Newer Meranti / Jatoba / Nyatoh Guitar Woods and Pickup Choice

[Mr. B]

I'm wondering if anyone has owned or installed pickups in the guitars with the newer woods that Ibanez and others are using now enough to get a feel for what works and what does not work. After thousands of pickup swaps in hundreds of guitars over the years, I have a feel for what usually works and does not work in Mahogany, Basswood, Alder, Ash, Maple etc, but I haven't had a chance to try pickups in these new woods to see what meshes with them best. What are they similar to?

... and listen, If you are one of those people who believes that wood has absolutely zero effect on tone because you only play chugga chugga detuned metal, or because your ears are shot from too much volume from too many years, this thread clearly isn't for you.
30+ years of experimentation and thousands of pickup changes has taught me that there are pickups that usually work brilliantly in certain woods, while the same pickup will usually sound terrible in other woods. Posting one more video of some dude playing a concrete guitar vs a Mahogany guitar with no control of variables running them both through a digital modeler using digital effects and digital processing to a digital recording program and playing them back through Youtube and computer speakers isn't going to change my mind. Don't bother.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Newer Meranti / Jatoba / Nyatoh Guitar Woods and Pickup Choice

I have not used any of these woods. However my experience from building many guitars with both traditional and newer species has been that even the same construction can make the same model pickups go from being godlike to godawful.

Fwiw, I have almost always needed a tweak or two when I build a new guitar and string it up/plug it in for the first time.....which is a similar scenario to yours where you are trying a wholly new combo. Only 1 or 2 guitars gave ever just screamed with the very first set of pickups that I built them up with.....or indeed with the component ratings.