Worst pups you ever used

Re: Worst pups you ever used

The factory Epiphone 57CH pickups in my dot were terrible. The guitar had the same pickup in neck and bridge position (label on the back said "Les Paul Neck/Dot neck & bridge"). I replaced them with JB/Jazz combo which were great but were later donated to another guitar.

When I ripped off the nickel covers to make them a splittable pickup I damaged the windings on a coil of one of them, so I turned it into a single coil with another dead coil beside it. Hooked that up in the neck of the dot and it is honestly one of the sweetest sounding pickups I have ever played.

The good thing about terrible pups is you can experiment with them and not care if you destroy them.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

Zacker said:
List the worst pups you used and explain why.
I'll start: Epiphone Alnico Classic pickups, they are very bad. Honky mids, muddy bass and very little treble.
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Gibson's P-94.

Looks good but sounds the most clunky of any pickup I tried.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

I don't think there are genuinely a lot of bad pickups out there, even though many, or most, are cheaply made. Coca Cola is cheap but it still tastes amazing. The main problem, IMO, is when you get a cheap pickup that happened to be made badly. When you buy a premium pickup like SD, a major part of the appeal is an assurance of consistency you won't get from low cost pickup suppliers. Therefore, some of my favorites have been cheap, and some of the worst were the most expensive. My favorite pickups are the stock AlNiCo's that cam with my MIJ '69 Tele reissue, while my least favorite are definitely the Little Pearly Gates. I took them out and gave them away.

Stock AlNiCo's tend to be good when they're made properly. A fully charged A5 with a medium wound coil seems to be the most popular recipe, for cheap and expensive pickup models alike. As long as the manufacture doesn't screw things up somehow, the pickups should sound decent enough.
 
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Re: Worst pups you ever used

EMG 81. I had it in a BC Rich Warlock (of course) when I was a teen. My gear was crap but the EMG still sounded like a synthesizer set to a 'Distorted guitar' patch.

Actually, I can't think of a single musician/band whose tone got better when they went from passives to EMG 81's.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

Stratman said:
Nope, I clearly said I generally don't care for Duckbuckers.

Not worse or better, just don't like.

It about the same as people who make stupid comments about "Chibson fakes" when they don't actually know what they are talking about....

Gibsun hahah What a tool!
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Did you actually think that would cause ANYBODY problems to read? Ijit...
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

Early 90s epi stock pups... They just sound bad.
Its funny people have mentioned a few pups I actually like..emg81, bcrich pups... It just goes to show that different people like different things. I bet a lot of it has to do with its application.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

Back in the day, I had a late '60s-early '70s Gibson ES-150DCN, and I never could get a decent tone out of those humbuckers, except through a Fender amp, and even they were marginal. The guitar had other problems, but it was the poor tone that finally made me dump it. Grainy top end, muddy bottom, awful for chording. Turned me off of Gibson humbuckers for a LONG time.

Bill
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

p4vl said:
EMG 81. I had it in a BC Rich Warlock (of course) when I was a teen. My gear was crap but the EMG still sounded like a synthesizer set to a 'Distorted guitar' patch.

Actually, I can't think of a single musician/band whose tone got better when they went from passives to EMG 81's.
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EMGs are a love or hate thing... some adore them and some really can't stand them. i don't think you can really say the 81 is a bad pickup because for specific genres this pickup can really shine and prove its qualities, most modern metal and todays "heavy music" is based on the emg81, it is really a matter of taste.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

The absolute worst commercial pickup I ever had the chance to play was the PJ Marx Jeff Watson signature model humbucker. The sample I had was so microphonic - despite being fully epoxied - that even medium gain/medium volume playing would have been impossible.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

Ptolemaeus said:
Worst pickups I've used personally is a tie between the stock ones that came in my PRS SE and the stock bridge pup that was in my Vintage Modified Stratocaster.

The stock PRS were too muddy under high gain, which is what I predominately play through. No definition. They weren't all that bad for a not as driven sound, but I bought the guitar for really heavy stuff, so I swapped in a Mayhem set. Looking for a different neck pup, though. The Distortion neck is good, but I'm looking for something a bit less output with a fatter, more fluid sound.

The bridge pup on the Strat was almost unusable. It was waaaay to trebly and harsh. I don't know what was up with it. Swapped in a Cool Rails bridge and haven't looked back. The middle and neck pups are pretty good, though, so I kept them as is. I might swap the neck for a single coil sized humbucker later, but I'm satisfied with it for now.
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Try putting an RCA4 in that Distortion neck. You'll get the sound that you're after.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

Demanic said:
Try putting an RCA4 in that Distortion neck. You'll get the sound that you're after.
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Nah, I tried mag swapping and went through the Alnico range...still wasn't what I was after. I'm just gonna throw an A2Pro or a PGn in it and be done.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

PizzaMaker said:
The factory Epiphone 57CH pickups in my dot were terrible. The guitar had the same pickup in neck and bridge position (label on the back said "Les Paul Neck/Dot neck & bridge"). I replaced them with JB/Jazz combo which were great but were later donated to another guitar.
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YES!



I had exactly the same pickups in my Dot, and they were horrible. Just a dead sounding pickup, very woofy in the neck. They're the reason I found this place.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

Sometimes, the worst pickup I ever used became the best pickup I ever used, when I put it in the right guitar.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

For me I've owned 2 Strats with Lace Sensors. I just couldn't bond with either one, and they are both gone. I had an early Strat Plus, and a Clapton, both with the gold set. They weren't horrible, they just weren't for me. No hum. Zero squeal. They had their good points, but I didn't like the tone. I have a friend that is a far better player than me. He has the holy grail set of Lace pups in one of his Strats he uses for gigs. He has great tone, and he makes them sound pretty good. But I think he can make a $100 Korean guitar through a pignose amp sound good. The title of the thread is "worst". I won't say that. I will say they aren't for me. I've tried them, and I know this type of pickup just not for me. EMG's as well. Same thing. I don't dig the tone.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

In some of my guitars, the Epi 57/HotCH sound great, in others, not so much. Depends on the guitar. The worst sounding pickup i've encountered other than the ceramic ones in a Squier Affinity would be the Classic vibe tele bridge pickup. Tried for a year to get a good sound out of it, finally gave it away. (Yeah, that was mean, i know). For least inspiring, most bland, boring pickups, my vote goes to the Select By EMG.
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

Worst pickup I ever used was a DiMarzio (not sure what model) that I found on a sidewalk in the Denver area. Serious magnet damage meant basically no sound from the B string and a TON of low end. Very muddy and generally as bad as I've ever encountered. I installed it in a free LP ripoff that was given to me without any pickups. The terrible guitar and terrible pickup were a fantastic match!
 
Re: Worst pups you ever used

that's a tough one, basically every single coil on the market ( especially the fender made crapola), some ( if not all) of the bc rich pups made since 98, there are also a few sd and dimaezio pickups on the list but i cant for the life of me remember what model they were ROFL
 
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