Can the right pickups get Les Paul tones from any guitar?

[Snake Aces]

Re: Can the right pickups get Les Paul tones from any guitar?

Aceman, perhaps?

Haha, what ever happened to he who smelt it dealt it? Aceman has been getting blamed for a lot of farts lately.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: Can the right pickups get Les Paul tones from any guitar?

There isn't a pickup that will turn a 25.5 in scale, maple necked, alder bodied, tremolo, bolt on necked guitar into a Les Paul.

 

[jimijames]

Re: Can the right pickups get Les Paul tones from any guitar?

IME/IMO, no. Technique is way more important than pickup selection, but woods have an effect too,

If you want your Tele to sound like a les Paul, attack the strings differently and turn down the treble lol. Obviously not as simple as that but I've seen a lot of people pigeonhole themselves as les paul players or Tele players and never explore what the other side has to offer. Let me tell you though there's nothing like a good Tele for the thin stuff and a les Paul for the wall of sound stuff

 

[andrew96]

Re: Can the right pickups get Les Paul tones from any guitar?

also its really important how its wired. i dont have a good ear for that stuff but my first guitar was a strat, and at one point it had 3 on off spdt switches.
i heard a big difference in three spdt switches and 5 way switch. les pauls also have a volume for each pickup and a tone for each pickup.
which if you turn the volume lower on your neck pickup then switch to your bridge pickup, it will give you a boost thats good for going from rythym to solos.
and remember when ever you finish playing a song you have to scream in a Scottish accent "I got blisters on me fingers!"

 

[Boogie Bill]

Re: Can the right pickups get Les Paul tones from any guitar?

I'm going to say...maybe. I have several Les Pauls, and with many of them having different construction (long vs. short neck tenons; chambered vs. swiss-cheesed vs. solid; ABR-1 vs. Nashville bridges; etc.) and different pickups, so it's difficult to define "THE" Les Paul tone.

There are a lot of guitars on the market that are 2HB, V/V/T/T controls, 24.75" scale, 22 frets, stop bar tailpiece and tune-o-matic bridge, set neck and maple over mahogany that are NOT LPs, and they're the ones that are going to get you closest. One other criteria that is important to me is having the neck pickup under the 24th fret harmonic. My Ibanez Ghostriders come pretty close to this, even though they don't fit all the criteria, but they are close enough that I can use them interchangeably with any of my Pauls.

Conversely, my G&L ASAT Deluxe is a 2HB (split-coil '59 and TB-4), maple over mahogany, 22 frets--but it is 25.5" scale, bolt neck and this particular guitar has Leo Fender's Dual Fulcrum Vibrato. Ain't even close to the tone of any of my LPs--it's still a 2HB, but it is a unique tone and the springs in the vibrato give it an airy, reverb-ish quality, almost like a full hollow.

So I can argue that every construction detail is important and contributes to the sound of the guitar. It all acts as a comb filter to shape the frequency response. But personally, I try not to get caught up in minutia. It's a simple question of, "Does this work for me?" For me, a lot of times "close" is all I need.

And you are the only one that can determine if "close" is close enough for you and your needs.

Bill