GM Spirit of 76 alnico 5 pickups. (Duncan Saturday night special inspired).

[75lespaul]

I bought a low line Jackson JS32 that had a wiring and pickup upgrade, and these are the pickups. Anyone have any experience with either these or the Duncan it's inspired by? Obviously the Duncan is way better and these pickups are lacking.....something. I have a JS32 Rhoads with a Custom Custom double screw neck and a double screw C8 bridge (custom shop, no slugs) and it is one of the best sounding rock machines I have. This one...ok. Could use it live, but doesn't make me go jolly knockers if you know what I mean, lol. Also got a Schecter with the Duncan Designed JB and it screams. I was gonna put the real JB in it, but no need. So anyone ever play these, and can you think of any mods I may be able to do before I just swap out these things for the Customs in the Rhoads? Selling the Rhoads because the upper bout is just too long for the small stages I play, lol. Almost gutted the bass player a few times, HAHAHAH!!!

 

[eclecticsynergy]

GM clones generally are pretty good approximations of the original models.
SNS is a vintage output set; won't be anywhere near as hot as the DD or JB, or even the C8.
If you try it at the same settings as the others, it's going to seem weak unless you up your gain some.

Also, A4 is a fairly polite magnet. Vintagey, balanced, and usually pretty true to the voice of the wood it's in.
Won't impose a lot of its own personality on a guitar - almost the opposite of the JB, which brings its own sound with it.

IMO another important aspect of A4 is, especially at the bridge, it really needs some volume to do its thing.
Always, always seems lacking at low volume levels.
I have several A4 pickups I thought I didn't like - until they came alive at band levels.

So my recommendation is to try the guitar for a couple of rehearsals or a gig, increasing your gain a bit to bring it up.
If after giving it a fair shot you really don't like it, you might consider a mag swap to beef it up.

Might be interesting to see what a doublethick A8 or thick ceramic could do for those.
You'd still be asking something from them that's a big departure from what they were designed for.

IME mag swaps are great for fine tuning or a little extra push, not so good for total transformation.
There's no mod that'll make a vintage wind perform like a Distortion or a JB.

IMO you might be better off going with a high output pickup to match the other guitars.
Personally I like my guitars to be in the same ballpark outputwise, so I don't have to tweak my rig for each one.

 

[75lespaul]

That is a VERY informative post, thank you! Yes, I've played it through my current setup which is (gasp) a Line 6 Pod Go, Orange power amp, and Marshall 2x12 with the older more greenback sounding T75s. Have not cranked this to band volume yet so I will have to do that.but because these guitars are the exact same everything except the body shape (woods, cheap Floyd, etc) I believe I'm going to wind up putting the custom shop Customs in this guitar; however, I will then try these in an Agile Hawker Custom that I just can't get to sound good. Original run Brobucker didn't even do it and that pickup sounds killer in anything I put it in, even a Chibson SG, but not the Hawker. I think with the Hawker, that's when I'll do everything you recommended. Thank you so much, really appeciate everything you posted!.