Ibanez Prestige pickup suggestion

[4hisglory]

Hello all. I have a Ibanez RG5120m that I bought new this past March. It is a work of art! The fit and finish is perfect but the tone is lacking for my tastes. It’s a mahogany body with an ash top and a maple/bubinga bolt on neck. I’m sure it excels at metal but I play more “reserved” music (praise and worship) which requires low to medium gain tones that are more sort of growly and “open” and chimey rather than tight and compressed. The Fishman moderns that came in it were very bland with the amp/drive settings that I use so I swapped them out for a Suhr Thornbucker neck and Thornbucker plus bridge. They are advertised as being like a 50’s PAF style but with better clarity. In this particular guitar I’m finding them unremarkable at clean tones and very “nasally” with drive. I’ve tried many different low-gain drives (Tumnus, Timmy, Amp 11, Keeley TS) and it just sounds very nasal with any gain. I’ve tried every possible pickup height and I can’t dial it out with EQ either.
I really want to love this guitar. It’s gorgeous and the playability is fantastic. Do any of you have a suggestion for a set of pickups that are “open” and “chimey” without being shrill or nasal and continue to have those characteristics with low to medium gain? Thank you very much!

[BBB]

Before you go out and spend more money. Did you try moving the wires on the back of the Fishman's to test the other gain setting?

[4hisglory]

Thank you BBB. I don’t have the Fishmans onboard anymore. I have a Suhr Thornbucker and Thornbucker plus. I actually put the Fishmans in a box to keep safe and misplaced them... . They’re somewhere around here....

[jeremy]

i havent tried those thornbuckers so cant really help ya there but, in general, what do you want from your pups? a jazz neck and c5 bridge should not be nasally at all, but on paper doesnt seem like those thornbuckers, especially the neck at 7.3k a5, should be overly nasally either

[4hisglory]

i havent tried those thornbuckers so cant really help ya there but, in general, what do you want from your pups? a jazz neck and c5 bridge should not be nasally at all, but on paper doesnt seem like those thornbuckers, especially the neck at 7.3k a5, should be overly nasally either

I’m sorry, I should have been more clear on the differences between the two. The neck isn’t nearly as nasal as the bridge but it lacks “openness” and “chime”. It’s actually quite dull. The low strings have no attack or bite....really lack dynamics between picking soft or hard.

[Benjy_26]

I really like the PATB-3 in the bridge of shred sticks. It makes them take on a Gibson-y flavor. As far as the neck, the PATB-1n is a good match for it, but I don't know if it'll have the chime you want.

[ICTGoober]

Might as well suggest a set of Bill Lawrence units while I'm here. Their hallmark is clarity, clean power, articulation, and high fidelity. Plus - they're affordable.

[4hisglory]

The results are certainly not what I was expecting with the Thornbuckers! I was too busy to swap the pickups myself so I took it to a shop. To be honest, the experience wasn’t great. Super nice guy but the bridge pickup had an intermittent short so I opened the back cavities up to find the problem. The soldering was quite (very) shoddy. I figured out that the selector switch had (somehow) stopped working correctly. I ordered a new one and soldered it again.
Thinking that it’s possible (given the poor soldering) that something is mis-wired, I took off the back plate this evening to take a fresh look. It’s a hot mess. It seems as though the pots are the right values (500) but I have no idea what that cap is. All the other madness is for splitting the coils. I’m gonna undue everything tomorrow, add a .022 orange drop and wire it 1 tone/1 volume no split and see if that sounds better.

Wiring:

https://imgur.com/a/NjPhOBX

[ICTGoober]

Hope the shop wasn't Ninth Circle of Hell Music (Guitar Center).
Real luthiers won't work there - only hacks.

[4hisglory]

Hope the shop wasn't Ninth Circle of Hell Music (Guitar Center).
Real luthiers won't work there - only hacks.

No. It was a local brick and mortar. Slim pickin’s around here.

[4hisglory]

Here’s the guitar. I can’t stand that it sounds lousy.
From some angles it looks like I’ve crystals just forming on water:

https://imgur.com/a/4XoUr9r

At other angles you can see the ash top:

https://imgur.com/a/qOzWQ3F

You’d never expect what’s under the hood....

https://imgur.com/a/NjPhOBX

[ICTGoober]

Beautiful axe. That custom finish is seen a lot on custom bikes and lowriders. Some call it frost, some call it broken glass, or shattered ice. Several ways to get the effect.

[dave74]

I know you said that every possible pickup height has been tried, but were you able to lower them very much or do they quickly bottom-out?

The reason I ask is because Ibanez started using fairly shallow routes when they went away from the dmz/ibz types with the large ceramic magnet. On those with shallower routes some pickups just won't work unless you take the dremel to it. Were the Fishmans stock from Ibanez? What year is this beauty? Great finish, I also really like their new cosmic shadow prestige.

[Mincer]

A 59 and a 59/Custom Hybrid is a great set that can be further altered with pedals. But they both split well, and sound great for many styles of music on their own without feeling or sounding compressed.

[Demanic]

+1 to what Mincer suggests.
Or maybe a Custom Custom in the bridge with a Jazz neck.