still miss the bite, power, and clarity of the Full-Shred. It's just so good for a little shred session!

This is all played with a Squier Super-Sonic through various boxes (switch the set-up each time but often use: echo, reverb, fuzzes, boosters) through a Marshall 18W Clone (Ceriatone EF86 36W Amp). Despite the crazy looks, I think a lot of the guys into traditional type pickups (PAFs, P90s, etc.) could really dig this PU. It is good going into a turned up tube amp (although it would be the icing on the cake if it had just a bit more power!).

Hope this helps,

Tim

[misterwhizzy]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

What kind of gear are you playing these through? Just curious. Let me ask...would you buy them again if you had the chance?

They're running through a modified JCA20H, with Emince Governor and Wizard in the cabinet. My comparison is to a Gibson Les Paul Studio with Custom 8/59 A4n. Would I buy them again? That's a great question. I bought the guitar thinking I'd make it useful for clean tones, and now it does it. I still haven't fixed the wiring perfectly. The neck doesn't spit the coils properly. But split bridge with full neck is a really great sound.

So when I crank up the gain a bit, it tends to mush out just a little bit, more in the neck than in the bridge. And once I got them to the appropriate heights, it really sounds pretty good, just not hot humbucker tight. Hope that makes sense.

[Shadow1psc]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

I had no interest in these pickups as humbuckers. What interested me was the idea of having two quite different single coils to choose between in the same rout. My thought was:

- put bridge model in neck position, set nice and high
- add a three-way switch to select PA coil, blade coil, or both in parallel

But the need for special rings, the fact that covers don't fit (I dislike the open-coil look), the non-matching surfaces, the price, etc. were all turnoffs. I liked my plan in theory, but I couldn't think of a real-world application worth spending the money on.

I am very curious to hear whether or not anyone applied the same approach that I had in mind, though.

If these were redesigned as standard-production pickups using standard-sized coils, and brought down in price, I'd get one.

I wanted to do this. The second we started talking about unique, mismatched coils, I immediately thought I would get to put a triple shot on these. After hearing that they would need a specific mounting ring, I made a thread and few posts hoping that we would either be able to make it work, or SD would maybe do something for the couple of us ordering from the custom shop anyway. I never really got any answer, and figured it better not to chance it (though tbh I could have used the triple shots elsewhere).

I will say given how I was able to finagle the pickups into something far less malleable than plastic, I probably could have gotten them into the triple shots with a small amount of work. It'd certainly be worth the effort given how much I like the pickups. To the people who asked who this particular set is marketed towards, I would say anyone who wants a hotter Crunchlab/Liquifire progressive metal/rock tone with lots of versatility, clarity and harmonics, this is your go-to. TO BE PERFECTLY HONEST, though, when you compare the price point of the two, coupled with the look (which is love/hate) and the lack of mounting versatility, simply picking up a CL/LF may be the more economical route.

[Johnny the Kid]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

https://forum.seymourduncan.com/show...ht=fuglybucker

Those sound awesome. I want a set.

[SrDeMaFp]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

pshh, I'll file down a tri-shot ring if I have to.....

Knock yourself out, dude. I really can't imagine the outcome being too pretty, though.

[ItsaBass]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

In the end, how many were made, and how many were bought?

[dr.barlo]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

I've got a set... But have been too lazy to install them!



I have a BG1400 and Lil59 that needs installing as well...

And the weird thing is that in the past I was swapping pickups like changing socks you know... Either it's the age, or the Brobucker made me very lazy.

B

[0v3nm4n]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

Knock yourself out, dude. I really can't imagine the outcome being too pretty, though.

well it IS a FUGLY-bucker :P

[KeeperOS]

Review on a Mahogany neck-thru Superstrat

I realize I'm pretty late to the party but for good reason.

Back when I was about to receive my set I bought my Parker Mojo Fly Single Cut and naturally I wanted to try them there. In one word, they were HORRIBLE. These pickups were intended to be clear and bell-like and that, combined with a Parker's naturally trebly tone due to its' thin body, resulted in possibly the worst sound I had EVER heard from ANY pickup. At one point I was convinced that they must have been installed or wired wrong, perhaps with the polarity reversed or sth.
That guitar in the end got a Tom Anderson HN3+ and now sounds phenomenal but I wasn't about to give up on these pickups regardless of what all the haters said.

So, next time around I used my first impressions on the intended tone of the pickups and thought which of my guitars' natural tone would be complemented appropriately.
So, my next testbed was my beloved Swing EZ-10:


With a Mahogany neckthru+wings, a Rosewood fretboard and a 7mm thick Ebony TOP she always had a tone that favored the lows and mid-highs but without a lot of mids or top-highs.
It was a match made in heaven. All those qualities that I hated in the Parker were so perfect for this guitar that I could be persuaded in thinking that these pickups were custom-wound for this particular guitar.

These pickups are extremely clear-sounding, with highs that are reminiscent of the Full Shred but unlike said pickup, they are very organic-sounding with plenty of character of their own and plenty of bottom-end, provided the guitar had some to begin with...

They're not extremely high output but definitely not anywhere near vintage territory either.
Like I said they are very clear sounding with a mostly balanced EQ but that are still favoring the highs (surprise there, especially considering that's what we had specified in the first place).
The neck's tone is very liquid-like with that singing quality that all the neck pickups that we love seem to share.
The bridge pickup is dialed in just right so that it will never really get dark, muddy or undefined under lots of gain but that can still be cleaned up nicely by rolling the volume down.

After listening to the demo I decided to have them both split to the blade coil and I am pretty happy that I did.
I rarely if ever split a bridge pickup but this one produces a very convincing Strat-like tone, definitely usable even to me while when they're both split with the 3-way in the middle position they produce a very very good twangy-type of tone (almost Tele-like although not quite).

All in all for a designed-by-committee pickup (apparently nearly an anathema to some, judging by some of the posts in here) the end result was pretty darn good and the SD Custom Shop, as always, delivered a pickup that was extremely faithful to what we asked and KICKED SOME SERIOUS BUTT!!!



* P.S. This is for all the crybabies that are complaining about the pickup rings. Look at the last photo carefully, paying extra attention to the pickup rings. These are two pairs of pickup rings, a black plastic pair that SD bundles with their "normal" pickups plus a pair of thin METAL rings ON TOP OF THEM (that's two pickup rings PER PICKUP for those that are counting).

Now I know I might awe you with my infinite wisdom but for some weird reason I had NO trouble installing these pickups in the pickup rings that you see above.
ALL I had to do was put the pickups in at a SLANTED angle, one side first, then raise the other. Pretty tough huh? It must have taken me all of 10 seconds to thing of and then execute that difficult stunt-like maneuver...

The only downside is that you cannot lower the pickup bellow the ring's height (or raise them above it but the pickup would then touch the strings anyway) but let's be serious here, who would EVER get the pickup BELLOW the ring's level?

Also, looks-wise, I cannot really understand all the whining about the different bobbin colors. From 10 INCHES away it is barely noticeable that the two bobbins have a slightly different shade of black, ANY further than that and you CANNOT tell a thing. Now I can understand that their appearance is unusual and one can take it or leave it (personally I dig it) but lets not forget that they're pickups and we're swapping them because of the way they SOUND, not LOOK...

[BloodRose]

Re: Review on a Mahogany neck-thru Superstrat

Good review Bro! And good feedback on the pups! I was bummed I didnt have the cash for a set and then the reviews seemed less than stellar, but I guess in the right application, they are great! New life for the Swing hung??

Hope all is well, sorry Ive been neglecting to get you an email lately. (does work both ways, hint hint..) haha Take care

[KeeperOS]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

Yeah, all pickups are like that, there's the wrong and the right guitar to put them in and for the right application.

Now these pickups are pretty darn versatile, a quality that you'd think guitarists would love being the greedy bunch that they are but the wrong and right guitar is still a given.

Yeah, loving them in the Swing, cured her from a couple of smallish nags I had about her. She's always been a keeper though, just that now she's even more so!

[El Dunco]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

Did you guys not get the specifically designed, custom pickup ring that came with it? I had no such trouble with installation.

[uOpt]

Re: anyone got their fuglybuckers up & running?

Did you guys not get the specifically designed, custom pickup ring that came with it? I had no such trouble with installation.

In a Les Paul?