Re: The Ibatnez
The trembucker is quite hot and provides all the aggression needed for the hard rock and metal stuff, while it screams during solos. The best part is that it does all that while maintaining clarity, it is not mushy or muddy sounding. Definitely one of the best hot humbuckers out there. It provides the hard rock sound I was dreaming and hoping of, period. The perfect match for this guitar and my favourite of the two.
The Cool Rails mini humbucker is totally different. The sound doesn't have any "edges". It's very "round", bassy and clean. It's like the complete opposite of the Custom 5. And while the Custom 5 appears to be the perfect match for the guitar's looks, the Cool Rails is so very different it's fantastic. One of the things I love about this guitar is that people who have tried it don't like just one of the pickups. Some people love the Custom 5, some others are stunned by the Cool Rails. I say stunned because the sound of the Cool Rails doesn't match the looks of the guitar, that's for sure! It's like you look at the guitar and think "feckin hell, this thing is the coolest looking shred-machine I've ever seen" and then you switch to the neck pickup and you get this sweet bluesy sound, full-fat cleans and warm overdriven leads.
I forgot to mention that I replaced the original 5-way switch with a 3-way and replaced the original potentiometers with one 500k push/pull for the volume and a 250k push/pull for the tone (originals were not push/pull). Both pickups are splittable, the tone knob splits the bridge pickup and the volume knob splits the neck pickup. 3-way selector switch is "bridge-both-neck" as expected.
I didn't know what to expect of the pickups. As I mentioned in the first post, I sent an email to Seymour Duncan describing the guitar and gave info about what I was looking for. They were very kind and helpful, suggesting that I should go with a Custom 5 TB14 for the bridge and a Cool Rails for the neck. I didn't know how these pickups sound, I had never tried any of the two but I checked their specs on the tone chart that's somewhere in the SD website and the combination seemed interesting so I immediately decided to go for it. I was thrilled with the result, as the guitar turned out to be able to do more than I expected.
The trembucker is quite hot and provides all the aggression needed for the hard rock and metal stuff, while it screams during solos. The best part is that it does all that while maintaining clarity, it is not mushy or muddy sounding. Definitely one of the best hot humbuckers out there. It provides the hard rock sound I was dreaming and hoping of, period. The perfect match for this guitar and my favourite of the two.
The Cool Rails mini humbucker is totally different. The sound doesn't have any "edges". It's very "round", bassy and clean. It's like the complete opposite of the Custom 5. And while the Custom 5 appears to be the perfect match for the guitar's looks, the Cool Rails is so very different it's fantastic. One of the things I love about this guitar is that people who have tried it don't like just one of the pickups. Some people love the Custom 5, some others are stunned by the Cool Rails. I say stunned because the sound of the Cool Rails doesn't match the looks of the guitar, that's for sure! It's like you look at the guitar and think "feckin hell, this thing is the coolest looking shred-machine I've ever seen" and then you switch to the neck pickup and you get this sweet bluesy sound, full-fat cleans and warm overdriven leads.
I forgot to mention that I replaced the original 5-way switch with a 3-way and replaced the original potentiometers with one 500k push/pull for the volume and a 250k push/pull for the tone (originals were not push/pull). Both pickups are splittable, the tone knob splits the bridge pickup and the volume knob splits the neck pickup. 3-way selector switch is "bridge-both-neck" as expected.
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