There’s so much snake oil in the electric guitar business that it’s hard to tell fact from fiction. I’ve been playing electric guitar for over 30 years. I’ve played almost everything. I collect guitars. So my opinion matters a great deal. Not really! You should always use your own ears when judging things. But you should also realize that all of this is super subjective. And what you think now might change in a year.
Up until a couple of years ago, I hated P90 pickups. They were single coiled so they hum like crazy when you try to distort them. Useless. Who would want to deal with that hum, when you can use a humbucker? Thing is, I’d never actually played one. And now we arrive at the entire point of this post – before you think you can judge a pickup, play one, on a great guitar, into a great amp.
So what changed my mind? Watching Phil X get an amazing tone from a P90. Yeah, they hum. But the sound he got was amazing. I became interested. When I saw a Gibson Les Paul 50’s Tribute used for $499 at Guitar Center, I thought “Well, here’s my chance to try out some P90’s.” I plugged it into a Marshall combo. The neck felt a bit fat, but it wasn’t too bad. I started playing it, and there was the sound. The sound I’d heard from Phil X. The sound of classic rock. I did not let that guitar leave my hands until I had it up to the register. And when I want crunch tone in a recording, I reach for the P90’s.
But there are other tones to be had, and I have them. Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates, for that PAF humbucker sweet singing distortion. DiMarzio Super Distortion pickup for that shitty Ace Frehley sound.* Texas Special pickups in one Strat, Tex-Mex in the other. GFS low cost Alnico II pickups for a different flavor of distortion, similar to a PAF sound. Dirty Fingers for extreme overdrive, or for when I need to hear each individual note in a distorted chord.
But I have a new holy grail pickup on my radar, and it’s called the Shawbucker. Right now you can’t buy them. You can only get them in a new American Strat. But eventually they’ll be available one way or another. It’s the best humbucker in a Strat sound I’ve ever heard and I want one ever so badly. It snarls but it’s funkier than hell.
And, truth be told, I could use some nice underwound Strat pickups that emphasize the bell-like tones. I have some GFS Strat pickups that are underwound. They’re OK, but they don’t have the kind of character I’m looking for.
My take on pickups? They’re like seasoning. What does the music recipe call for? I wrote the guitar riff for my song “Omnipotent” about 8 years ago, but never had a guitar sound that really nailed what I wanted. Until the P90’s, which nailed the sound in my head perfectly. When performing, I wouldn’t dream of bringing P90’s. They’re too noisy in the real world, and the louder your guitar is the less people will hear subtle differences in tone.
Not useful enough? OK. The stereotypes of pickups are mostly true. Alnico II magnets are smooth sounding, Alnico V magnets are more gritty. Ceramic pickups are used when builders want to make super loud metal pickups, or when they want to save money. Ceramic magnets are great in loud pickups – they just are. But in quieter pickups, if you see ceramic magnets, it’s likely meh.
P90 pickups are smooth when clean and gritty when crunched, but you can’t distort them too much because of the noise. Great for AC/DC type crunching, not Satriani type super sustain. GFS pickups are a great value but I find them noisy. Seymour Duncan pickups are a good compromise between quality and value. You can pay more money and get slightly better pickups, but SD usually has a pickup that sounds like what you want. I’m a SD fan.
*Yes, I just slammed Ace Frehley. KISS was my favorite band when I was a teenager. Like many 70’s guitarists, Ace was very good at riffs and not very good at solos. Ace’s best solo ever was in Detroit Rock City, and he didn’t write it. Bob Ezrin did. I will still play some of his KISS riffs at least once a week. Great riffs. I learned to solo, initially, by listening to Ace. Fortunately I moved on to better soloists like Elliot Easton, Brian May, Eddie Van Halen, Ian Bairnson (Alan Parsons Project,) Al Di Meola, Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and on and on and on. But Ace was the guy on the poster on my wall when I was 16. I will always have a soft spot for Ace. But he wasn’t exactly the greatest player and he didn’t really have the greatest tone.
