Senor Blues
New member
TLDR: Thank you SD forum, I should have just bought good SD pickups to start with:
I wanted to thank the forum members here for being so helpful to others. I have never yet posted here, but I have learned a lot and have read lots of SD forum posts when putting together a partscaster for a particular sound and use, and I wanted to say thanks. I just built the guitar pictured—I like short scales. I scored a $40 (shipped) eBay Bullet Mustang body, the rest is all stuff I either had or pulled from other guitars and put it together. The Warmoth Mustang Roasted Maple Neck with Evo Frets that just plays great was a Reverb score because it has a broken fine adjuster, but the truss rod itself still works great.
Originally I put in some EMG’s--- a 60 Neck and an 85 Bridge, then vice versa, then an SLV and a 85, then a set of EMG Fat 55’s, but …..I hate the cleans on the EMG’s on the short scale Mustang, even the cleans on the Fat 55 Retroactives which are otherwise great pickups, are sorta lifeless, too bright and plinky. (compared to what is in there now) The EMG’s all however sound great under gain and played in tune on open chords and all the way up the neck (more on this later) with no nasty overtones.
So trying to solve plinky overbright cleans and mid-gain tones, what I learned on this forum caused me to evaluate passive humbuckers with every different kind of magnet there is from A2 to A8, cast and polished, oriented and un-oriented etc –spent about a hundred bucks on magnets and it was fun to learn about the things I liked about each, response to pick attack, etc. Was well worth the time and money I spent.
In the process, and somehow believing the rest of the internet and not wanting to spend big bucks on brand name pickups I tried pulls from cheap Epiphones, some of the Amazon and ebay chinese ones, some of the ones that are advertised, “ They are just as good as the big names but don’t cost $120,” pickups and various others. Some of them sounded good with gain, some sounded good only clean, Some did not clean up well with the volume knob and honestly there were, on most of them, some nasty harmonics that were not musical and actually made me check intonation, cut a new nut as open chords were sounding out of tune, etc. It was none of that. I’d put the EMG’s back in and the guitar played in tune with no overtones (amplified).
After reading this forum for months I got a Pearly Gates Neck and a Custom Custom Bridge in there with Triple Shots. The guitar sounds a whole order of magnitude better than the cheapo pups, it plays utterly awesome and in tune with no nasty harmonics. The A2 pick attack response is there and the Pearly gates is actually brighter than I expected but I really like it even though the bullet mustang in my opinion has the neck pickup too far towards the Bridge. These pickups respond to volume changes, clean up nice and I really like them. Thanks to reading the forum, I knew what I wanted and bought the ones that thought would get me where I wanted to go. It was a good call on both pups.
Oh and learning about magnets here I fine tuned my cheapo P90 Harley Benton SC 450 GT P90 to the point that thing now sounds great replacing the harsh ceramics with SD P90’s that I got used with UOA5/A2 in the Neck and A4/Rough A8 in Bridge. This forum is useful! That thing now sounds as good as an actual Gibby p90 LP I sold when I was on an EMG jag in the 1990’s and hated hum while playing out a lot in those days.
Oh, and Chris from SD Customer Service is a total rockstar and took care of me when UPS sent my order from the SD website to New Jersey from California (I live 90 miles from Santa Barbara) and then lost them for four days. He totally handled it and got me taken care of, and fast.
So again, thanks SD forum!
I wanted to thank the forum members here for being so helpful to others. I have never yet posted here, but I have learned a lot and have read lots of SD forum posts when putting together a partscaster for a particular sound and use, and I wanted to say thanks. I just built the guitar pictured—I like short scales. I scored a $40 (shipped) eBay Bullet Mustang body, the rest is all stuff I either had or pulled from other guitars and put it together. The Warmoth Mustang Roasted Maple Neck with Evo Frets that just plays great was a Reverb score because it has a broken fine adjuster, but the truss rod itself still works great.
Originally I put in some EMG’s--- a 60 Neck and an 85 Bridge, then vice versa, then an SLV and a 85, then a set of EMG Fat 55’s, but …..I hate the cleans on the EMG’s on the short scale Mustang, even the cleans on the Fat 55 Retroactives which are otherwise great pickups, are sorta lifeless, too bright and plinky. (compared to what is in there now) The EMG’s all however sound great under gain and played in tune on open chords and all the way up the neck (more on this later) with no nasty overtones.
So trying to solve plinky overbright cleans and mid-gain tones, what I learned on this forum caused me to evaluate passive humbuckers with every different kind of magnet there is from A2 to A8, cast and polished, oriented and un-oriented etc –spent about a hundred bucks on magnets and it was fun to learn about the things I liked about each, response to pick attack, etc. Was well worth the time and money I spent.
In the process, and somehow believing the rest of the internet and not wanting to spend big bucks on brand name pickups I tried pulls from cheap Epiphones, some of the Amazon and ebay chinese ones, some of the ones that are advertised, “ They are just as good as the big names but don’t cost $120,” pickups and various others. Some of them sounded good with gain, some sounded good only clean, Some did not clean up well with the volume knob and honestly there were, on most of them, some nasty harmonics that were not musical and actually made me check intonation, cut a new nut as open chords were sounding out of tune, etc. It was none of that. I’d put the EMG’s back in and the guitar played in tune with no overtones (amplified).
After reading this forum for months I got a Pearly Gates Neck and a Custom Custom Bridge in there with Triple Shots. The guitar sounds a whole order of magnitude better than the cheapo pups, it plays utterly awesome and in tune with no nasty harmonics. The A2 pick attack response is there and the Pearly gates is actually brighter than I expected but I really like it even though the bullet mustang in my opinion has the neck pickup too far towards the Bridge. These pickups respond to volume changes, clean up nice and I really like them. Thanks to reading the forum, I knew what I wanted and bought the ones that thought would get me where I wanted to go. It was a good call on both pups.
Oh and learning about magnets here I fine tuned my cheapo P90 Harley Benton SC 450 GT P90 to the point that thing now sounds great replacing the harsh ceramics with SD P90’s that I got used with UOA5/A2 in the Neck and A4/Rough A8 in Bridge. This forum is useful! That thing now sounds as good as an actual Gibby p90 LP I sold when I was on an EMG jag in the 1990’s and hated hum while playing out a lot in those days.
Oh, and Chris from SD Customer Service is a total rockstar and took care of me when UPS sent my order from the SD website to New Jersey from California (I live 90 miles from Santa Barbara) and then lost them for four days. He totally handled it and got me taken care of, and fast.
So again, thanks SD forum!
