pleximaster
New member
Hi
I am new to this forum and I recently got myself a few Gibson Nighthawks. Extremely cool guitars, underrated by many and you can still have get them for a bargin. I am a traditional Les Paul guy to begin with but these guitars add a lot and are very inspiring to play. My only main issue with these are the stock bridge pickup which is a sort of modified 500T or something, 14k impedance. It work well in coil tap mode but as a humbucker its too much for me as I play mostly on old plexis and these pickups just saturates them totally and I loose definition and tone. Therefore I ordered a SD 59 slanted pickup to test. Being a PAF clone in a way with "only" 8k I wondered if the would work in the coil tap modes. But it did! The balance with the stock minihumbucker was great! Much to my surprise! And the 59 in humbucker position gave the guitar a much more woody tone with more bark and vintage tone and sizzle! When I replaced the stock magnet with an old one from a broken 50´s P90 it got really great! The coil tap mode got a bit weaker with this mod however. One thing one should now is that the SD pickup needs to have the adjustments screws cut in order to fit it into the cavity of the nighthawk, the original pickup doesnt have adjustable pol pieces.
Encourage by the pickup swap in one of my nighthawks I got the idea to install a real vintage PAF pickup in one of my other Nighthawks! I had this PAF basket case were someone bent out the legs of the baseplate and recut them, and also cut the adjustable screws to fit in a telecaster. The coils were good though. So I took the baseplate of the original Nighthawk bridge pickup and modified it to accept the not so wide vintage coils (NH bridge pickup uses Trembucker/F-spaced coils)
Install in the Nighthawk was a real wow! The un vaxed coils gives the midrange a whole new dimension! And this makes the nighthawk sound really great! In coil tap mode it is a bit weak and it doesn´t really match the output of the neckpickup Still its the way I´ll keep it! Probably install an old minihumbucker to match but I really like the stock pickup here in this position.
Ill try to post some sound clips when I have time to make some quick and dirty iPhone recordings.
best regards plexi
I am new to this forum and I recently got myself a few Gibson Nighthawks. Extremely cool guitars, underrated by many and you can still have get them for a bargin. I am a traditional Les Paul guy to begin with but these guitars add a lot and are very inspiring to play. My only main issue with these are the stock bridge pickup which is a sort of modified 500T or something, 14k impedance. It work well in coil tap mode but as a humbucker its too much for me as I play mostly on old plexis and these pickups just saturates them totally and I loose definition and tone. Therefore I ordered a SD 59 slanted pickup to test. Being a PAF clone in a way with "only" 8k I wondered if the would work in the coil tap modes. But it did! The balance with the stock minihumbucker was great! Much to my surprise! And the 59 in humbucker position gave the guitar a much more woody tone with more bark and vintage tone and sizzle! When I replaced the stock magnet with an old one from a broken 50´s P90 it got really great! The coil tap mode got a bit weaker with this mod however. One thing one should now is that the SD pickup needs to have the adjustments screws cut in order to fit it into the cavity of the nighthawk, the original pickup doesnt have adjustable pol pieces.
Encourage by the pickup swap in one of my nighthawks I got the idea to install a real vintage PAF pickup in one of my other Nighthawks! I had this PAF basket case were someone bent out the legs of the baseplate and recut them, and also cut the adjustable screws to fit in a telecaster. The coils were good though. So I took the baseplate of the original Nighthawk bridge pickup and modified it to accept the not so wide vintage coils (NH bridge pickup uses Trembucker/F-spaced coils)
Install in the Nighthawk was a real wow! The un vaxed coils gives the midrange a whole new dimension! And this makes the nighthawk sound really great! In coil tap mode it is a bit weak and it doesn´t really match the output of the neckpickup Still its the way I´ll keep it! Probably install an old minihumbucker to match but I really like the stock pickup here in this position.
Ill try to post some sound clips when I have time to make some quick and dirty iPhone recordings.
best regards plexi
