Re: Pairing an Invade with a 59?
Today was my offday and finally I took the time to do the experiments on this guitar. It is a mahogany ibanez s with some version of the floyd rose bridge, which I do not have any idea about. Anyways, I tried it with a 59n, with a PGb in the neck, a 490R and finally a 498T.
The output of the invader is insane! It simply drives the amp too much for my tastes. But I have to mention that I liked it a lot because of what it does (gotta keep one around). And the nice thing is unlike the other 3-ceramic magnet HB's that I came across in the past (500T and X2N) this one is not that trebly. It made the bridge (which sounded very thin with paf type buckers, and very cool with a CC) very thick, with lotsa bass. Moreover the tone wasn't that blur, I was happily surprised. It's been quite a while I did not play with any ceramic bucker. But now I see why there are hard-core invader fans. For reasons of variety in my situation I'd be willing to leave the invader in that guitar if I were not to sell it.
All the other pickups but 498T were overpowered against the invader. 59n was the best clear a5 PAF among them all, but the output was simply not enough. I left the cover of the 498T on it and with metal pickup mounting rings it looks quite cool in a tele neck kinda way.
Of course the neck now is very loud. I was not expecting any good cleans from the neck. I was expecting to get a good neck lead tone, maybe a little too round and all. But guess what! After lowering the 498t quite a lot (flush with the pickup mounting ring), and raising the screw pieces higher than usual, I get a very good neck tone, and the very cool thing is that it is not that blurry. Of course expecting jazz neck clarity is out of question, but it can handle 3 (and carefully done 4) string chords pretty well. I am really amazed. I hated that pickup, and am happy that I found a use for it.
BTW I left the cover on because it already had a lot of highs anyway.
B
