HSS help in basswood Ibanez please!

Monsta-Tone

New member
I have a really sweet Ibanez 540R that I got from Frank Falbo.
He reshaped the back of the neck, now it feels like a super flat Strat neck! It's an absolute pleasure to play!

Maple neck
Rosewood fretboard
Basswood body
H - S - S pickups
1 Volume, 1 Tone, 5-way switch
Edge Lo-Pro tremolo with gigantic brass block

Current pickups are:
Hot Rails - neck
Hot single coil - middle
Custom Custom - bridge

I'm using a Rivera S-120 combo or a Rivera Knucklehead 100 amp.
Both of these amps have a fantastic Twin Reverb sounding clean channel.
The S-120 has a very smooth, compressed, darker overdrive tone. The Knucklehead sounds much more open and punchy/crunchy overdrive.

The current pickups are too dark and slightly muddy in this guitar. I would like to put these pickups in a Strat (Ibanez/Fender parts guitar with alder body and Gotoh Floyd tremolo).

I'm looking for:
Neck - i use my neck pickup for sweet, warm cleans and heavily distorted rhythms, as well as Santana like (Supernatural, Santana Brothers, etc.) singing leads. I want lots of clarity, harmonics, and touch sensitivity. My favorite neck humbucker is the PAF Pro. It's dark and warm, but bright enough to sound really sweet with cleaner amp settings.

Middle - does not have to be true single coil. I'm looking for bright, jangly cleans, great overdriven tones, and no loss in output when compared to the neck and bridge.

Bridge - hot, fat distorted tones with LOTS of harmonics. I like for my bridge pickups to sound like a very pissed off neck pickup. So far, my favorite bridge pickup is the Super Distortion.

As a whole, I'm looking for a very versatile, great sounding set of pickups. Touch sensitivity, harmonics, and note clarity are very important to me. I play most styles of music from bluesy stuff to agro metal. I am constantly switching between clean and dirty tones.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have an F-spaced Tone Zone, PATB-1b, Gibson 500t bridge pickups, and a chrome covered trembucker spaced JB with A-8 magnet (I can always put the A-5 magnet back in) but have no idea how they would sound in basswood.
 
Re: HSS help in basswood Ibanez please!

Put the A8 in the PATB-1b as bridge, buy a Parallel Axis Single Coil for the middle and a Strabro 90 for the neck... and call it a day.
 
Re: HSS help in basswood Ibanez please!

Fullshred works wonders in Basswood - I had one in my Charvel and harmonics just flew of the fretboard. It is quite bright though, though it is not a cutting kinda bright, more a "extremely defined and tight" kinda bright.

If not the Fullshred, the Super Distortion is always great in Basswood.. Maybe the DiMarzio Steve's Special or Super 3? Both have that fat grunty thing going on, and smooth high end for an almost neck pickup like lead tone.. Super 3 is more aggressive and Steve's Special is more refined and laid back. I prefer the Super 3, but I like loads of output, so I am biased :D The PAF Pro and Screamin Demon could be great for this as well, if you want a bit lower output :)

For the middle, DiMarzio Virtual Solo Pro perhaps? Has lots of output, is hum-free and sounds like a big fat single coil, though not like a P-90, more of a Strat on steroids kinda thing.. Or perhaps the Quarter Pounder? - I am dont really use the middle pickup, but I always liked those two :)

Neck - I had an DiMarzio ProTrack in an old Ibanez with a similar config to yours, and it was very nice. It's basically a PAF Pro in a single coil size.. Has that PAF Pro tone in spades :)
 
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