I aways said......(pearly gates content)

[gimmieinfo]

.....that whenever i heard a song for the first time, if i loved it right off the bat it's a song i will be bored of very soon. But if i'm not to sure about it and it grows on me over time, it's gonna be a song i will love for life. Thats how i'm feeling about the PGs. Been wanting to try them for years and finally bought a set to put in a new LP. It's a very thin sounding LP and the PGs just exacerbated that way too much to be tweakable, so i pulled them out immediately and listed them for sale. It was reallt the guitar that just made most pickups sound really thin. But then i decided to return the new LP and i then decided to try them in my old Epi IBG 50s LP because it's a big fat sustain machine but the probuckers sounded fantastic on 10 but rolling the volume down for cleans left them weak sounding. So i stuck them in and over the course off the day i kept thinking that i wasn't sure whether i should pull em and sell them as i first thought.

But over the course of the day i kept picking it up and more and more i started to realize just how good they were in certain ways and they grew on me. Next day the grew on me lot more and now i freakin love them. The dynamics are fantastic in a way i can't quite describe, the lows when i roll off the volume for cleaner tones stay crisp and unlike the PB's they don't sound weak as i clean up. And i have hard complaints about brightness, but even tho they are, they do something other HBs don't....you turn the brightness down on the amp and theres a sweet spot there ! Other bright HBs i always have the same problem where there's no sweat spot....they are either too bright or too dark and no amp tweaking helps. I'm not even sure i need tone controls (u may have seen my pot about cap value for PGs) anymore. I guess they apparently have the RIGHT treble frequencies to acomplish that unlike most HBs. And the dynamics are just awesome, thats what really has me excited. I play better because of these due to the clarity and dynamics. But it's funny how you don't notice those things right way. These pups are like a song i'm unsure of but come to love ! They still have to pass the band test and thats happening tomorrow.

 

[Seashore]

I'm not a pearly gates user, but about pickups in general, I totally get where you're coming from. I'm the same way about the music I listen to also. I always feel like I've gained something valuable if I can come to understand and appreciate an album that didn't grab me at first. The journey is the destination, or something.

 

[Mincer]

I think it is common when you find the right pickups for the right instrument. If they don't match, no amount of tweaking anything seems to help, and it certainly doesn't inspire you to play.

 

[gimmieinfo]

I think it is common when you find the right pickups for the right instrument. If they don't match, no amount of tweaking anything seems to help, and it certainly doesn't inspire you to play.

The thing thats different tho is what the PGs did for this LP. For me, there are things that i feel cannot be changed with pickups, and after many tries i was sure this LP was one of those. It was good but nothing near perfect with a few tonal issues that were just acceptable and a bunch of pickups i tried changed the EQ and output as usual but the core voice of the guitar i believed i was stuck with I can't even remember the last time i found pickups for any guitar that transformed it and eliminated issues that appeared to be part of that particular guitar's voice.

You know the old saying....great pickups can improve a mediocre sounding guitar but they won't make it great. Thats what I've always found but this may be the first time i ever fit a set in a guitar that actually took a average guitar and made it so good that all tonal issues i was fighting for the year or so years i've had it are completely gone. I dunno if the PGs are just that good or it was just the best match i've ever found. The latter would be a shocker because i installed my first set of pickups in a LP in the 70s, (super D's) and being an incessant tweaker u can imagine how many pickups i've swapped. It's mind boggling. Anyways, i really didn't think this IBG Epi LP was capable of such greatness. I find it hard to find ANY guitar at any price range that isn't flawed in some way as tone goes This one has none now. Funny thing is, in all my years i have never been happy with any duncan i had but for a JB in the 80s but i didn't know much about tone and touch then.

 

[gimmieinfo]

Well, i'm not too surprised because this isn't the first time this has happened, but after trying them with the band i was disappointed. At home i loved everything about them but in a band mix at stage volume they were hard to dial in and the cleans i get rolling down the volume weren't there the same way. The probuckers clean up much better. Once i got them dialed in best i could i was happy with them in some ways, but the lack of ability to cleanup is a deal breaker, so i put the probuckers back in. Makes me sad because somethings about them i really liked.

 

[Securb]

I have a PGn in my Tele it previously lived in my Strat and LP. It sounds amazing in any guitar I put it in. I think you could put a PG in a piece of driftwood and get a great tone.