best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

[peterxox]

Hey everyone, wanted to get varied expert advise on which would be the best pick ups for a single peice carbon fiber guitar. We have incredible sustain from our guitar, the tone is very bright, we mount 2 humbuckers one volume knob, one tone, and one blend pick up selector.
Anyone have past experience with carbon fiber who would like to share suggestions or opinions?
thanks!
Peter

 

[daemon barbeque]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

hello!Welcome to the forum!Do you mean the Handle?If yes ,what a great design!
I would say ,try a alnico V humbucker ,with strong midds and bass ,maybe 250kohm pots for a darker sound.What kind of spacing is the guitar?PATB-1 would be a great option!Or the PATB-3 Blues Sarasceno!Those PUs have a strong bottom and strong mid freq ,extreme sustain and cool definition!Those have the same quality as your guitar design has ,so a good match!
Just tell us what you want from your design!What qualities do you want to have!Definition under hi-gain?A well balanced allrounder?A vintage specced blues axe?It will be easier to suggest!
So cheers and welcome again!
Cheers!

 

[peterxox]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

Hi Daemon,
thanks alot for the compliments! yes its for the Handle,
very nice suggestions on your part. our scale is 64,8 cms.
our desired sound- good question, we want personality, but our carbon fiber hollow section does already give us a unique sound... we want at this point to help balance the guitar get it nearer to an all arounder so anyone will find it as attractive as we have planned it. We do not want to get middle of the line, we must maintian our personality but do not want to segment too much our market because of an extreme pick up arrangement.
I am the designer not our sound tecnician, I will have Paolo try to tell you in the near future whether he suggests Definition under hi-gain, or A well balanced allrounderor A vintage specced blues axe?
In the mean time any suggestions from you are more than appreciated!
thanks,
Peter

 

[daemon barbeque]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

Hi Daemon,
thanks alot for the compliments! yes its for the Handle,
very nice suggestions on your part. our scale is 64,8 cms.
our desired sound- good question, we want personality, but our carbon fiber hollow section does already give us a unique sound... we want at this point to help balance the guitar get it nearer to an all arounder so anyone will find it as attractive as we have planned it. We do not want to get middle of the line, we must maintian our personality but do not want to segment too much our market because of an extreme pick up arrangement.
I am the designer not our sound tecnician, I will have Paolo try to tell you in the near future whether he suggests Definition under hi-gain, or A well balanced allrounderor A vintage specced blues axe?
In the mean time any suggestions from you are more than appreciated!
thanks,
Peter

Hahaha.Man i am more than happy to talk about it!I watched the footage of the Handle the other day ,and visited your site!Great design and ideas there.So it deserves a good PU..I don't know how many you want to build ,but the price (if i am not mistaken) is affordable for many guitar players.So i assume that a great allrounder would help you!
There are two ways to balance the "bright" sound.The pots ,and the PU.So after choosing the right "character" wich could be got with the PU ,you can tweak on the pots!
A good allrounder is Pearly Gates.It can mek many people happy .Even hi-gain poeple like it ,so it's a good beginning!The PATB design can help you alot as i stated ,so it deserves a good test anyways! (I know i am a big fan of that design ,so i am biased ).
The Jazz Bridge can be interesting!With your design ,it can produce verywell articulated and rich sound!An interesting combination for shure!

But again ,there is no PU that can do all.We need more input to suggest the "Closest" one!Maybe you can tell what you "desire" as a result.tell us your fav. tunes and players ,so we can help more!
Cheers!

 

[gnoj_LL]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

hope we can see some pictures, that would be awesome!! hehe

 

[Extant]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

Nice man. I'm very interested in one of these. Just a quick question - how much do you estimate they're gonna cost?

As for pickups, I'd have to recommend you look at other brands as well as Duncans, too. Try EMGs - I'm sure at least one of their models would work good in a guitar like this. Dimarzios would be a good choice, too - they do models for lots of unusual guitars, like the Parker Fly and the Zemaitis, so I'm sure they could custom wind something for you guys.

 

[BG00]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

EMG's would universalize the sound yes, but they would also alienate a lot of players who are biased against them. To me a pearly gates would not be the greatest choice for an already bright sounding guitar. Personally I would try the usual hot rodded humbucker set that is tried and true, the JB/Jazz combination. If you want to make it a little more unique possibly a custom custom/alnico II pro set would work. Both of these combinations would provide players the ability to do all styles of music.

 

[daemon barbeque]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

EMG's would universalize the sound yes, but they would also alienate a lot of players who are biased against them. To me a pearly gates would not be the greatest choice for an already bright sounding guitar. Personally I would try the usual hot rodded humbucker set that is tried and true, the JB/Jazz combination. If you want to make it a little more unique possibly a custom custom/alnico II pro set would work. Both of these combinations would provide players the ability to do all styles of music.

The JB is brighter than the PG!And Custom is Brighter too!So i wouldn't suggest both of them!

 

[StrangeSound]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

Listen to good ol' Mr. BBQ..the PATB-1 and 3 series could easily fit the bill.

 

[pstarove]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

I have two guitars that use carbon fiber in their construction, they are Steinberger GSX (graphite neck) and Parker Fly Deluxe (carbon fiber shell).

Don't even think of using Alnico 5 or Ceramic magnets. Your tones will cut glass. ONLY Alnico2! and it's better to use a little bit overwound pickups like CS Antiquity or EVH/'78 models to tame the brightness even more. It's better to use a 500K volume and 250K tone controls.

Trust my experience.

 

[hamerfan]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

I'm with pstarove. Everyone who ever had a carbon graphite guitar (even the neck) now about the the brittle tone, which must shaped in advance.
I know the CC well, which would add mids to neutral sounding graphite. The EVM/'78 are a great choice and and little overwound Seth (8.75 like some Antiquities) could be a great choice. Just for the Bros out there: Dont expect a CC/EVM/overwound Seth to sound like you are used. My experience was that even an all maple strat with ebony board sounds more woody and warm than graphite!

 

[peterxox]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

Hi all,
I am overwhelmed by the amount of comments and opinions and I respect and thank all of you.
to get an idea of our guitar go to: http://www.xoxaudiotools.com

we are presently mounting dimarzio PAF Pros but I want to know which brand and which specific pick up is best for our CF guitar.

We have a top end, unique and innovative guitar listing for about €1900 and are aiming at relatively high quantity distribution. So our pick ups should please the masses and compliment and round off the bright tones of Carbon fiber and basically distinguish our sound of th Handle guitar.
thanks again
peter

 

[pstarove]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

Well, PAF Pros are good pickups, but they will emphasize the extended high end of the graphite guitar. My suggestions brand-wise are the following:
1. Seymour Duncan Antiquities, EVH/'78 or slightly overwound Seth Lovers
2. Dimarzio AirClassics, PAF Classics or Virtual PAF/Virtual Hot PAF combos (these will be the cheapest ones, but I suppose you don't care much about the price) If you manually change the magnet in these to Alnico 2 (it's very easy), you will have unique and one of the best pickups available, period. I have done so and I could never be happier with my Parker Fly.
3. If you want to go active, the best thing to do is to try Shadow SH-EQ5s. They are expensive, but very organic sounding and have an onboard EQ that lets the customer adjust 5 bands to his liking. I personally like the sound with all eq pots set to 12 o'clock (no change).

Feel free to ask if you have any further question. I have really suffered a lot from the unnatural sound of graphite and have spent several years and a ton of $$$ before I found the sound I like. So I'm really interested to help you learn from the errors of others.

 

[hamerfan]

Re: best pickup for a carbon fiber guitar

hi peter, nice guitar. A 24 fret guitar needs a little stronger neck pup than a normal 20/21 fretter to balance right with the neck!