Your Favorite electric guitar pickups
 

What are your favorite electric guitar pickups? It may differ from guitar to guitar. Although I don't think I have a favorite, the Seymour Duncan '59 is a great rocker and with an OD can get into '80s metal too.

I bought a 2016 Gibson Les Paul Standard back in June and I was shocked at how much I liked the Gibson Burstbuckers in it. I thought I was going to replace the pickups until I played it - sounds amazing.

Hey Dru!

Fender '52 Reissue Telecaster (1983) - Joe Barden pickups. My go to recording electric for leads.

Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster - Lindy Fralin set.

1973 Gibson Les Paul - DiMarzio Super Distortion in the bridge and DiMarzio PAF in the neck.

Lace Sensor Golds.........

My favorite pickup is the '57 Classic humbucker from Gibson. I've pairs of those in two instruments, an ES-335 and an SG. Those pickup are just so articulate and add such character in bends. One of the two pairs sports a '57 Classic Plus in the bridge position so the two pairs are a bit different as well.

Bob

I've never played Barden or Fralin pickups before but I've read great things about them. I do have a DiMarzio SD / PAF Pro set in my Dean Hardtail Select (import, not USA). Great pickups. I have another SD in a Les Paul Clone also. Something about a Les Paul and a SD.

dru: as with all of my equipment, i don't really have a favorite pickup. i have two strats with similar pickups but i've got the guitars set up differently including one set of pickups fairly high and one set fairly low. i do also love humbuckers and have an 82 les paul that sounds great as well as two rks dave mason guitars with dimarzio humbuckers with split coil positions. also, p90 pickups in some of my es125s that are a little noisy but real crunchy. last, but not least, is an epiphone casino with the mini humbucker type that sound real good.

i have an original gold foil that i'd like to pair with a supro string thru for a coodercaster type guitar.

yes, i sure didn't answer your question but i got to elaborate. ha!

play music!

How, exactly, do you discern the abilities of one pickup over another? I've always been a little puzzled by this, as it's seemingly impossible to do an exact a/b comparison given all the other variables involved. Any swap-out necessarily involves at least a passage of time between hearing 'a', then hearing 'b', and memory, especially for sound, is far from perfect - not to mention the confirmation bias involved.

That being said, the electric guitar pickups that I've experienced that do the most for me, are the Rickenbacker HB-1s in my 650D. Never played them in another guitar, and have never experienced this guitar with other pickups - but there's just something about the way they respond to my touch that I've never experienced with any other guitar. It's clearly more than just the pickups, but I still maintain that these have something special.

Ain't science great?

Hey Bob, I have a pair of '57 Classics in my Les Paul Standard Plus. Nice pickups. I've done a lot of reading on forums on Gibson pickups over the years and that seems to be the Gibson pickup that are preferred by many.

What's your experience with the '57 Classic Plus. It's just slightly hotter. Can you tell much of a difference? I've never played one.

Well when I replaced the pickups in my Strat and Tele with the Lace Sensors the difference was obvious from the first chord, the pickups were waaay hotter and sounded much better immediately. No regrets.

I make my own humbuckers. The formula which seems to work best for me is uncovered, unpotted and vintage (low) output somewhere in the region of 5,000 turns of wire per coil with offset coils.

Low-output humbuckers don't have enough turns of wire to split well so I'll also add a custom option which combines one whole coil and 2-3,000 turns of wire from the other.

I'll try out a bunch of different magnets in a new pickup: A2, A3, A4, A5. Most likely I'll choose A2.

Like a lot of people who take up pickup-winding, I found that it only took a few tries before I could turn out good pickups that I'd want to keep. This isn't a difficult skill to learn.

In chronological order of release:

• DeArmond Rhythm Chief 1000/1100 "monkey-on-a-stick" archtop pickup
• '50s Gibson P-90
• '50s Gretsch (DeArmond) Dynasonic
• Gretsch PAF Filter'tron
• Gibson Firebird mini-bucker ('63-65 first-run)
• '60s Epiphone (Kalamazoo)/Gibson Johnny Smith mini-bucker
• '80s Yamaha tappable single-coil (exclusive to their SSC-500 model TMK)
• Gretsch Super Hi-Lo'tron (current MIK production)

As my style tends toward the cleaner side of things overall I've always been able to get whatever tones I'm after from the above, through any good amp, without the need to resort to aftermarket/custom-wound pickups...

I like the strat Fender CS Fat 50s pickups quite a lot. For tele I'm actually really liking the Fender CS Vintage Noiseless set.

For humbuckers, I like Seth Lovers and black top filtertrons.

I record my guitar right before I change pickups, and then right after, using the same rig, amplifier and microphone, in the same spot. Then I a/b the recorded tracks! That's scientific enough for me!

Favorite pickups I've owned:
Fralin P-90 set (5% over bridge, 10% under neck)
Fralin Strat Blues Specials
Rio Grande S-90 (discontinued, MAYBE the same as their current Dirty Harry)
Duncan '59
Gibson Classic 57 w/ nickel cover
DeArmond 2k

GAS:
Duncan P-Rails (already have a guitar, just saving for the pups)
Lollar Regals
Fender Big Dippers

TV Jones Classics