Chris Metcalfe
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- May 1, 2008
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Any other Artist Award owners have experience of changing the pickups? these pickups get a fairly bad rap in many circles, and I know some people change them out. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's done this, and with what results. My own view at the moment is that the pickup is OK ( certainly not great) for a floater - a bit thin on top, and certainly with poor string balance, but not unuseable with the right amp settings. I gather from a previous post that the pickups were designed to sound like DeArmonds, anyway, which might well account for the thinner sound. This is not Guild single coil as in Franz, it's far too polite for that.......
For anyone who's interested, these are humbuckers that are specially designed to sound like single-coils. They are made with a long bar magnet in the middle, surrounded by two humbucking air coils which each touch the bar magnet on one side only, which means that the pickup is humbucking, but only senses the sound from one single point, in the middle, like a single coil. The whole thing is then filled with what looks like solidified chicken soup, or worse. It measures about 4k resistance ( like a filtertron - again, thin-sounding) At the risk of being even more geekish, I can share with you all that these are almost exactly the same pups that were used on heritage jazz guitars - only the casing is different. Didn't one of the heritage founders work for guild at one time?
Anyway I'd like to hear anyone's experience, if anyone has any! I'd have much rather had a DeArmond on it, but the AA is otherwise such a great guitar that you put up with these details..and who is going to pay ebay dearmond prices? not me..
thanks
Chris
For anyone who's interested, these are humbuckers that are specially designed to sound like single-coils. They are made with a long bar magnet in the middle, surrounded by two humbucking air coils which each touch the bar magnet on one side only, which means that the pickup is humbucking, but only senses the sound from one single point, in the middle, like a single coil. The whole thing is then filled with what looks like solidified chicken soup, or worse. It measures about 4k resistance ( like a filtertron - again, thin-sounding) At the risk of being even more geekish, I can share with you all that these are almost exactly the same pups that were used on heritage jazz guitars - only the casing is different. Didn't one of the heritage founders work for guild at one time?
Anyway I'd like to hear anyone's experience, if anyone has any! I'd have much rather had a DeArmond on it, but the AA is otherwise such a great guitar that you put up with these details..and who is going to pay ebay dearmond prices? not me..
thanks
Chris