Help Me Choose Some Humbuckers!

[bratfink]

Can you still get the old Jackson pickups made?

I have a set of J-90's in a soloist with a JE-1200 circuit, sounds great with distortion, really agressive. Then the pickup selector allows me to select the outer or inner coils of the humbuckers so I can get a really nice single coil sound for playing clean blues etc.

[stgabriel]

Great question on Jackson pickups. I haven't seen any in new guitars -- only the Seyomour Duncans.

[surfreak]

Whatever you choose, don't ruin your guitar with EMG's, please.

Given the choice of woods, which is also my preferred choice tonewise, I'd go with SD Custom 5 for the bridge, and SD Jazz for the neck.

If you want a more aggressive, brighter bridge tone you also can't really go wrong with a SD JB.

[toejam]

Whatever you choose, don't ruin your guitar with EMG's, please.

Given the choice of woods, which is also my preferred choice tonewise, I'd go with SD Custom 5 for the bridge, and SD Jazz for the neck.

If you want a more aggressive, brighter bridge tone you also can't really go wrong with a SD JB.

Why would EMGs ruin it? And as far as the JB, that thing is highly overrated... it's all treble and high mids, lacking bass. Blech!!

[BTB007]

Tone Zone for bridge.
Air Norton or The Breed for neck.

[surfreak]

Why would EMGs ruin it? And as far as the JB, that thing is highly overrated... it's all treble and high mids, lacking bass. Blech!!

Because in my experience they work well exclusively in full blast high gain mode. They are by design "toneless", I've had EMG's on guitars that had very different construction/wood type/scale/hardware features, and they all sounded exactly the same.

I partly agree with you on the JB, in a "bedroom" situation it does sound harsh. In a band situation however, that's what makes it cut through the mix.

[toejam]

They're not toneless. If they were, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the warmer 85 with an alnico magnet and the brighter 81 with a ceramic magnet. They do sound different in every guitar due to the woods... they're just more consistent in their tone.

[Rich#6]

1. EMG 81/85
2. SD's Distortion/Jazz
3. Dimarzio Tone Zone/Air Norton
are my 3 choices

[mm2002]

Another EMG vote here. 81 in the bridge, 89 in the neck. Best of all worlds.

[shreddermon]

How about this...

Neck: Dimarzio PAF Pro DP151
Bridge: Dimarzio Super 3 DP152

I like those choices, except I'd go with the PAF instead of PAF Pro. IMHO, the EQ of the Pro-version is too flat across the board. The Pro sounded like an EMG (i.e, crap) in my GMP. :P

[RacerX]

Duncan Distortion/Jazz

or


Custom/Jazz