What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

[Little Pigbacon]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

Gibson Burt's Buckers
EMG 85, 81, 89(R), SA
Also had the Fender Vintage Noiseless Jazz Bass pickups and liked them, but haven't compared them to much else.
Pigbuckers!

 

[JeffB]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

Rumplestilkskin ?
Is that really the name of a builder ?

Now I'm curious because that's a cool name for a business.
Any good ?

Yup. Singlecoils only, but his strat and tele sets are excellent.
Reasonably priced, wound how you like em, quality materials, and great complexity of tone.

 

[Brandenburg]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

Ive used
EMG: 81,SA,85,H
Iron Gear:Smoke Stack II,Pig Iron OW,Rolling Mills, DIRTY TORQUE
Gibson: T-TOP

T-Top pickup is my all time favorite..great harmonics, and very smooth and natural sounding

Iron Gear sound really good for the price..Decided to try their pickups as I really wanted something different than the SD or dimazio offerings.. glad I went with them..I might give the jailhouse rails a try next..

Used to really love EMG's 20 years ago but now I really prefer passives.. In saying that.. there are times that the highly compressed sound is what im in the mood for.. Besides EMG's running into a Randall RG 100es sounds awesome

 

[dominus]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

I've had good luck with most of the Artec made pickups (GFS, Dragonfire, Entwistle, Calig), and they're cheap as hell.

 

[Evan Skopp]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

All my electric guitars and basses have SDs except my "Crazy Heart" Gretsch G6122 1959 RI, which has the stock TV Jones Super Tron and Plus HT pickups. Honestly, I think SD makes the best Filterton-style pickups, but I keep that guitar stock for sentimental reasons.

 

[DreX]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

I feel like Bare Knuckle Pickups is more comparable to DiMarzio, they have have modern and vintage offerings, but their passion is in their modern, higher output stuff. Lollar, Fralin and D Allen are more like SD in that they seem interested in "the best of the vintage".

Well, it would be very hard to 100% duplicate a certain type of scatterwind. So if you actually look at it closely I'd guess really not many. Certainly the broad brushstroke of 'PAF clone' or whatever, yes this could cover quite a few pickups.

I read in an interview that SD has "cabinets" full of diagrams and specs for all sorts of pickups. It's trade secret, but I'd love to know how much of, say, an SSL-1 is specified on paper and how much is left to chance. The more detailed they are, the more likely they are to be unique, but with some pickup makers like Fralin in particular, I get the feeling there's a higher degree of randomness to their products.

The only two pickups I can really say I felt like I was playing the same pickup was the Fralin Blues Specials and the Lollar Blackface set. Many others are very similar, but I'd sweat those two were the same recipe.

 

[DarkMatter]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

I've tried 2 Bareknuckle pickups. The alnico Blackhawk which I found to be overly saturated for me, and the apache single coil, which will never leave the guitar. The apache seems very similar to a duncan surfer, I couldn't say one is better than the other.

I'm also using a GFS mean 90 which impressed me. I bought it knowing that I had some of the "this is cheap therefore inferior" mindset, but I ended up liking it quite a bit.

 

[MkIII Renegade]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

Bare Knuckle - Nailbomb and a Cold Sweat neck.

EMG 85 (fave EMG overall), 81 (for maximum thrashy rhythm) and SLV (Lukather singles....nice). SPC mid boost is important to have on my Strat bodied guitars with EMGs for a little extra warmth.

 

[Gibson 1964]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

Wolfetone
Wilde
TV Jones
Zexcoil

 

[B2D]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

I really like the EMG 85, 89, 60A, and the DG set.

I played a great Tele not long ago with a Fralin Unbucker and a modded Fender Esquire pickup - loved that.

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

Anything by Klein I've had has been great. I've had a few sets of his lower-wind Strat pickups, a tapped Esquire pickup, and a mini humbucker from him.

My Reilander P90-in-Tele-hole pickup is probably the best sounding aftermarket Tele pickup I've ever owned.

 

[AlexR]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

I feel like Bare Knuckle Pickups is more comparable to DiMarzio, they have have modern and vintage offerings, but their passion is in their modern, higher output stuff. Lollar, Fralin and D Allen are more like SD in that they seem interested in "the best of the vintage".



I read in an interview that SD has "cabinets" full of diagrams and specs for all sorts of pickups. It's trade secret, but I'd love to know how much of, say, an SSL-1 is specified on paper and how much is left to chance. The more detailed they are, the more likely they are to be unique, but with some pickup makers like Fralin in particular, I get the feeling there's a higher degree of randomness to their products.

The only two pickups I can really say I felt like I was playing the same pickup was the Fralin Blues Specials and the Lollar Blackface set. Many others are very similar, but I'd sweat those two were the same recipe.

All the big names will have wind specs for each of their pickups. They would be foolish otherwise. The point of buying a main brand is that you get that 1 product over and over again. It is dependable and repeatable.

The smaller boutique firms will also have a guide as to turn counts and amount of scatter, coil offset etc, etc. There will be a certain amount of variability in the PAF clones even if there is a ballpark figure.

Winders like ReWind have a random pickup choice.......two coils wound slightly differently. There are recipies as to which possible coils will sound good mated in a pickup, but there is a random chance as to what pickup strength you get for both bridge and neck.

 

[Powdered Toast Man]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

Fender CS pickups are actually really good. Their Nocaster set are excellent. I've got the Fat 50's in my Strat.

A lesser known one is Don Mare pickups. I bought one of his "0038 Keefer" Tele bridge pickups and it was so great that I ordered a second one for another guitar! They're a bit more expensive, but you are getting hand made pickups built to order. And as I understand it he's the entire operation. Great guy too! Any pickups I buy in the future will likely be from Don.

 

[DreX]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

The point of buying a main brand is that you get that 1 product over and over again. It is dependable and repeatable.

The Fishman guitar accessory company insists otherwise, but I digress.

The smaller boutique firms will also have a guide as to turn counts and amount of scatter, coil offset etc, etc.

That would be dependent on which factors the pickup makers feel are important to the end result. For example, I've heard people believe scatter winding is overrated / not an important factor in the overall, or perhaps they do it the same way for every pickup, so I wonder if they would even bother to document it.

That's one question I might as Seymour Duncan if he does a Q&A: how does scatter winding affect tone, do you have a consistent pattern or is it different for each model of pickup?

Then there's aspect like gauss of the magnets, and how particular they are about that. I know SD is very meticulous in their gauss, each pole piece is the same gauss across the whole pickup, and the same within the whole set. A set of Fralins I gave away had magnet strengths that were all over the map. They don't seem to be especially exacting, and it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't think it made a meaningful difference in the first place.

 

[allbutromeo]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

Fender CS pickups are actually really good. Their Nocaster set are excellent. I've got the Fat 50's in my Strat.

+1 on the CS Nocaster set.
I've also used some emgs in the past, but the only ones I ever got sounds I liked were my 25th anniversary set.
I also have a lot of gibsons, but so far the only pickups of theirs I liked were the 57 Classic neck, and the Super 57 bridge in my trad pro 2, it's like what a 57 classic plus should have been.

 

[HALENisking]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

My EVH frankenstein replica humbucker! Loud, clear, muscular, rude.

 

[Demanic]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

I'm surprised that no one's mentioned Lace. I love their Deathbuckers.

 

[Gibson 1964]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

I'm surprised that no one's mentioned Lace. I love their Deathbuckers.

I like those, but I actually prefer the drop and gains myself, though I keep wanting to make a full hollow with deathbuckers. It would weigh next to nothing if done right.

 

[LLL]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

The Bareknuckle VHII. I can get within 99.5% of the Van Halen 1st album "brown sound" with it.

and..

Callaham H/SRV single coils. They're just... awesome.

Talk is poop without clips; here's 2 examples:

Bareknuckle VHII:

Runnin' With The Devil

Callaham H/SRVs:

play/download the "Ariel.mp3" file (Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow)

 

[HALENisking]

Re: What non-Duncan and non-Dimarzio brands of pick ups have you tried and really...

The Bareknuckle VHII. I can get within 99.5% of the Van Halen 1st album "brown sound" with it.

and..

Callaham H/SRV single coils. They're just... awesome.



Talk is poop without clips; here's 2 examples:


Bareknuckle VHII:

Runnin' With The Devil

Callaham H/SRVs:

play/download the "Ariel.mp3" file (Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow)

Sounds killer! Your VHII and my EVH franky pickup should have a battle to the death, it would be brutal! :18: