Number Nine
New member
Some Custom Shop ‘78 Observations
Hi everyone,
Long-time observer and first-time poster here. There’s a lot of great info on this forum for people like myself who enjoy modding guitars as much as playing them, so thanks for that!
I’ve been doing a lot of pickup-swapping lately and my favorite humbucker brand happens to be Seymour Duncan, so I thought I’d post some of my findings here that might be helpful to other users.
I recently purchased a new HSS Fender American Professional Stratocaster with the Vmod and Shawbucker pickups. I’m a long-time G&L fan and this is my first American Fender, and I have to say that, for my taste, one area where G&L kills Fender is the stock pickups. I found the Vmods to be very thin and brittle sounding compared with the CLF Alnico Vs in my G&Ls, and the Shawbucker had the unfortunate and paradoxical qualities of being too twangy and too muddy at the same time. However, the guitar itself plays nice and is lovely to look at so... mod time!
I started off by replacing the pickups with a Duncan SSL-2 in the neck (which I’m familiar with), a Fender Custom Shop ‘69 in the middle (which I’ve been wanting to try for a while,) and an SH-5 Custom in the bridge, which I used to have in an ESP Eclipse II and loveddddd! I no longer own that guitar so I was kind of feeling nostalgic for that flavor.
Anyway, sometimes pickup swapping takes a bit of experimenting and this particular experiment failed. In this strat, the SH-5 totally sucked! Brittle, harsh-sounding top end that would not go away regardless of pickup height or pole-piece adjustment. The mids weren’t really anything to write home about either. The SSL-2 sounded good in the neck but not mind-blowing either, but the CS ‘69 in the middle sounded nice. Hmmmm...
Anyway, I recently decided to learn the song I’m The One from the Van Halen 1 album and have been marvelling at the guitar tone, which to me is a great example of some of the best elements of vintage and modern guitar tones mixed together. I’m not a particularly huge EVH fan, but I do love that first record and especially the huge, ripping guitar sounds. I’ve always wanted to own a Duncan Custom Shop pickup wound by MJ, so I figured what the hell, let’s try the Custom Shop ‘78!
I was a little nervous about dropping 160 bucks on this pickup, as some people has characterised it as brittle or thin, but based on my experience with the JB and now the Custom, I know that pickups can do unpredictable things in certain guitars and decided to roll the dice. I’m glad I did! So far, the ‘78 is really stellar sounding in this guitar!
I would describe the tone as very “chewy,” which I know is very vague but bear with me. If you’ve ever compared a Small Stone phaser with an MXR Phase 90, then you know that those two pedals have very different midranges and people often describe the MXR as “more chewy” sounding. In that same way, the ‘78 pickup sounds much chewier than any other pickup I’ve ever heard. In this particular guitar it doesn’t sound thin or harsh. It’s very balanced sounding, but the low end is definitely tighter than a JB and maybe even the SH-5, so I could see it being thin in certain guitars I guess. But yeah, that chewy midrange is really something special and a great tone to have in my arsenal.
Does it sound exactly like Van Halen 1 through my rig? No, but that’s not what I’m going for anyway. Someone playing the ‘78 in a superstrat through a plexi with a variac would be able to answer that question better than I.
I’m not really a dedicated shredder or EVH devotee so YMMV. I play in two rock cover bands, a jazz combo, and a couple of original bands (one psych rock and one prog metal,) so I have several different types of guitars for different purposes. My number one axe is a USA G&L with a JB in the bridge, which I play through either a princeton reverb, an AC30, or an Orange Rockerverb depending on the gig (again, not very EVH-like of a setup, so YMMV.) I’m curious to see how this strat with the ‘78 stacks up against my main guitar live, and will report back after my gigs this weekend.
PS, I also swapped the neck and middle pickups while I was at it, and the CS ‘69 sounds killer in the neck! With a snappy compressor setting it cops a gorgeous Shine On You Crazy Diamond clean tone, and with the SSL2 combined in the middle, the quack tone is amazing! I was starting to wonder about this guitar after the first pickup swap, but I’m much happier with it now. Great stuff!
Hi everyone,
Long-time observer and first-time poster here. There’s a lot of great info on this forum for people like myself who enjoy modding guitars as much as playing them, so thanks for that!
I’ve been doing a lot of pickup-swapping lately and my favorite humbucker brand happens to be Seymour Duncan, so I thought I’d post some of my findings here that might be helpful to other users.
I recently purchased a new HSS Fender American Professional Stratocaster with the Vmod and Shawbucker pickups. I’m a long-time G&L fan and this is my first American Fender, and I have to say that, for my taste, one area where G&L kills Fender is the stock pickups. I found the Vmods to be very thin and brittle sounding compared with the CLF Alnico Vs in my G&Ls, and the Shawbucker had the unfortunate and paradoxical qualities of being too twangy and too muddy at the same time. However, the guitar itself plays nice and is lovely to look at so... mod time!
I started off by replacing the pickups with a Duncan SSL-2 in the neck (which I’m familiar with), a Fender Custom Shop ‘69 in the middle (which I’ve been wanting to try for a while,) and an SH-5 Custom in the bridge, which I used to have in an ESP Eclipse II and loveddddd! I no longer own that guitar so I was kind of feeling nostalgic for that flavor.
Anyway, sometimes pickup swapping takes a bit of experimenting and this particular experiment failed. In this strat, the SH-5 totally sucked! Brittle, harsh-sounding top end that would not go away regardless of pickup height or pole-piece adjustment. The mids weren’t really anything to write home about either. The SSL-2 sounded good in the neck but not mind-blowing either, but the CS ‘69 in the middle sounded nice. Hmmmm...
Anyway, I recently decided to learn the song I’m The One from the Van Halen 1 album and have been marvelling at the guitar tone, which to me is a great example of some of the best elements of vintage and modern guitar tones mixed together. I’m not a particularly huge EVH fan, but I do love that first record and especially the huge, ripping guitar sounds. I’ve always wanted to own a Duncan Custom Shop pickup wound by MJ, so I figured what the hell, let’s try the Custom Shop ‘78!
I was a little nervous about dropping 160 bucks on this pickup, as some people has characterised it as brittle or thin, but based on my experience with the JB and now the Custom, I know that pickups can do unpredictable things in certain guitars and decided to roll the dice. I’m glad I did! So far, the ‘78 is really stellar sounding in this guitar!
I would describe the tone as very “chewy,” which I know is very vague but bear with me. If you’ve ever compared a Small Stone phaser with an MXR Phase 90, then you know that those two pedals have very different midranges and people often describe the MXR as “more chewy” sounding. In that same way, the ‘78 pickup sounds much chewier than any other pickup I’ve ever heard. In this particular guitar it doesn’t sound thin or harsh. It’s very balanced sounding, but the low end is definitely tighter than a JB and maybe even the SH-5, so I could see it being thin in certain guitars I guess. But yeah, that chewy midrange is really something special and a great tone to have in my arsenal.
Does it sound exactly like Van Halen 1 through my rig? No, but that’s not what I’m going for anyway. Someone playing the ‘78 in a superstrat through a plexi with a variac would be able to answer that question better than I.
I’m not really a dedicated shredder or EVH devotee so YMMV. I play in two rock cover bands, a jazz combo, and a couple of original bands (one psych rock and one prog metal,) so I have several different types of guitars for different purposes. My number one axe is a USA G&L with a JB in the bridge, which I play through either a princeton reverb, an AC30, or an Orange Rockerverb depending on the gig (again, not very EVH-like of a setup, so YMMV.) I’m curious to see how this strat with the ‘78 stacks up against my main guitar live, and will report back after my gigs this weekend.
PS, I also swapped the neck and middle pickups while I was at it, and the CS ‘69 sounds killer in the neck! With a snappy compressor setting it cops a gorgeous Shine On You Crazy Diamond clean tone, and with the SSL2 combined in the middle, the quack tone is amazing! I was starting to wonder about this guitar after the first pickup swap, but I’m much happier with it now. Great stuff!
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