Vintage V100AFD

K

knee_boarder

New member
Hi everyone

I've just purchased a Vintage V100AFD and it sounds okay but I have a set of Seymour Duncan '59's that I bought and put in a Rockwood LX250G about 28 years ago.

Is it worth swapping them into the Vintage or have cheaper pickups such as Wilkinson's really improved over the years?

Many thanks
 
Looks like those guitars come with Wilkinson WVHZ pickups. Alnico V magnets with Neck 6.9k / Bridge 8.2k. The '59s are also Alnico Vs and 7.4k/8.1k.

I'm personally a big fan of '59s in a Les Paul, but suspect that they would sound similar to the Wilkinsons.
 
Only your ears can decide for sure...

But yeah - a couple of classic style PAFs. Won't break amazeballs different or anything.
 
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Welcome to the forum.

The Wilkinson pickups in there were based on the Seth Lover patent. You could put Duncan Seth's in there, which would be an improvement. Clearer, little bit of everything and some chime or mids to them.

But since the guitar is a "Slash" model, I'd first try a Slash set and venture out from there. 59's would work, but the neck would have the famous 'boomy' problem.
 
GuitarStv said:
Looks like those guitars come with Wilkinson WVHZ pickups. Alnico V magnets with Neck 6.9k / Bridge 8.2k. The '59s are also Alnico Vs and 7.4k/8.1k.

I'm personally a big fan of '59s in a Les Paul, but suspect that they would sound similar to the Wilkinsons.
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Agreed. I had that same guitar, and wound a 'PAF' style set to replace the Wilkinson's, only to find very little difference between them, and most of what I could hear attributable (I believe) to my set being unpotted.

If there's something you don't like about the Wilkinson's, I'd focus on that and what a change could do to fix it, but they're not the sort of pickups that require changing if you don't mind them.

Larry
 
GuitarStv said:
I love bright, low output pickups in the neck. Most humbuckers are a little woofy/tubby for my tastes. Worst case, you knock the tone knob back a notch and things are golden.

:P
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Different strokes, I guess. I like my neck pickup to sound fat, liquid, and strong (which honestly, PAF-types in general do not to my ears).

But I've never seen anyone offer a PAF-type that underwound. That's what I'm really surprised about.
 
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Rex_Rocker said:
Wow. I honestly can't imagine that sounding... like... anything but like an icepick.
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You can't be serious. A 6.9k humbucker in the neck of a Les Paul-type guitar being ice picky? Maybe if it was twice that DCR. I've only ever heard mud from neck hb's with that sort of reading?

How does a pickup sound "liquid"?
 
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Wound_Up said:
How does a pickup sound "liquid"?
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Without having the chirpy scratchy attack of a Jazz or a '59 or other *typical* A5 underwound neck humbuckers. Which are like 7 point something, even.

Again, different strokes. But I've NEVER seen anyone offer a PAF-type that underwound before, which is what caulght me off guard.
 
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Rex_Rocker said:
Without having the chirpy scratchy attack of a Jazz or a '59 or other *typical* A5 underwound neck humbuckers. Which are like 7 point something, even.

Again, different strokes. But I've NEVER seen anyone offer a PAF-type that underwound before, which is what caulght me off guard.
Click to expand...

FWIW T-tops, which were the first patent number pickups to be a set specification, were all 7.5k, regardless of bridge or neck. Those specs were considered to be best sounding of the PAF types of the day. PAFs can range anywhere from 7.1k to 8.7k or so, but not always because of turn count (sometimes it was the 14% variance in coil wire diameter used at the time). But once T-tops were introduced, 7.5k was not considered underwound, but the patent standard. Deliberately making pickups 8-9k was considered overwound (though you'd have to know the turn count to know if it was overwound, or just had a thick batch of wire on it.)

But that alone doesn't tell you the output or sound of the pickup, because the differences could be from the wire diameter variance, turns per layer relative to overall turn count, the ambient temperature when the reading was taken, etc. It's possible to have a 7.2k pickup and 7.8k pickup be nearly identical in output and sound.
 
beaubrummels said:
FWIW T-tops, which were the first patent number pickups to be a set specification, were all 7.5k, regardless of bridge or neck. Those specs were considered to be best sounding of the PAF types of the day. PAFs can range anywhere from 7.1k to 8.7k or so, but not always because of turn count (sometimes it was the 14% variance in coil wire diameter used at the time). But once T-tops were introduced, 7.5k was not considered underwound, but the patent standard. Deliberately making pickups 8-9k was considered overwound (though you'd have to know the turn count to know if it was overwound, or just had a thick batch of wire on it.)

But that alone doesn't tell you the output or sound of the pickup, because the differences could be from the wire diameter variance, turns per layer relative to overall turn count, the ambient temperature when the reading was taken, etc. It's possible to have a 7.2k pickup and 7.8k pickup be nearly identical in output and sound.
Click to expand...
Maybe I speak from very limited experience, but I once had a '59B that measured at 7.3-7.5K. I don't know if I got a mislabeled '59N that somehow made it to the bridge position, or if it was just wire diameter variance, turns per layer relative to overall turn count, the ambient temperature when the reading was taken, etc." But the fact is that pickup sounded absolutely puny in that guitar at the time. I quickly swapped it out for something eles PAF-type (could've been a WLH or a 36th Anni PAF) that read the way it should on the multimeter, and the difference was night and day.

I get it, though. It was a different pickup altogether, so it was not apples to apples, but I did get another '59B that read a healthy 8 point something in the multimeter in another guitar, and that pickup in that guitar ended up being my favorite PAF-type for what I wanted to play with it.

I just don't have good experiences with low DCR pickups in general. I've since moved over PAF's, but then again, the style of music that I play kinda lends itself to pickups with some compression and mid-focus to them. I've just never been able to gel with low-wind pickups in the neck position, even.

IMO, a pickup does not need to be low output and extremely bright to still have some clarity to it.
 
7.5 is lower than I like in the bridge for sure. But the bridge and the neck react pretty differently to pickup winds.
 
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