Re: Epiphone Olympic 1965 pick-up help
I am glad to see that Duncan is finally making some Melody Maker pickups, as in my opinion the original pickup in the mid-sixties MM I had was too thin-sounding.
In fact, many years ago I emailed Duncan about doing some Melody Maker replacement pickups that sounded better than the stock ones, and was told by whoever I talked to (don't remember his name), that there was "no market" for such a thing, as most Melody-Maker owners think the original pickups were great. I then asked him if those pickups were so great, why is it that so many old MM's for sale have had the pickup changed out to a humbucker or P90?. He had no answer for that. I guess they finally re-thought their position and are making some options for replacements.
I would add that I think the earlier wider-coil MM pickups are supposedly better-sounding than the later skinny ones, maybe that is what the guy was thinking about. In the end, I replaced the pickup with a Bill Lawrence single-blade p/u, which sounded much better than the original one. It fit the cutout in the pickguard, but the hole spacing was different, so I had to mount the pickup directly into the wood, with a spacer under it, and stuck the original adjustment screws back in the pickguard with silicone, so it looked stock. My brother now has that guitar. I think it's great that Duncan and other companies are now making replacement pickups to drop right into a Melody Maker, if I were to replace it these days I would go for the P90-sounding one that Duncan makes, as a P90 in a MM is a beautiful thing.
Al
