SG and PRS SE sound the same

[alex1fly]

Context: I played & heavily modded primarily a single Strat for 20 years, sold it last year, and since then have been building a small collection of kick@$$ guitars with which to explore other classic & useful guitar tones & playing styles. I now have an SG, two PRS SEs, a 50s style Tele, a thinline HH Tele, and a Strat.

But I'm considering pulling the pickups out of my Gibson SG. They're 57 Classic+. Great sounds, fat and recognizable, but no matter what I do I can't get any kind of meaningful dynamics out of them - pickup height, preamp EQ, pedal settings, different amps. It's like there's always a compressor on. On top of that, my SE Custom sounds *identical* to the SG in blind tests, and is way more expressive and responsive to different attacks (unless I add a touch of compression, in which case it responds just like the SG). The SG gets punk rock strummage, hard rock chuggage, jazz chordage, and neo-soul fingerstyleage, and the goal is to still have a great sounding SG but not have it be redundant like it is now. Options I'm thinking of are:

Neck
P90 voicing. Convince me there's a better decision here.
Bridge
Duncan JB (with a split)
Dimarzio Air Zone (with a split)
?

The SG sounds and feels great, but doesn't do anything that the SE Custom doesn't (except for not make me deal with the floating bridge). And dang if the SE doesn't cop both a convincing PAF guitar and a chimey Telecaster using the coil splits and sounds absolutely fantastic doing both things.

Thoughts? Am I overthinking it? What does anyone else do with guitars that sound the same but are both awesome and worth keeping?

[Masta' C]

If my house was burning and I could only grab one guitar, it would definitely be my SE CU24. It may be relatively inexpensive compared to some of my others, but it plays great and really does do nearly everything from a sonic perspective.

If I was in your situation and simply couldn't bring myself to give up the SG, I would definitely consider swapping pickups to make it a little more unique.

A Bluesbucker/AirZone combo could be really cool!

[Securb]

Try out a 490r/498T set the SG will growl

[Mr. B]

Yeah, I like the 490r 490t set in an SG better than the 57 classics as well, but what I like WAY better than either is the Duncan 59 Set. I've tried dozens of sets in an SG and that is still the best I've found. I have a set of Seth Lovers in my PRS Santana SE, and you're right, there are some similarities between it and an SG, but with the A2 Seths in the PRS and the A5 59 set in the SG they are different enough to both be useful tones.

[Chistopher]

I also agree with changing the pickups. That'll change the tone some, but from what you're saying I think you may even want to change the wiring a little bit just to even further make the SG into its own unique thing.

For the neck you are fairly limited in options if you want a P90 voicing. A Phat Cat and a Bluesbucker are your two biggest bets.

I'd say Bluesbucker neck, Air Zone bridge, and if you really wanted to spice things up, replace the tone controls with bass cuts, I'm willing to bet you'd need it more with those pickups than you would a tone anyway

[Mincer]

I like the P-Rail in the neck, so you get a multitude of sounds. Go with a Custom in the bridge with a series/parallel switch.

[Benjy_26]

I threw an A4 Phat Cat in my Les Paul's neck slot. I don't known how P90-ish it is, but it's definitely clean, clear, and bell-like when running wide open and cops a great jazz tone when rolled back a bit or when using flat wounds.