Re: Jazz vs Pearly Gates in neck positron
Guys, there are two points I'd like to make:
1) If I have any say in this (as the OP), this thread is supposed to be about humbuckers
2) Defining what a "true P90" sounds like might prove just as difficult as defining a "true humbucker" etc, you catch my drift. I for one love the variety that all those pickup types give me. Perhaps there is a time and place for a discussion about "true PAFs", "true P90s" etc. I'm just not sure this thread is it...
lol...you have inadvertently walked into the argument that is on constant spin cycle here in the SD forum. Its seriously like the cuckoos nest on the subject of phat cats with people repeating themselves over and over.
Anyways...yeah back to humbuckers, mahogany teles and a fat sound.
The trick is of course to match the pups to the axe, your amp, the style of music and each other. You want your axe to be greater than the sum of its parts rather than being some kind of unbalanced setup where everything individually is good, but not always working together as a whole.
So I'm gonna recommend a pair of pickups that will play nice together without you having to change your amp eq every time you flip the pickup lever.
These pickups are also a proven combination in mahogany solid axes (sg's come to mind) and complement the inherent tonal qualities of the wood and the inherent qualities of a bolt on neck style axe.
As such, they will sound fat and powerful, yet retain plenty of that high end that you are after too. Eq wise both of these pickups are fairly compatible, with the bridge having more grunt in the mids to accomodate for the fact that it is sitting at the skinny end of the string. If you eq your amp to get one sounding great, then the other will also be sitting in its sweet spot as well.
So...in the bridge a custom5 and in the neck, a 59. 500k pots all round and .022uf caps. Roll the tone back and you are jazzin it up, open everything wide and you will be able to take it all the way to the heaviest of styles. Blues for days. They both have a strong low end, not loose like the alnico 2 based pickups. Assuming your amp can handle the low end push you will have a very big yet clear piano like tone. Both have plenty of treble clarity. The big low end will complement the bolt on setup and the somewhat scooped nature of these two pickups will balance out against the thicker mids imparted by mahogany. You will never find you cant get enough treble detail out of either of these. Basically, if does not sound awesome, then it will be due to the shortcomings of whatever amp you are using.
Maybe chuck in some push pull coil splits (you will need to get a 4 conductor 59 if you go this way) and you will have more tonal options at your fingertips.
Hope this helps.
