Dandolin wrote:do eet almost all the Alumitone haters i've evar have been tan pants wearers - they're actually a lot of fun, and once you move off the idea that you need to replicate old tones, they're a great way to find new tones. fwiw, i def like mine with the Virus (not that's it's any slouch w/ Haxan (Snaxan))
I'm going to put it in my Fallout. Won't mix with the neck p90 at all I'm sure, and I'll lose the beloved coil tap, but that's ok!
coupleonapkins wrote:
Also, thanks for the info about the pickup height, which literally eggplains this otherwise erratica:
no problem, it makes a huge difference. was something i discovered out of frustration initially thinking 'why do these sound so muffled and washed out?' at normal pickup heights. thought to myself might as well try to raise them super close to the strings and see what happens before i get rid of them, and immediately they opened up, the difference being night and day. way back when i first tried them out, there wasn't really any info online suggesting this, so i am sure tons of people (at least back then) probably threw them out due to not knowing about how high you really need to push them up to the strings to get them to do their super detailed hi fi thing. definitely not a sound or feeling for playing that everyone will love, but if its something you love, then you love it a lot.
i haven't played them myself, but know people who use them and have heard them. to reinforce what other folks have said, they're wonderful for super clean tones. they'd be brilliant for the early Bill Frisell approach where he was repurposing ideas from the pedal steel vocabulary. i'm the opposite of an ultra-clean pickups guy, so they're totally unsuited for me other than in some special application like a 12-string, dulcimer, or mandolin-family instrument. but if you want "pretty," they're 100% that.
i know a guy in Indiana who commissioned an all-aluminum Strat before aluminum guitars became a huge thing. aluminum body, hollow aluminum neck and fingerboard, and obviously silver Alumitones. it was unearthly.
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
FIFTY YEARS OF SCARING THE CHILDREN 1970-2020--and i'm not done yet
Yep - I’ve got'em, and I def prefer their clean tones and very slightly pushed stuff to higher gain stuff. The cleans are amazing, though, and the comparison to early Bill Frisell and pedal steel tones is apt. I could see why someone who was interested in very tight higher gain tones might also like them for that, but when I gain it up I prefer fuzzzzz in all it's dripping glory, so horses for courses....
I stuck some in an ES335 style guitar once, and I did not like that jawn, clean or no, so it's def possible to get a poor matchup tonally - I tend to like them more in Fendery type builds
"In a moment of unparalleled genius, Noel Parachute headed off this potential disaster by unplugging the microphone."
almost all the Alumitone haters i've evar have been tan pants wearers - they're actually a lot of fun, and once you move off the idea that you need to replicate old tones, they're a great way to find new tones. fwiw, i def like mine with the Virus (not that's it's any slouch w/ Haxan (Snaxan))
I'm going to put it in my Fallout. Won't mix with the neck p90 at all I'm sure, and I'll lose the beloved coil tap, but that's ok!
