I have a Samick Greg Bennett Avion AV3 (Les Paul body, same make except tonally sucky pickups)... I've been playing this guitar for the past 10 months and am thinking of upgrading its pickups.. I am mostly into hard rock, blues rock and shred metal... For the neck puickup, I'm going with Alnico II pro.. My problem is the bridge pickup... Here are the specs I desire on it: - First and foremost, it should be very articulate and clear sounding. I don't want notes to superpose and the buzz of open strings and eliminate hums and noise as much as possible. Notes should sound distinct while sweep picking at a high gain. - Secondly, it should be GOOD FOR RIFFING and adapt well to distortion. I want harmonics to sound clearly. - Thidly, tonally it SHOULD sound fat and warm. I know most bridge pickups are made to deliver sharp, knife edged and thin tone but that's not what I'm after... Well these are all... Out here in my city, we have very few options on pickups and very common ones are put up for sale... There are few opportunities available to actually test these pickups and we mostly have to order them online... So I'm relying on you guys to give me good options... Thanks in advance SO far I've narrowed down to thes pups: - SEYMOUR DUNCAN JB - SEYMOUR DUNCAN DISTORTION - DIMARZIO TONE ZONE I'd like you to guys to give your views on the above pups and if they would suit my specs or not. Any other suggestions are welcome. And yeah, I'm not a big fan of active pickups....
What's you rig? I mean pedal/processor/amp? Tone depends on your overall rig, so depending on the pickup solely for desired sound is not a good idea... The options you have listed are all good.. Since you can't test the pickup before buying you have to rely on youtube videos and take a call.. All the best !
What Amplifier/Processor/Pedals do u use? A lot will depend upon this too...Rather than changing the pickups i wud suggest review ur gear first..Coz AV3 has pretty decent pickups..I had played one through a Line 6 Floor Pod and the distortion was Amazing!!!
I use a Boss ME 25 mostly... Other than that I have a boss DS1, a digitech bad monkey and digitech delay pedal.... As for the amp, I have a Roland Cube 20
Yes, actually it was the pick of all the guitars at my budget (15-20k) when I bought it... It had a killer sustain and a better tone than all the others... But the problem with its pickups are that they are not articulate and clear enough. The notes superpose against each other and the noise gets real ugly at high gain. Also the harmonics doesn't sound too well either....
Anyways, if you guys had to choose between these 3 pickups, which one would you have gone for keeping in mind a warm and fat tone with good clarity at high gain?
I have heard reviews that SD Distortion has a thin and compressed sound. Is that true? Have you tried it?
There's nothing thin sounding about the Super Distortion. It's EQ curve is B8/M7/T5. It does sound fizzy however. It's a bit dated since it was first released in 70's, so according to current standards its output is not as high as you'd expect for a modern high output humbucker. But for Classic Rock era sounds that pickup sounds great. The tone Zone has more gain than the DP100 & can very well be used for Rhythm playing as well. None of those would be my first choice for modern metal though. Among the SD choices you listed, the Duncan Distortion is the one to get if you are after mostly metal oriented sounds. It's also comparable to the Super Distortion gainwise, supposedly has more gain that it but sounds smoother. Both DiMarzio & Duncan have pickup selector tools on their website, it would be worth trying those out to get more options for your style. Personally I feel at this stage, new pickups will help to make your guitar sound clearer, but not necessarily tonally better. That's considering your whole signal chain at the moment, so be aware of this while upgrading them.
