Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

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Elias Graves

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The body is a 2" thick slab of walnut hollowed completely out with a 1/4" walnut cap. Neck is walnut with a Honduran rosewood board. Unplugged, it sounds like a mini resonator.
At the neck right now is a Duncan SM-3 mini and its OK but not great. With 250k pots and a .033 cap, it's tame enough but it's a little uninspiring.

I play mostly rhythm; I'm a singer/songwriter who does three chord country blues kinda stuff through tweed style amps at the edge of breakup. Just a pretty classic bluesy sound with a little twang is what I like.

I don't use a bridge pickup on its own much but I do love that middle position setting with the added bite and harmonics o the bridge pickup added in.

On a whim last week, I got a Lollar El Rayo pickup used for a good price so I figured I'd give it a go. Whoa. Nice pickup; insanely bright for this guitar. I could see using this to warm up a dark neck humbucker or maybe in the bridge o a strat or the neck of a tele but a PAF it ain't.

Anyway, I tend to favor single coils so I did a makeshift setup with a soapbar (Duncan Vintage) to test it out. Sounded pretty good but soapbars or dogears are gonna be tough do to very high string over body spacing. Humbucker mounts would be preferable.

You guys think a set of phat cats would do the trick here or should I try out my old favorite standby the Seth Lover?

Any other suggestions welcome.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

You're trying to get country twang from a neck pup?!
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

GuitarDoc said:
You're trying to get country twang from a neck pup?!
Click to expand...

That's what the bridge pickup is for. The neck is for the bluesy tones.

But I just picked up a set of Phat Cats. We'll see how that goes.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

Elias Graves said:
That's what the bridge pickup is for. The neck is for the bluesy tones.

But I just picked up a set of Phat Cats. We'll see how that goes.
Click to expand...

Let us know what you think of Phat Cat in that hallow walnut guitar of yours.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

+1 for TV Jones. Question is, which model? On an Alder body Telecaster, the TVJ Classic Neck model is surprisingly mellow. One of his Hi-Lo'Tron or Dynasonic replica pickups might be nearer the mark.

The other thing that I would change is the volume pot. Audio taper 500k.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

Funkfingers said:
The other thing that I would change is the volume pot. Audio taper 500k.
Click to expand...

Insanely over the top out of control bright. The last setup on the firebird pickup was a 380 volume and 460 tone. I kept the tone control on 2-3 most of the time.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

Try either a Lollar Goldfoil or a Stephens Design Pig Ninety. Try with 300K volume pot and 250K Tone pot.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

You're not going to get any twang out of Phat Cats with 250k volume pots. Even with the bridge pup alone.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

The Phat Cats are just what this guitar needed; they sound great. The neck pickup is just huge and it sounds 100 time more like a hollow body than it ever did with the firebird pickup. The bridge pickup is fat but has plenty of twang on tap if you play it right. Very happy with this set.
I ended up using a volume pot that reads 340 and a tone pot that reads 360, along with an .047 tone cap. I normally prefer modern wiring but this one will probably need to go with 50s, as I notice a considerable high end roll off with the volume control.

Now I gotta go touch up the paint.

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Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?




Despite the improvement provided by the PC pups, it's still not there yet.
Taming the bright on this guitar is a real challenge. At present, I have:
300k volume pot
250k tone pots
.047 tone caps
470k resistor in line between pickups and tone controls.

I still find the tone controls on 3 all the time to keep the shrill out.
Not sure where to go from here. Whether some real p90s might help or if I may have to bite the bullet and try some humbuckers here.

Any ideas?
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

Problem is, you're fighting walnut - which is almost as bright as maple. You might need to solve it externally with an EQ or filter pedal, like one of the Moog beasties.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

jtougas said:
Problem is, you're fighting walnut - which is almost as bright as maple. You might need to solve it externally with an EQ or filter pedal, like one of the Moog beasties.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I figured the hollow build and floating wood bridge would compensate for that to a degree. Live and learn.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

Just to fling out a little background noise...Maybe try different strings than usual, like maybe a pure nickle flat-wound or half-round set? Maybe experiment with some different kinds of picks than your normal go-to? Trying to think of some cheap and easy things you could try. Maybe some kind of home-brew cardboard beam blocker in front of your speaker? That is a very cool guitar...you'll have it dialed in soon. Alright--I'm done belching the alphabet for now......but I'll be back!
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

you have posted a lot about this guitar and how you are not happy with it. Maybe you need to think about changing axes and chalk this one up as an experiment.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

A pair of 59s is a usual suggestion from me.
I really want to know more about this guitar. It looks so funky in the original post; I wish you had left it with 1 pickup for looks alone.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

My Godin Radiator has a couple silky smooth and rather dark big singles ala toaster-style. Its a huge route to the point of being a semi hollow and resonates off the plastic pickguard. Maybe look for either a set of those, or just a secondhand Radiator to pull out of. I'd also suggest getting a full nickel string and that beam blocker idea too.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

baritone said:
A pair of 59s is a usual suggestion from me.
I really want to know more about this guitar. It looks so funky in the original post; I wish you had left it with 1 pickup for looks alone.
Click to expand...

Funny you mention that.
On a whim, I reinstalled the SM3 at the neck and something happened. Not sure if it's the lower weight, smaller footprint or the gaps around the pickup letting sound come through, but a big change came about.
Before, it sounded like a mini resonator when unplugged. Now it sounds like an acoustic guitar.
Very weird.
At any rate, the mini sounds a lot better at the neck than the phat cat did.
Now, the bridge phat cat sounds different as well. The strangest thing I think I've ever heard from a guitar. All the bizarre high pitched harmonics I was getting are gone.
Thing is, I'm getting the sounds I want out of the neck pickup and thinking about making a pickguard to cover the bridge route, go with a Reverend/G&L style three knob setup and reverting to single pickup.
What more do you want to know about the guitar?


Current iteration.
 
Re: Man, this guitar has been a tough one to find pickups for. Help?

 
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