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HeadBanginologist
I've been going back and forth on what to put in the bridge of my Hamer Studio Custom. The guitar initially had dual 59's in it, and upon arrival I immediately put my A3/A5 Phat Cat in the neck (LOVE IT) and left the 59 in. I had hoped to put the A4/59b in there but it just wasn't jiving.
I wrestled back and forth between the C5, 59/C, CC, pearly gates, or the option of going with another brand altogether (which would've been fine, just more expensive). After much researching and listening to the 1 really great YouTube video demonstrating it, I settled on the 59/C...and I like it.
The thing that was bothering me about the 59b was the bright high end, I know i can tame it with the tone knob down and such, which I'm still doing at the moment with the hybrid, but I wanted just a little more OOMPH, which ended up just being an absence of midrange in the sound. When I put the 59/C I got that just extra little bit mids I was lacking, as well as a slightly more rich low end (also thanks to the mids).
Chords still retain that chime that I liked from the 59, but when pushed, gave me sweet compression that the low output 59 wasn't giving me, and a little bit of "chunk", for lack of a better term. This was true for open chords, as well as power chords, chimey when open and arpeggiated and chunky when Palm muted and pushed with a stronger hand.
Leads surprised me, I kept hearing that it was very bright (and it is) so I was expecting to still have to tailor to it by cutting some treble, that wasn't the case however. The extra output and oomph from the Custom coil just made leads sound fat, and not shrill. It's a strange occurrence, where clean and slightly overdriven arpeggios are chimey, muted chords are chunky and lead tones are fat, but a great occurrence nonetheless.
I wired it to be split with a push/pull pot on the tone knob (which is only connected to the bridge, leaving the neck pickup a little brighter), and if I were to describe the split tones in one word it would be spanky. Somewhat similar to a tele bridge, just less of that natural Tele honk and twang. Obviously it's not a tele bridge pup, and that wasn't my intention, but it works. The split coil especially works well with the PCn where get an almost hollow tone, not empty sounding, ALMOST akin to the middle position of filtertrons.
The humbucker mixed with the PCn is also a great tone, similar to the description above with just a tad more of that oomph mentioned above, I imagine it would be a good clean rhythm tone, or lightly overdriven Arp tone.
Overall I'm pretty damn happy with it, this was just an initial impression while my wife was grocery shopping and daughter was napping, so it will be put through the ringer throughout the next week/weekend. Gigs coming up and a few sessions next week will show the true colors of it.
I wrestled back and forth between the C5, 59/C, CC, pearly gates, or the option of going with another brand altogether (which would've been fine, just more expensive). After much researching and listening to the 1 really great YouTube video demonstrating it, I settled on the 59/C...and I like it.
The thing that was bothering me about the 59b was the bright high end, I know i can tame it with the tone knob down and such, which I'm still doing at the moment with the hybrid, but I wanted just a little more OOMPH, which ended up just being an absence of midrange in the sound. When I put the 59/C I got that just extra little bit mids I was lacking, as well as a slightly more rich low end (also thanks to the mids).
Chords still retain that chime that I liked from the 59, but when pushed, gave me sweet compression that the low output 59 wasn't giving me, and a little bit of "chunk", for lack of a better term. This was true for open chords, as well as power chords, chimey when open and arpeggiated and chunky when Palm muted and pushed with a stronger hand.
Leads surprised me, I kept hearing that it was very bright (and it is) so I was expecting to still have to tailor to it by cutting some treble, that wasn't the case however. The extra output and oomph from the Custom coil just made leads sound fat, and not shrill. It's a strange occurrence, where clean and slightly overdriven arpeggios are chimey, muted chords are chunky and lead tones are fat, but a great occurrence nonetheless.
I wired it to be split with a push/pull pot on the tone knob (which is only connected to the bridge, leaving the neck pickup a little brighter), and if I were to describe the split tones in one word it would be spanky. Somewhat similar to a tele bridge, just less of that natural Tele honk and twang. Obviously it's not a tele bridge pup, and that wasn't my intention, but it works. The split coil especially works well with the PCn where get an almost hollow tone, not empty sounding, ALMOST akin to the middle position of filtertrons.
The humbucker mixed with the PCn is also a great tone, similar to the description above with just a tad more of that oomph mentioned above, I imagine it would be a good clean rhythm tone, or lightly overdriven Arp tone.
Overall I'm pretty damn happy with it, this was just an initial impression while my wife was grocery shopping and daughter was napping, so it will be put through the ringer throughout the next week/weekend. Gigs coming up and a few sessions next week will show the true colors of it.