What are some unique sounding pickups?

C

Chistopher

malapterurus electricus tonewood instigator
So I was playing a Teisco the other day with an pickup that was not quite a standard humbucker. It had a cool tone, but it was also slightly different than what I'm used to. It got me thinking about how the original aftermarket pickups were designed to give players a tone that couldn't be accomplished with the pickups they had at the time. Like how the super distortion was the first pickup specificly meant to drive an amp. And then the JB, which when I first played it sounded nothing like anything I've played before. I was wondering if there are any other pickups that just sound different. The majority are probably made by beautique manufacturers, which I have little experience with. Some of the first that I thought of were Lace Sensors, specifically the Alumitones, the Kent Armstrong Motherbucker, most of the SD Custom Shop, and a good bit of what Bare Knuckle offers. Anyone have any other odd pickups they've played?
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

The D-type neck pickup on the PRS S2 Vela is very cool. More than a typical single, but not P90-ish. Definitely has its own thing going on.

Also, Railhammer pickups are doing some cool things.


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Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

Alumitones are great. But Sensors, not my thing, really. Still I approve of most of what Lace does.

Basically... The answer to this thread is: Sentell. Weirdness abounds.

I'll also call out G&L for having some innovative pickup designs :)
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

To me the Seymour Duncan Customs, Hots, & Quarter Pounders (all for Stratocasters) are quite a departure from traditional Strat tones.
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

My favorite unique sounding pickup is my Antiquity/Seth Lover hybrid. It has a neck Ant screw coil and a bridge Seth slug coil with the Ant magnet and it's uncovered. I use it in the neck of a Strat. It's my favorite pup.
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

While we are on the subject of weird pickups, has anyone used z-coils or those single coils with the slanted bars instead of pole pieces? Their name escapes me but they look like this: ( / / / / / / )
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

Clint 55 said:
My favorite unique sounding pickup is my Antiquity/Seth Lover hybrid. It has a neck Ant screw coil and a bridge Seth slug coil with the Ant magnet and it's uncovered. I use it in the neck of a Strat. It's my favorite pup.
Click to expand...

That sounds interesting, what do you have in the bridge to match?
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

My Ibanez Artcore Semi Hollow has some crazy aggressive but very clear and controllable pickups that come stock. The feedback is very musical and so controllable its almost unreal. Especially in the bridge and it drives the amp so hard. Its just odd for a semi hollow. But the way they sound when everything is dialed down is almost like an expensive single coil pup. I just wish I could buy some more to put in my other guitars that dont have my preferred SD Customs

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Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

PRS 408 pickups are extremely unique, but they are completely proprietary and you can only get them if you get a PRS 408 Guitar or Paul's Guitar

More normal sized pickups that are unique sounding:
Dimarzio EJ Custom
Duncan Quarter Pound
Tom Anderson H, HN, and SF series

The reason those are unique is that they don't sound like what the "traditional design" of the type of pickups they are.
The EJ Customs are bright, clear, and chimey but yet not trebly at all with no top end buzz when you crank the gain like you would get on a more traditional PAF style pickup. Of course, it's most definitely not a PAF style humbucker.
The Quarter Pound is an extremely high output single coil pickup that sounds much warmer, darker, and fatter than a standard single coil. It has a mid focus that's not typically found in any single coil pickup.
All Tom Anderson humbuckers are super oddball: H series has a very wide frequency response and is considered "full range". It's built kind of like the StagMag in that it's 2 single coils glued together, but with magnets in between and I think also around the coils. The HN series is like the H, but instead of using ceramic magnets, it uses neodymium magnets and it's basically an H series with a boosted mid focus. That's very far away as you can get from either the PAF style or 80s hot rod mid focus humbuckers. The SF series are very unique single coil stacks that are very full, and warm, and have a very sweet treble response that you would not expect from a single-coil-looking pickup. Similar output to the Duncan Quarter Pound, but sounds much more polite.
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

Black Winters were so different I had to redo ALL my amp settings just to get started with them. Had to learn to work with them from ground zero. Very sterile, dry, flat, no character of their own. The amp and other equipment is their whole life.
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

The G&L Z-Coils were designed by Leo Fender, and they are very unique, indeed. I have two G&L Comanches.

First, they have some serious output...hotter than some PAFs. Second, they are hum-cancelling...like a P-bass pickup. But...they still have a single coil tonality. Third, they have a very wide response from bottom to top. A little bit of an edge around 2-4kHz. Some say they sound neutral, and a bit characterless. Took me a while to figure them out, but I decided to set them up to be a little darker than the typical Strat. I roll the treble and presence on my amp back a couple of numbers. The Comanche has Leo's PTB tone controls and I might roll the Treble back to eight, where on my Legacys I "normal" the PTB Treble on 10 and the Bass on 5.

What I find cool about this pickup is that once I started working with it I realized I could create a unique "signature" tone with this guitar. It is so versatile, but it ain't a Les Paul and it sure as hell ain't yer daddy's Strat! There's another guy here in town that I run into and he gets a completely different tone than I do...and still sounds great. I usually gig with multiple guitars, but if I can only take one...it's probably going to be a Comanche.

Google "Comanche For Dummies" for a post I wrote several years ago about my journey with the Comanche and the Z-Coils. They're not for everybody, but they've worked out very well for me.

Bill
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

I am a fan of Teisco black foil and gold foil pickups. Nothing else sounds like them. I sold mine as I could not get along with the neck. If you have foil pickups, don't touch them


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Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

I take it that black foils are just gold foils in a different color? I once had a friend with a Mercedes SLS Black and for the longest time it didn't make sense to me because the car was yellow... all these tricky names these days.
 
Re: What are some unique sounding pickups?

Boutique winder in the UK called Alegree who does lots of weird designs
 
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