ES335,Les Paul, Ltd., Strat,Tele-59s, Fishman Fluence Claissics, Seth Lovers,P-Rails

leevc5

New member
Just a thought, take it leave it, but please don't bash me.:boggled: I am sure that many if not most of you have known this all along but I have just come to recognize it.

Certain guitars and pickups are naturally meant for each other. The pickup's properties and the shape, body wood, neck and electronics of the guitar are almost a perfect fit for each other.

I've been playing around with pickups (too many to mention) and guitars for many years. Putting P-Rails into a guitar and finding it come alive as if the pups and guitar were meant for each other brought me to this conclusion. As I look back now I see it with my other guitars, for example:
-My ES-335 and Seymour Duncan 59s work in unison like no other pickups I tried in it:
-My Les Paul and Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers were a perfect match until I found the Fishman Fluence Classics. The Seths are still a great match but the classics having two voices per pickup and voice one almost exactly like a Seth led me to replace the Seths.
-My HSH strat has a Jazz neck pickup that fits so well it is much of the time my go to guitar.
-And finally the thing that started all this. Replacing GOTOH pups in an Ltd. VI with P-Rails and triple shots. The transformation was awesome, that old guitar was reborn and now an absolute delight to play.

I recognize that obviously there is a third critical component: the player which brings in a significant subjective factor to all this as well.

You can look at resonant peak, Q factor, inductance and so on until you are blue in the face and it might put you in the ballpark but nowhere near home plate.

I would really like to hear about any of your experiences with pickups and guitars fitting "magically" together.

Again, just a thought as I wait for the wood glue to set on a speaker cabinet I am building.

Rock on and prosper.
 
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Re: ES335,Les Paul, Ltd., Strat,Tele-59s, Fishman Fluence Claissics, Seth Lovers,P-Ra

I've got an epiphone explorer that I bought bout 11 years ago. Acoustically the guitar is very powerful sounding. You can feel every note, from the tip of the headstock to the tip of the body. It's a very resonant guitar. And that's a very welcome suprise coming from a Korean made guitar in the mid 2000s. The pups in it were horrible. So, like I had done every guitar I've owned before it, I stuck a dimebucker in it . Instantly better. I started reading that nobody really liked the dimebucker, so i thought, what am i missing here? Then began the tone quest. I started replacing pickups in it, trying to find the holy grail of tones. And 11 years later, yesterday, matter of fact, I finally put the dimebucker back in it. Man I've missed that sound so much. Through all of the pickup swaps, one thing is for certain. Either the dimebucker was made for that guitar, or that guitar was made for the dimebucker.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk
 
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Re: ES335,Les Paul, Ltd., Strat,Tele-59s, Fishman Fluence Claissics, Seth Lovers,P-Ra

Wait until you have multiples of supposedly the same spec guitar, then find out quite literally the same pickups sound quite different in each one.

Wood plays a very important role - not a big toneshaper, but more of a 'fit' threshhold......adjusting the nuances so one pickup might just the right match and another just grates.
 
Re: ES335,Les Paul, Ltd., Strat,Tele-59s, Fishman Fluence Claissics, Seth Lovers,P-Ra

Part of this game has always been deciding by how much the stock pickup in a guitar does not suit it so as to decide which replacement model does.

Fender '51 Nocaster bridge/Treble pickup in Fender Relic Nocaster, spot on. Same model pickup in pre-2012 Fender AVRI '52 Telecaster, not singing. (Luckily, the neck/Rhythm position Nocaster pickup works fine in both guitars.)
 
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