What made you switch out pickups in the first place?

[uOpt]

What made you switch out pickups in the first place?

For me it was Helmuth Lemme's book (this was long before the English translation). I followed his schematics to mess with the existing pickups via electronics, but that didn't do it. The book had enough info to realize that different pickups are the way to go. After swapping for the first time I was hooked.

How about you?

 

[Ashurbanipal]

^^ Similar reasons, though I wasn't aware of Lemme's work at the time . My first decent guitar was an Ibanez RG and the neck pu in series was always a bit dark for my taste, so that led me down the mod path. Even these days, a new pu for me is either a last resort when other options have been exhausted; simply wanting to try something new; or building something up from a husk or whatever and needing a pu.

 

[freefrog]

Was a teen, had a cheap first guitar, DiMarzio was the hype...

Then I dissected the stock pickups and your question makes me realize it was 45 years ago.

 

[Chistopher]

I wanted to sound better and didn't want to practice

 

[Mincer]

I wanted to sound better (or at least closer to the tones I was listening to) and couldn't afford a new guitar.

 

[alex1fly]

My heroes all tinkered with guitars. Seemed like a good thing to do.

 

[jeremy]

my first guitar was a hss squier ii strat and wanted a fatter tone from the neck so put a jackson rail pup in there. it wasnt great, but it was different and started the path of modding damn near everything ive owned since

 

[Securb]

In the beginning, it was not so much swapping as buying pickups for project guitars. The first being a Dimebucker/Jazz combo for my Iceman build. My first "swap" was my LP Ice Tea Traditional; the 57s were way too bright for me, so I decided to give the WLHs a try. Since then, I have come to the assertion that there is no need to settle for that status quo with my pickups. Not that any of my pickups were defective or lacking in some way, I just know there are better options for reaching the tone I desire to have.

 

[Butch Snyder]

1982, I had a Global Les Paul copy. Global was a brand that JCPenney and Sears sold. I bought it with Christmas money. I got birthday money and my bandmates told me I could get a Carvin pickup with it. Remember Carvin catalogs? At first, I thought I wanted a DiMarzio Super Distortion. I kept seeing these advertisements for Seymour Duncan in Guitar Player magazine. The ad would show an extreme closeup of a zebra coil pickup. It looked really interesting to me. We went to our local music store and I told them I wanted the hottest pickup they had. They handed me a JB. I had it installed in the bridge position and was transformed.

 

[MikeS]

Circa 1997, I was playing an Ibanez RG series and took the guitar to a tech and had an EMG 81 installed in the bridge. Metallica played EMGs, and that was all the reason the 16 year old me needed.

 

[beaubrummels]

The first time was because I bought a vintage Strat that had only one original pickup and I was trying to get a matched sound across all positions.

 

[misterwhizzy]

First of all, this is an interesting question. I don't expect my answer to be all that interesting.

I was a broke teenager--I know that's redundant--with a Squier and a Crate, as I'm sure many beginners do or did, and I could rationalize trying to get a better tone with the amount of money a pickup cost, but not an honest-to-goodness amp.

 

[magillver]

In the late 70's I had (and still have!) a Yamaha strat-ish guitar (SSC500 if anyone cares) that had blade single-coils in which the adhesive holding the blades began to fail, and when I'd be playing, the blades would pop out and stick to the bottoms of the strings (frang-frang). I loved the guitar but hated the pups, so switched them out for an EMG strat set and never looked back...

 

[ehdwuld]

2009 documented here on the forum

Got an RG swapped to the JB/JAZZ set
With Triple shot rings and a super 5 way

Love that guitar BTW

It just sounds awesome

 

[Rex_Rocker]

I started posting on the ESP forum in the 2000's, and everyone was swapping pickups out. So I wanted the fattest, hottest pickup I could find. So I got a Super Distortion. Loved it for a while, then kinda realized overly fat sounding pickups are not usually conductive to tight sounds.

All my favorite bands were using EMG's, so I got a Zakk Wylde set and traded that Super Distortion away. As someone mentioned, I really wanted a new guitar, but couldn't afford it. So I got pickups to switch my guitar up instead.

Funny thing is I was an "EMG or die" guy for like 10 years. Then I tried a Duncan Distortion, and I signed up on this forum.

 

[playas]

The stock humbucker in the bridge of my Hohner (hss strat copy) - which I didn't like the sound of anyway, started failing intermittently and I wasn't able to get it working.

So I replaced it and the wiring and put a PG in the bridge. That was 2008.

 

[Wattage]

First time?

Joe Perry and Brad Whitford's ads for Bill Lawrence, I put L500's in my Iceman back in 1980/81

 

[idsnowdog]

It started in 1987 when I got my first guitar, a Westone with an H/S/S setup. The neck and body were great, but the pickups sucked. I got a Carvin catalog in the mail, and I saw I could get a full set of noiseless H/S/S pickups for the price of one Dimarzio or Duncan. The M22SD was decent, but the noiseless singles were horrible. However, the experience formed a positive impression on me, so when I bought my second guitar, a Japanese 1986 Fender Stratocaster, I put a Dimarzio PAF Pro in the bridge, and that guitar sounded great. Joe Satriani and Steve Via were onto something using a PAF Pro!

 

[Mincer]

Like a lot of teens, I thought louder pickup=better. As I got to be a better player, I realized how dynamics work, and that I like really dynamic amps.

 

[Masta' C]

I was a teen in the late '90s with my first electric guitar, a very cool 1990 Ibanez RG570.

Went to a local shop to order an acoustic...a quilted blue Dean I had been saving up for. After waiting months for it to arrive, I finally got it home and soon after noticed the bridge was separating from the body.

Had to take it back and the replacement we ordered took forever to arrive. I would check in every couple of weeks, hoping for an update.

After some time, the shop owner felt bad and told me I could pick any pickup out of his case for my electric, free of charge.

I had tried an Invader in another guitar and thought it looked cool, so he gave one to me, brand new in the box.

The replacement from Dean still hadn't shown up after another several weeks, so he tossed another pickup my way...this time I went with a Hot Rails for the middle to pair with the Invader.

I loved it, though I ended up going with a Screamin' Demon in that guitar in the long run. Pretty sure I put an A2Pro in the neck that he sold me at cost, also.

But that was my introduction to pickups and why I started swapping... It wasn't a "need", but rather a nudge