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I'm thinking about changing at least the neck pickup, or both pickups, of my Epiphone 58 korina ltd ed blah blah Flying V. It's got an «Alnico Classic™ humbucker» and an «Alnico Classic Plus™», both of which are sort of OK.

Here's the highlights of what I'm doing with my guitar:
* Nick Drake-y fingerpicking but with reverb & delay so the sustained notes sound sort of Sigur Rós-y
* Open chords swirly soaring The Pine-y (but usually slowed down) stuff
* Bass+rhythm+lead in one, either fingerpicked or with those open chords—i.e. percussive playing with sustained open chords that let me fill in the space with lead stuff in between the open chord strums; fret-thumb on bass duties
* Sheer MBV holocaust noise
* MONO-y post rock tremolo wank
* Ambient stuff with lots of reverb & delay
* Roland JC
* Chrome flat-wound strings (wound 3rd), .11-.50.
* MXR Distortion+ for mild distortion, Digitech Death Metal for medium distortion, Danelectro Fab Tone for GWAAAHHHHHHHH
* Enough reverb and delay pedals to get made fun of by punk rock purists
* Very seldom (almost never) modulators like phasing/chorus/flanging/&c.
* Example of some of this: https://www.facebook.com/galleriznedi/v ... =3&theater

Here's what I want to improve on the current pickups:
* Muddy—even non-distorted into a JC it's real hard to hear any nuance that's clearly there acoustically
* Mid-heavy—the DFA of my DADFAD are much louder more or less no matter what I do, especially the F
* It seems like the frequency range is rather low.

What I want in new pickups:
* Much more definition than my current pickups. I wanna play those cool licks I pull of acoustically with even more open chords—e.g. closing only one string, and, you know, actually being able to hear that note would be nice.
* A very rounded and evenly distributed sound, but tending somewhat towards the warm side, like Nick Drake's acoustic sound.
* High frequency range.

Basically I just want my guitar to sound as similar as possible through my JC as played acoustically, because it sounds gorgeous acoustically, smokes all other solidbodies that I've played extensively.

(Should note that I have pretty much no clue about pickups whatsoever. I mean, I know how they work and so on, but I don't know anything about *specific* pickups.)

epiphone pickups are kind of sucky. it sounds like you want nots-so-hot, clear sounding humbuckers. find someone making decent PAF replicas and buy a set.

So, apologies if this is a dumb question, but, do you need to change all the electronics & so on if you put in PAF? I see that that various DiMarzio PAFs are apparently aplenty here.

you shouldn't have to. it might not be a bad idea, though, depending on how good the stock wiring/pots/switch are; some Epis are decent in this regard, some decidedly not (Wildkats are notoriously cheesy this way). but most if not all passive humbuckers that aren't wired with 4 conductors for coil splitting should be interchangeable wiring-wise.

Dimarzio makes a nice PAF, as does Lundgren.

MechaGodzilla wrote:epiphone pickups are kind of sucky. it sounds like you want nots-so-hot, clear sounding humbuckers. find someone making decent PAF replicas and buy a set.

I much prefer the neck to the bridge on my guitar, and according to Epiphone the bridge pickup ("Plus") is hotter, so this makes sense to me. They're also supposed to be "PAF-sounding" though.

dubkitty wrote:you shouldn't have to. it might not be a bad idea, though, depending on how good the stock wiring/pots/switch are; some Epis are decent in this regard, some decidedly not (Wildkats are notoriously cheesy this way). but most if not all passive humbuckers that aren't wired with 4 conductors for coil splitting should be interchangeable wiring-wise.

All right. I have no idea how to even establish whether mine has decent electronics. I have this one:
http://www.epiphone.com/Products/Design ... ing-V.aspx (at least I'm pretty sure I do)

goroth wrote:Dimarzio makes a nice PAF, as does Lundgren.

All right. There's certainly Dimarzio around here. Dunno which ones would fit me the best however. Any suggestions?

Going off of Dimarzio's probably at least somewhat arbitrary tone rating thing, the 59 pickups sound good in theory. But they're kinda expensive, so I wouldn't wanna buy them on a whim either.

Try writing to their customer service. It's been a while since I spoke with them, but they've always been pretty good I reckon. Never played the 59 in one of my own guitars, but I dug it. I'm not a super PAF expert though.

What about the Seymour Duncan 59? Jónsi from Sigur Rós uses that, and I think their sound is much closer to my mark than the slew of Fender post rock bands out there.

Also, the DiMarzio pickup picker suggested as follows,

neck:
The Humbucker From Hell® - DP156
PAF JoeTM - DP213
PAF® 36th Anniversary Neck - DP103

bridge:
D ActivatorTM Bridge - DP220
D ActivatorTM Neck - DP219
PAF® 36th Anniversary Bridge - DP223

It sounds like you might want to look into Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers. Well rounded pickups with a slightly warm tone. And they bring out the acoustic sound.
The 59's also seem like a good option for what your'e looking for.

VREEEEVROOOOOW wrote:

MechaGodzilla wrote:epiphone pickups are kind of sucky. it sounds like you want nots-so-hot, clear sounding humbuckers. find someone making decent PAF replicas and buy a set.

I much prefer the neck to the bridge on my guitar, and according to Epiphone the bridge pickup ("Plus") is hotter, so this makes sense to me. They're also supposed to be "PAF-sounding" though.

unless they've gotten better since my early 2000s g400 "vintage", which allegedly had "proper" (ie not ceramic) pickups, then there's still a good deal of room for improvement in the epiphone PAF-type department

VREEEEVROOOOOW wrote:

dubkitty wrote:you shouldn't have to. it might not be a bad idea, though, depending on how good the stock wiring/pots/switch are; some Epis are decent in this regard, some decidedly not (Wildkats are notoriously cheesy this way). but most if not all passive humbuckers that aren't wired with 4 conductors for coil splitting should be interchangeable wiring-wise.

All right. I have no idea how to even establish whether mine has decent electronics. I have this one:
http://www.epiphone.com/Products/Design ... ing-V.aspx (at least I'm pretty sure I do)

ahh this is the all korina V you mentioned in another thread, right? it might be good to post a picture of the control cavity next time the strings are off to see how good the guts are. one would hope that a limited edition model would have decent parts but you never know!

The strings are never off. I'd have to remove them for this purpose, heh. But surely someone has posted them online somewhere. The ltd ed is a lot better than the regular with respects to wood at least. The regular ones are "korina", whereas mine's actually korina. So here's hoping.

looking at it, you could probably get the guard off without removing the strings

In my experience humbuckers and non-muddy tones almost always seem mutually exclusive. Maybe a humbucker-sized P90 like the Seymour Duncan Phat Cats? I've heard/read good things about them.

I've considered P90s too. DiMarzio has some. This is a humbucker cover one: https://www.dimarzio.com/pickups/soap-b ... cker-cover

oscillofuzz wrote:In my experience humbuckers and non-muddy tones almost always seem mutually exclusive. Maybe a humbucker-sized P90 like the Seymour Duncan Phat Cats? I've heard/read good things about them.

i don't agree that humbuckers always equal dull mud... but yeah, there are brighter drop-in options. most fascinating to me would be the OIL CITY WINTERISER II. humbucker-sized firebird pickups. bright and clear as heck, no hum.