Re: Burstbucker Pro
I tell ya...my experience w/ the BB Pro's was a love hate affair for a long time...harsh biting treble frequencies...I tried fiddling with them on two different Les Pauls...and I kept getting frustrated. I could never get a a good combination of sounds..I could get a good scremaing lead and mushy nasty power chords, or gorgeous powerchords, and this shrill annoying lead sound.
Thanks to a post by Papersoul (a regular here) over on the LP forum, I tried dropping the pole pieces below flush w/ the cover and then played with the pickup height and BAM...FINALLY got some righteous tone out of them ...cleans, crunch, high gain (for me anyway)
I finally had gave up and was ready to jam a set of 59's i had laying around into the paulam but now I have no real desire to change them (even sold the 59s to a forum member here this past weekend)
BB Pros are excellent pups once ya get 'em set right. In fact I've found this the case with all recent Gibson pups. I was able to get great sounds out of my 500T/496 and my 498/490 set in the firebird sounds great too. You do have to play with them though. Perhaps most people don't experiment enough with them...I don't know.
I agree though, they (and all Gibson pups) are overpriced as an aftermarket replacement.