Seth Lover v. WLH

[JeffB]

Re: Seth Lover v. WLH

The neck pickup on the wlh is really the star of the set. It does really nail all the Jimmy #1 tones. Roll off the tone , hit it with gain and it also does a convincing becks'bolero or I can't quit you baby. Its just a great vintage style neck pickup..mine meters out at 8k on the button. A little hot, but not too overbearing. Many original Gibsons had hotter neck pickups and I find it ble ds super well with the Gibson 59T bridge pickup which is a punchy but low output a2 pickup (7.68k on my meter).

The WholeLotta bridge...thats a love/hate affair for me. Ive been horsing around for a year plus and I like the low end, and the highs but I just find it lacks...something...focus..definition...its loose and fuzzy in the midrange and gets squirrelly with my Marshall and OR15. The mids just fall apart and are like sandpaper. My t tops and 59t are both more focused and sweeter and stay more composed. I think I would try an a2 or a4 in the whole lotta bridge.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Seth Lover v. WLH

Only on paper. IME in practical use in an SG, a WLH neck is more like a smoother, flatter sounding Pearly neck. I just removed a set of WLH from my SG and replaced with a 78-model bridge and Seth neck. Where previously I had the guitar neck volume rolled to 8-9, I simply keep it on 10 now to balance for the change to Seth.




As was covered before in another thread, it's more likely they changed to polished to ease assembly. It's pretty far-fetched to suggest that Duncan would decidedly make their bread-and-butter pickups sound worse in order to make their boutique pickups sound better.




IME the Seth neck is the flattest, most even neck; the WLH has a touch more top end, though not bright at all, just a bit of chime; the Pearly has even more top and is chimey but a touch less mids in comparison - pretty much as the top gets brighter/chimey the mids seem to get turned down. As far as output, the Seth neck is a bit the lower than the others; the WLH and the Pearly necks are almost identical. Because WLH seems flatter, the WLH neck seems a little lower in output, despite the specs on paper. The WLH just sounds like a differently EQ'd, flatter more polite Pearly set, in my experience. The WLH bridge sounds like Angus when distorted but not quite much else. The neck isn't quite a stereotypical Gibson neck chimey sound. IME the real benefit of WLH is when switching from humbucking to split and from series coils to parallel coils.

I agree with all of this.