What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

Mincer said:
Yeah, you will get a warmer, more dynamic sound from the WLH, which are great pushed-PAF pickups. However, I love the 59/Custom in the bridge. Howabout WLH in the neck, and Hybrid in the bridge?
Click to expand...

I fitted the WLH set in my McCarty, then swapped out the bridge for a 59/Custom Hybrid. That's the combo that's still fitted, and they split beautifully too.


Sent from my TARDIS using timey-wimey talk.
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

bloomfieldriffs said:
Please listen to the clips posted(in the first clip JB nails Clapton, Beck, Montgomery and others tone with just a Les Paul and Gibson pickups). Take these Gibson pickups as a baseline. In my opinion it becomes a matter of personal preference, not the quality of the pickup, when making comparisons of the baseline pickups to any other pickup. The aftermarket companies offer a wide range of alternatives but none of them are necessarily better sounding than the Gibson pickups, they sound different and that difference may be what an individual guitarist wants but they do not sound better. I think that in the short clip posted and several other Joe Bonamassa youtube clips it is clear that the tone achievable with Gibson pickups is world class.
Click to expand...

joe does get a variety of great tones from that guitar but that has as much to do with him as a player as the guitar or the pups, although that is a $6000 guitar with special custom bucker s pups that he is using in the video. joe b uses custom shop duncan pups in his non-vintage gibson les pauls fyi

gibson does make some good pups, im a big fan of the bb1/bb2 combo for example, but they also make some that many people dont think are that great or at least dont think are a good match for each other.
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

jeremy said:
joe does get a variety of great tones from that guitar but that has as much to do with him as a player as the guitar or the pups, although that is a $6000 guitar with special custom bucker s pups that he is using in the video. joe b uses custom shop duncan pups in his non-vintage gibson les pauls fyi

gibson does make some good pups, im a big fan of the bb1/bb2 combo for example, but they also make some that many people dont think are that great or at least dont think are a good match for each other.
Click to expand...


He sure as hell isn't running a 490T/498R set in a off the shelve L.P. Special, which I am!!! I don't think all of Gibson's pickups are awful, I just think these are not great & terribly mismatched!!! I was considering a 61 Zebra set for a while & before that a Dirtyfingers/B.B.1 set for it. At the end of the day I could get the WLH's cheaper and at least in my opinion they are just better pickups???

Duncan has spent the past several decades making a name for themselves by supplying quality product for a reasonable price (aside from those Silver pickups, still think that's just F-ING nuts) & only in the past ten years or so have they really been in any position to profit just off their logo?

Enter the silver pickups with beer flavored nipples age, LOL!!!

Just kidding Duncan, you know I love you!!!:yourock:



Gibson on the other hand has been in a position to profit of that logo for quite some time now! Just about the time they realized that they could they started cutting corners and costs! If you can build a good guitar for $500 & sell it for $$2500 or build a slightly better guitar for $900 & still sell it for $2500 then your probably going to be building a lot of $500 guitars??? Especially if people will still buy them like they are going out of style regardless....

Gibson is a business, not some great guitar charity, like any other business they pretty much care about one thing, their bottom line!!! As guitarist I think we like to romanticize the big old guitar companies some? It would be great if they cared half as much about their own history as the average player does & if they didn't care so much about making money, but that's just not the case.

I'm sure their mission statement reads as such because it's the same as 99.9% of every other company? Make a product for as little as possible and sell it for as much as possible....

I.E. Capitalism.....
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

bloomfieldriffs said:
Please listen to the clips posted(in the first clip JB nails Clapton, Beck, Montgomery and others tone with just a Les Paul and Gibson pickups). Take these Gibson pickups as a baseline. In my opinion it becomes a matter of personal preference, not the quality of the pickup, when making comparisons of the baseline pickups to any other pickup. The aftermarket companies offer a wide range of alternatives but none of them are necessarily better sounding than the Gibson pickups, they sound different and that difference may be what an individual guitarist wants but they do not sound better. I think that in the short clip posted and several other Joe Bonamassa youtube clips it is clear that the tone achievable with Gibson pickups is world class.
Click to expand...

I dunno about sounding exactly like Clapton, but if it's true it's because Joe can really play and because he's spent countless hours getting those skills together.

I'll bet he could make that LP sound like a Tele too, because he's mastered that Tele style as well, and that's what it really takes.

It's not in the pickups. But if you have the chops and more importantly, the feel, it can be in you.

I'm sure Joe could teach a master class on how to phrase and use finger vibrato in Clapton's style.

It'd be nice if he'd teach Eric how to do it again. ;)

 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

You can buy a made in the USA Les Paul Studio with maple cap on a mahogany body and a Nirtro paint job for the same as a MIM Strat with a poly paint job. In my opinion the Studio is at least 2X the guitar as the MIM Strat. Gibson pricing on the Studio is not gouging based on the name. It is a great guitar reasonably priced.
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

jeremy said:
joe does get a variety of great tones from that guitar but that has as much to do with him as a player as the guitar or the pups, although that is a $6000 guitar with special custom bucker s pups that he is using in the video. joe b uses custom shop duncan pups in his non-vintage gibson les pauls fyi

gibson does make some good pups, im a big fan of the bb1/bb2 combo for example, but they also make some that many people dont think are that great or at least dont think are a good match for each other.
Click to expand...

That's right.

And I like the BB1/BB2 combo too.

Duncan makes more pickups that I don't like than Gibson. :crazy:

But that's only because Duncan makes so many pickups. :D
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

bloomfieldriffs said:
Please listen to the clips posted(in the first clip JB nails Clapton, Beck, Montgomery and others tone with just a Les Paul and Gibson pickups). Take these Gibson pickups as a baseline. In my opinion it becomes a matter of personal preference, not the quality of the pickup, when making comparisons of the baseline pickups to any other pickup. The aftermarket companies offer a wide range of alternatives but none of them are necessarily better sounding than the Gibson pickups, they sound different and that difference may be what an individual guitarist wants but they do not sound better. I think that in the short clip posted and several other Joe Bonamassa youtube clips it is clear that the tone achievable with Gibson pickups is world class.
Click to expand...



Keep in mind that Gibson has changed PU models over the years, and changed the specs of individual models, so what you hear from years or decades ago, probably isn't what's in their guitars today.

Another thing is, you can't really expect to duplicate the tones you hear in any clips; they're probably using different guitars, woods, amps, speakers, tubes, effects, etc not to mention types of mics and where they're placed. There's so many variables in the final sound. PU's are only one piece of that. When you hear great tones, what percentage of that is specifically due to the PU's? Don't give all the credit to one piece of the puzzle. Sometimes players will work around a less-than-ideal sounding guitar, and make up for it in the amps and effects.
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

You may know something about this. When I was browsing for examples of Les Paul tone I came across a YouTube clip with a Greg Kock playing some type of 2 tone pickups and comparing them to a Les Paul. I went back and couldn't find it again. This guy was first rate picker and the pickups sounded interesting. Do you know anything about this guy or these pickups? I would like to find out some more.
And you are right about the variables I think even the relative humidity can make a difference (no joke here I can hear a difference playing in Az vs. Md).
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

bloomfieldriffs said:
You may know something about this. When I was browsing for examples of Les Paul tone I came across a YouTube clip with a Greg Kock playing some type of 2 tone pickups and comparing them to a Les Paul. I went back and couldn't find it again. This guy was first rate picker and the pickups sounded interesting. Do you know anything about this guy or these pickups? I would like to find out some more.
And you are right about the variables I think even the relative humidity can make a difference (no joke here I can hear a difference playing in Az vs. Md).
Click to expand...

He's very well known. Demos guitars for Fender and demos Fluence pickups for Fishman.

 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

bloomfieldriffs said:
You can buy a made in the USA Les Paul Studio with maple cap on a mahogany body and a Nirtro paint job for the same as a MIM Strat with a poly paint job. In my opinion the Studio is at least 2X the guitar as the MIM Strat. Gibson pricing on the Studio is not gouging based on the name. It is a great guitar reasonably priced.
Click to expand...
It's still a Les Paul, and that makes it inferior to a good strat in my book.

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

enjoy man. the neck pup is just fantastic and the bridge is pretty good too
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

bloomfieldriffs said:
Is it my eyesight or is Seymour spelled wrong on the bottom one?
Click to expand...

Has Seymour has changed the way he spells his name??? Unless you're talking about the writing on the WLH packaging? If so its just because the plastic box is causing something of an optical illusion, it's spelled correctly. The logos on the pickups themselves are both spelled exactly the same as the rest of my Duncan's, the stickers are normal as Apple pie, and I bought them from the same place that I buy all my Duncan's...

They are a highly regarded dealer so I doubt very much that counterfeits would go unnoticed for very long & I know they wouldn't risk their reputation selling fakes....

View attachment 74749

I gotta say, they sound pretty darn terrific!!! I haven't had the time to sit down and really get into playing them yet. I'm still adjusting the pickup height, pole screws, & that fun stuff! My preliminary findings though, THEY KICK SOME SERIOUS A$$!!! We'll see once I get them adjusted if having the neck and bridge pup's wound so closely together will cause any output issues for me but I think they'll be just fine??? My neck volume is usually turned down to 8-9 anyway so as long as it balances alright that way I'll be happy...

They are nice and sweet, round & warm, & they handle extrem amounts of gain much better than I expected!!! Plus, now my amp only breaks up when I want it to! I'm sure that will be quite helpful in the weeks to come? LOL!!!
 
Re: What Do You Guys Think About The W.L.H. Set???

Congrats on the new pickups, even if Seymour is spelled wrong, ya gotta luv installing new pickups, the process of extracting the old, the anticipation while soldering up the new, playing with height adjustments and finally playing the like new guitar and hearing all that you hadn't heard before...what a rush.

While I'm at it I gotta say anything with batteries should never have anything to do with guitars!!! They always go flat at the most inopportune times. Take it from me and build a big wall between your rig and anything that is battery powered.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

PFDarkside
Looking for a pair of complimentary humbuckers for hard rock/heavy metal
Replies
12
Views
713
PFDarkside
PFDarkside
D
Middle Humbucker for an HHH
2 3
Replies
43
Views
1K
Teleplayer
T
M
59 was awesome for metal. What next?
Replies
15
Views
353
metalmachine1983
M
Ascension
Scooped Strat set review.
Replies
5
Views
140
Mincer
Mincer
Rex_Rocker
Something about the JB...
2 3 4
Replies
60
Views
4K
Rex_Rocker
Rex_Rocker
Back
Top