Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

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ls1ashley

New member
First, guitar of discussion is a Gibson a Flying V. All Mahogany with a Bound white polymer baked maple fingerboard. This guitar comes with Gibson's Burstbucker 1&2. I can't for the life of me get any fire outta these despite some tweaking with height. It may be a bum guitar or probably just me, either way... It lacks low end and doesn't seem to be hot enough in general for heavier rock tunes.

As background, my #1 is an Ibanez S series guitar with DiMarzio FRED and a PAF Joe. The guitar practically plays itself with all sorts of yummy harmonics. Note the V will be us d to play slight heavier rock/metal type songs and will be tuned down a bit (1 step usually).

EMGs are no go for this guitar. In the DiMarzio camp I am feeling Tone Zone and Air Norton. In the Duncan camp I'm thinking a Custom and Jazz.

1. Anything wrong with these choices? My initial reaction is that they are kinda ... Well, not new or "exciting"

2. I am somewhat curious about an Alternative 8.

Thoughts?
 
Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

Maybe you could go PATB 1 B&N models. Not ordinary or boring, and also some great tones even without the unique look.
 
Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

What is a polymer baked maple fretboard? Or do I want to know?

At any rate, maple is a bright-toned wood, so there's that.

As well, "mahogany" is being used more and more these days in its more "generic species description" form than in previous decades, and if you look up all the various woods classified as being in the mahogany family tree, you'll quickly realize that the majority of guitars that are made with "mahogany" are not using the same "mahogany" that people generally expect to find when they hear "mahogany body".

That said, a V - even one of real mahogany - has never been hailed as a beefy-toned axe, largely because of the body shape. Typically, a V-shaped guitar has a pronounced spike in the lower-midrange to upper-midrange frequencies, depending on the wood and quality of wood used. This is one of the things that makes them ideal for detuned Metal as they can go low without going muddy. As well, they play well with a bass guitar so it can be heard doing its low-register thang instead of just clink-clank.


If you're worried about your pickup choice being "boring" or "not exotic enough", you are focusing on the wrong aspects. Go with what works tonally first. If it's a set of P-Rails, Seth Lovers, or Dano lipsticks, use what works and worry about the other crap some other time.
True, years of research led to the newer models (Nazgul and whatnot) but during those years, millions of songs were recorded using Customs, 59s, Distortions, JBs, and PAF Pros.
 
Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

Haha, hey, if it's boring to use Jazz humbuckers then I will take that label all day cuz it's certainly not boring to play them! FWIW the Jazz can easily handle heavy rock. I use it for that for a few songs but it cleans up real nicely for blues, country, jazz, funk or any other kind of clean genre as well. It's a real versatile pickup. There are some other nice options to help bring out the low end a bit too like the 59, Pearly Gates and the Alnico II Pro from Duncan.

Go with what works for you, your style and your preference.
 
Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

Appreciate the quick feedback, figured I was over analyzing..... PATB noted though!
 
Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

This is the Gibson Snow Falcon isn't it... Lucky *mumbling incoherent swear words*

What amp are you playing through by chance?
 
Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

acoustically how that V sounds?, i mean, not going into an amp, is the gutar more in the bright or dark side?
what kind of rock/metal?

also to don't had something so common, at least to rock, from dimarzio i say D-activator or X2N, on duncan, Black Winters, Parallel axis trembuckers (blues sarasceno and distortion) or the dimebag set (yeah, it's like the epitome of output on passive pickups for metal, but is also so, so, really so sweet and juicy for rock, at the level that with just the guitar knobs i can go from ol' thrash to AC/DC), or an Alternative 8 with a Pearly Gates
 
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Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

I think you should just give up & sell it to me??? All kidding aside, who cares about boring? As long as you love the pickups then they are what you need to drop into your V? As far as the neck goes, what they do is bake the maple in a big oven, when it comes out it looks kind of like rosewood. They started to do this a few years back because Gibson got in some trouble for buying illegal Ebony, after they were not able to buy Ebony anymore. So by baking or torrifing the maple was supposed to, in theory, sound like the coveted Ebony that they decided to rape the land of. It didn't work!!! The maple sounds alright, different but alright. To me it sounds like something between Maple & rosewood. Heating the wood for several hours makes it much more dense & changes the wood on a molecular level, hence, it's just like Ebony??? NOT!!! Excuse the 90's quote please! This may be some of the reason your pups don't sound quite right as they are? If the guitar was 10yrs older you likely would have had an Ebony fret board & I think they have worked out their legal issues now & are using it again??? To go back to the pickups that you choose
 
Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

I think you should just give up & sell it to me??? LOL, All kidding aside I.M.H.O. I think you may be focusing on the wrong things, there is nothing wrong with "boring pickups", If they sound great than that's what you need to drop into your V? There's a reason why the SH-4 JB & SH-2 Jazz set are Duncan's most popular pickups, they work very well for a lot of different music, & in all kinds of guitars made out of all kinds of materials? I had a similar experience with my G&L Fallout, it came with a SH-4 stock & sounded really good but this was around the same time the SH-8 Invader came out. There was this CRAZY looking pickup with huge lugs & I had to have one! It lasted about a week before the JB was back in & the Invader was on eBay. The main reason I bought it was I wanted something new & exciting to show off but I ended up hating the thing! Stick with something that you know you are going to like, or try the tone wiz? It's better to lose a 1/2hr than almost $200!!!
 
Re: Am I being boring, and general pickup question.

2manyguitars said:
I think you should just give up & sell it to me??? All kidding aside, who cares about boring? As long as you love the pickups then they are what you need to drop into your V? As far as the neck goes, what they do is bake the maple in a big oven, when it comes out it looks kind of like rosewood. They started to do this a few years back because Gibson got in some trouble for buying illegal Ebony, after they were not able to buy Ebony anymore. So by baking or torrifing the maple was supposed to, in theory, sound like the coveted Ebony that they decided to rape the land of. It didn't work!!! The maple sounds alright, different but alright. To me it sounds like something between Maple & rosewood. Heating the wood for several hours makes it much more dense & changes the wood on a molecular level, hence, it's just like Ebony??? NOT!!! Excuse the 90's quote please! This may be some of the reason your pups don't sound quite right as they are? If the guitar was 10yrs older you likely would have had an Ebony fret board & I think they have worked out their legal issues now & are using it again??? To go back to the pickups that you choose
Click to expand...

Wasn't it the rosewood they got in trouble for? Either way, I was here first. It's MINE!
 
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