Jazz Rock
New member
With new AIV mags under the coils, my Gibson was back with a vengeance, having lost the title of No. 1 since July 2005... since the Epi is Seymour Duncan equipped.
So I have A/Bed each pup and here is what happened:
I started with the neck pups. Eq on the amp was what I usually use for the Epi. The gibby seemed quite dark to start with, not too inspiring to be honest. I started changing the Eq slightly and it started to open up. Once I found an Eq setting working for both Neck pup, it became clear The '59n w/ AIV was producing more bass and treble, fringing on the muddy on the first fret of the low E-string. The 490R w/ AIV was heavier on low mid and overall seemed darker even though it wasn't as bassy on the low E-string.
The '59n sounded better to my hear for strumming and riffs offering some sparkle the 490R was missing completely. Also the '59 had a kind of woodiness on high string triad chords which was quite interesting.
At first I thought the 490Rwasn't cleaning up very well until it struck me than it was because it was actually hotter than the '59. Adjusting the gain levels, turned out the modded gibson pup was cleaning up but still not as nicely as the SD.
Nonetheless, rolling off halfway the tone knob and I found a really enjoyable mellow soundthe '59 didn't seem to be able to reproduce even though I tried different setting. There was a bit of dryness, in comparison, I couldn't get rid of.
So what I thought was aiming towards an outrageous win for the Seymour Duncan ended up being a win with a bemol as i was starting to enjoy the 490R AIV powered. Having said that, I am looking for more clarity in my rig and the 490R was rather less clear if anything than the '59. So, even though it is an interesting pup, I think it will fairly soon be replace by a P-90 style pup.
It was time to move on to the bridge pups. The comparison here was quite difficult to make. The '59b and the 498T w/ AIV have very different output and voicing. I managed to work out after quite some tweaking o the amp that the 498T had more low and highs, which was a bit surprising as the '59 is AV and the 498T is now AIV:ugh1:. Anyway, I decided to test the pups on "Waiting for the bus". I found a sound I really enjoy from the Epi. Even if I had been trying for 3 hours I don't think I would have managed to come even close to grinding sound with the Studio. the 498Twasn't sounding bad though.
The big deception was that it didn't handle higher level gain any better than the '59, getting quickly into mush... let's not even talk about palm mute!
So I was wondering if I was going to try the 498T with an AII or if I should give up now and move on to the next stage.
Anyway, here is my wee review on this very enjoyable experimentation.
A la prochaine...
So I have A/Bed each pup and here is what happened:
I started with the neck pups. Eq on the amp was what I usually use for the Epi. The gibby seemed quite dark to start with, not too inspiring to be honest. I started changing the Eq slightly and it started to open up. Once I found an Eq setting working for both Neck pup, it became clear The '59n w/ AIV was producing more bass and treble, fringing on the muddy on the first fret of the low E-string. The 490R w/ AIV was heavier on low mid and overall seemed darker even though it wasn't as bassy on the low E-string.
The '59n sounded better to my hear for strumming and riffs offering some sparkle the 490R was missing completely. Also the '59 had a kind of woodiness on high string triad chords which was quite interesting.
At first I thought the 490Rwasn't cleaning up very well until it struck me than it was because it was actually hotter than the '59. Adjusting the gain levels, turned out the modded gibson pup was cleaning up but still not as nicely as the SD.
Nonetheless, rolling off halfway the tone knob and I found a really enjoyable mellow soundthe '59 didn't seem to be able to reproduce even though I tried different setting. There was a bit of dryness, in comparison, I couldn't get rid of.
So what I thought was aiming towards an outrageous win for the Seymour Duncan ended up being a win with a bemol as i was starting to enjoy the 490R AIV powered. Having said that, I am looking for more clarity in my rig and the 490R was rather less clear if anything than the '59. So, even though it is an interesting pup, I think it will fairly soon be replace by a P-90 style pup.
It was time to move on to the bridge pups. The comparison here was quite difficult to make. The '59b and the 498T w/ AIV have very different output and voicing. I managed to work out after quite some tweaking o the amp that the 498T had more low and highs, which was a bit surprising as the '59 is AV and the 498T is now AIV:ugh1:. Anyway, I decided to test the pups on "Waiting for the bus". I found a sound I really enjoy from the Epi. Even if I had been trying for 3 hours I don't think I would have managed to come even close to grinding sound with the Studio. the 498Twasn't sounding bad though.
The big deception was that it didn't handle higher level gain any better than the '59, getting quickly into mush... let's not even talk about palm mute!
So I was wondering if I was going to try the 498T with an AII or if I should give up now and move on to the next stage.
Anyway, here is my wee review on this very enjoyable experimentation.
A la prochaine...
