Yes, I annoyed my family at ridiculous volumes.
As soon as I was able to really give these a test, my days of working as a guitar repairman in Stockholm, and working with vintage Gibsons from the 1950’s immediately came to mind. Clean tones were very transparent, where the actual tone of the strings really stuck out. You can really hear how you approach the string, playing with your fingers or with a pick. Some pickups can sound somewhat compressed, but these really opened up and kept opening up.
I was playing these through a 30 watt top (2x 6L6), and a 2x12 closed cab, so the 6L6’s can really deliver a clean punch without breaking up or compressing like EL34’s. They really do sound very clear, and have a nice tonal balance to them.
Neck pickup was just like a real vintage pickup. Pretty bassy where the top end really rolled off (but the clarity was still there), which is what one would expect to hear from a real “vintage” pickup. When I dialed in some gain, I would not think that they were the same pickups. Due to the clarity of the pickups, when overdriven, these seem to really pop out. I had to adjust my tone controls on the amp to tame some of the frequencies. Since the pickups are Alnico 2’s, you can make the amp work harder, and get a heck of a lot more out from the guitar and really punch in, when you want to.
I am going to keep playing these for a while in this guitar, but have to throw these into a solid body as well, just to compare.
I think that the best way to describe these is a completely “vintage” tone. I test a lot of different pickups (soldering iron is always close on hand), where I can usually judge a pickup pretty quickly and their characteristics. These are different. I feel even from what I heard and liked, that there is more to these that still remains to be discovered. Even compared to vintage 50’s pickups, these offer something very simular but it seems that there is more under the hood. Kind of like sitting with a nice wine or whiskey. One cannot simply take a quick sip and judge it, but sit with it for a longer period of time to really understand what makes it special.
