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Hello all.
Recently, I've been playing around with guitars that I hadn't played too much, and I found that my Epi Nighthawk Custom sounded a little thin and pingy at the bridge.
As some of you know, the Nighthawk has an oddly shaped bridge pickup route, which requires that whatever humbucker is installed be angled, with each coil being off centner to the other.
Previously, I had gotten a brass baseplate from a vendor in the UK (I forget the name) that had allowed me to install a Pearly Gates bridge in the guitar.
At the time, I liked what the PGb was doing in that guitar, even though the split sound was a little weak and maybe a little too bright.
I then went on to mostly ignore the guitar for a while, concentrating on strats and super strats.
I pulled it out last night to oil the board and jam on it a little, and it sounded quite thin. It still sounded like a PGb, but I remember it being thicker and louder.
I have some spare time, so, what the hell, I got the soldering iron out.
I looked into my pickup box and I saw an old, OLD, double screw coil JB that I had loaded with an alnico II mag and had stolen a set of fillisters from and replaced them with hexes from a Full Shred. I figured that, since it's already a franken-bucker, it wouldn't hurt to put it on this brass baseplate.
I've talked a LOT of smack about the JB in mahogany, set neck guitars. I've said that it's loose, has an annoying high-mid grind, and that it's way too compressed and sloppy.
In this set neck, mahogany guitar, I take all of that back.
I don't know if it's the 6 fillster/6 hex screws, the Alnico II mag, the brass baseplate, or if it's the thin, mahogany body and 25.5" scale neck or the ebony fingerboard, but it sounds GREAT.
Is the bass tight?
Tight enough to do metal chugs, gallops, and punk downstrokes.
Sloppy?
Nah. You can hear every note in a chord when played dirty. Even when played really, really dirty.
High mid grind?
Yeah, it's there, BUT, it seems a bit more restrained and the frequency range seems to be more filled out. It's got more low mids and sweeter highs than I recall.
How are the cleans?
Well, in full humbucker mode, they're OK. Not great.
Split, they're pretty darned good. I have it set to split to the coil that sits closest to the neck (hex screws). It'll chicken pick and twang on its own, does a convincing strat in between tone when combined with the middle singe, and has nice airiness when combined with the SM-1n in the neck.
I really like this pickup in this guitar, guys. I was wrong about it in the past. The JB *can* work in mahogany.
Recently, I've been playing around with guitars that I hadn't played too much, and I found that my Epi Nighthawk Custom sounded a little thin and pingy at the bridge.
As some of you know, the Nighthawk has an oddly shaped bridge pickup route, which requires that whatever humbucker is installed be angled, with each coil being off centner to the other.
Previously, I had gotten a brass baseplate from a vendor in the UK (I forget the name) that had allowed me to install a Pearly Gates bridge in the guitar.
At the time, I liked what the PGb was doing in that guitar, even though the split sound was a little weak and maybe a little too bright.
I then went on to mostly ignore the guitar for a while, concentrating on strats and super strats.
I pulled it out last night to oil the board and jam on it a little, and it sounded quite thin. It still sounded like a PGb, but I remember it being thicker and louder.
I have some spare time, so, what the hell, I got the soldering iron out.
I looked into my pickup box and I saw an old, OLD, double screw coil JB that I had loaded with an alnico II mag and had stolen a set of fillisters from and replaced them with hexes from a Full Shred. I figured that, since it's already a franken-bucker, it wouldn't hurt to put it on this brass baseplate.
I've talked a LOT of smack about the JB in mahogany, set neck guitars. I've said that it's loose, has an annoying high-mid grind, and that it's way too compressed and sloppy.
In this set neck, mahogany guitar, I take all of that back.
I don't know if it's the 6 fillster/6 hex screws, the Alnico II mag, the brass baseplate, or if it's the thin, mahogany body and 25.5" scale neck or the ebony fingerboard, but it sounds GREAT.
Is the bass tight?
Tight enough to do metal chugs, gallops, and punk downstrokes.
Sloppy?
Nah. You can hear every note in a chord when played dirty. Even when played really, really dirty.
High mid grind?
Yeah, it's there, BUT, it seems a bit more restrained and the frequency range seems to be more filled out. It's got more low mids and sweeter highs than I recall.
How are the cleans?
Well, in full humbucker mode, they're OK. Not great.
Split, they're pretty darned good. I have it set to split to the coil that sits closest to the neck (hex screws). It'll chicken pick and twang on its own, does a convincing strat in between tone when combined with the middle singe, and has nice airiness when combined with the SM-1n in the neck.
I really like this pickup in this guitar, guys. I was wrong about it in the past. The JB *can* work in mahogany.
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