Official Luthiers Forum!

howdy everybody, im thinking about building myself a semi hollow body electric kinda like an es335, but i am really not sure what pickups i should put in it though. i have always played heavier stuff until recently and trying to get anything but death out of emg 81 and 85 pickups is pretty tough but emgs are pretty much all i am familiar with. i would like to still get some descent drive but i want something bright and with descent cleans and stuff. i really just dont know much about pickups and i was wondering if anyone had some good suggestions of reasonably priced pickups i could look into.

~shad

I prefer hand wound pickups myself.

For a great sound you could try Gibson 59 classic neck and 59 classic plus bridge.

Another combo would be Seymour Duncan Seth Lover Humbuckers in the neck and bridge, sweet.

And finally if you have a little extra cashola, try Jason Lollar Imperial Humbuckers, double sweet.

I am sure others will chime in, pickups are like childre, "who's your favorite".

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Ken

Seymour Duncan sells a set of pickups called their hot-rodded humbucker set. It has an SH4 JB in the bridge and an SH2 Jazz in the neck. Great sounding pickups that'll do just about anything you want, from rock to country, jazz to blues, etc. As an example, I have them in my main guitar. I play a lot of classic and modern rock, but I also use this guitar really clean in church playing contemporary worship as well as old fashioned hymns. It sounds great and I get lots of complements on my sound. These are pretty much my "go to" pickups anymore. Around $130 for the set and hard to beat, IMHO.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

thanks mike, that sounds like just what i need, i havent played a lot of electric for a while now, but i am going to start helping out with my churhces worship service some and when i went to get my guit-fiddle i quickly realized that the 81-85 combo is not gonna cut it lol. sounds like the price is right too.

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~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Mike,

Thanks for pointing this out. I think this sounds like a great combo especially with the spit coil in the bridge option.

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Ken

Ken, I've never split the SH4, but have read on several forums that it sounds great in split form.
I just know I really love the combo SD put together on these.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

One of my favorite sets is the Distortion Mayhem set from Seymour Duncan. Despite the name this is a very versatile set of pickups capable of being very clean, full, bright, and punchy. Set them slightly further from the pickup and they sound better to me than a lower output pickup set closer to the strings.
I don't usually split my humbuckers, I think they sound thin and brittle as single coils. I run them in parallel humbucking mode instead. Sounds very similar to a single coil yet is hum cancelling and with a slight mid bump as compared to simply splitting the humbucker. Of course, you can get all three series/coil split/parallel with a single on-on-on DPDT mini toggle switch.

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Old growth, shmold growth!