Hello all! First time posting here.
I recently bought an Ibanez AZ242BC and absolutely love the look and feel of it.
I've been playing it for a few weeks, and I'm having trouble loving the Hyperion pickups and "alter" switch voicings; even after adjusting the eq on all my amp patches.
I know the Hyperions were meant for a variety of modern styles, but I find them too bright, hard, and edgy to get classic rock-type sounds out of them, and the positions utilizing the alter switch are all painfully bright and edgy, with considerable hum.
The neck pickup isn't completely bad (it has an almost single-coil sound that I can just about live with), but the bridge position sounds thin and almost quacky (alter switch off). There's times I could swear it was accidentally wired in parallel, but no: it's looks to be in series.
I'm trying to decide if I should try selling the Hyperions and switches on Reverb while they are in mint condition, and try a pair of Whole Lotta's, or 59/59Hybrids. My other Ibanez has Duncan 59s with UOA5 magnets and I really like that sound a lot, though sometimes I wish the bridge had a bit more oomph, while keeping the softer highs).
My other option (which I'm favoring a bit more) is to risk scuffing the Hyperions up a little, and drop some roughcast A4 magnets in them to get a little softer treble and fuller mids in them, and maybe soldering the switch to more conventional parallel/series combinations. There aren't many reports of magnet-swaps in Hyperions, so I'm not sure how the winds would react to different magnets.
Opinions?
Thanks!
I recently bought an Ibanez AZ242BC and absolutely love the look and feel of it.
I've been playing it for a few weeks, and I'm having trouble loving the Hyperion pickups and "alter" switch voicings; even after adjusting the eq on all my amp patches.
I know the Hyperions were meant for a variety of modern styles, but I find them too bright, hard, and edgy to get classic rock-type sounds out of them, and the positions utilizing the alter switch are all painfully bright and edgy, with considerable hum.
The neck pickup isn't completely bad (it has an almost single-coil sound that I can just about live with), but the bridge position sounds thin and almost quacky (alter switch off). There's times I could swear it was accidentally wired in parallel, but no: it's looks to be in series.
I'm trying to decide if I should try selling the Hyperions and switches on Reverb while they are in mint condition, and try a pair of Whole Lotta's, or 59/59Hybrids. My other Ibanez has Duncan 59s with UOA5 magnets and I really like that sound a lot, though sometimes I wish the bridge had a bit more oomph, while keeping the softer highs).
My other option (which I'm favoring a bit more) is to risk scuffing the Hyperions up a little, and drop some roughcast A4 magnets in them to get a little softer treble and fuller mids in them, and maybe soldering the switch to more conventional parallel/series combinations. There aren't many reports of magnet-swaps in Hyperions, so I'm not sure how the winds would react to different magnets.
Opinions?
Thanks!
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