I was wrong.
For years I trashed these pickups as sounding muddy. I mistook the ProBucker for the muddy ceramic pickups I’ve had in most of my previous Epiphones. I like the ProBucker pickups a lot. Ah, but I’ve given way the ending. Let’s do the review thingie…
The Good
I have an Epiphone ProBucker 3 in the bridge position of my Epiphone Les Pau, and an Epiphone ProBucker 2 in the neck position. The 3 is hotter, and I prefer a slightly less-hot pickup for that classic rock crunch sound, but the 3 in the bridge is the standard config and I didn’t want to mislead anyone when I made the video. Here’s the link to the video I made on these pickups:
Epiphone ProBucker Pickups Review
My benchmark pickup is the Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates. Compared to the PG, the ProBucker is hotter and more aggressive. It’s very tempting to always choose the “hotter” pickup in a direct shootout, but the ProBucker really does compare favorably to the PG. It’s a good choice for classic rock crunch and it’s a great choice for slightly heavier stuff. It’s hard to describe – watch the video, and you’ll actually hear it. What a concept!
Here’s even better news – you can buy a set of ProBucker pickups direct from Epiphone for $150 as I type this (7/19/21.) To my mind, if you want that rock sound and you have only $150 to spend on both pickups, look no further. I’m thinking about buying another set myself. In the past, Epiphone didn’t sell them directly. Now they do. Disclaimer – at some point in the future, they might take them down or change the link, so search the Epiphone website if the above link doesn’t work.
The Bad
If you buy these pickups for anything other than an Epiphone guitar, expect to clip off the plastic wiring clips and figure out which wire does what. That’s not terrible. It’s not even that bad. I’m a fan of these pickups.
The Ugly
The truth is that you can buy these pickups on the eBay black market for half of what Epiphone is charging, but you won’t know if you’re getting real pickups or fake pickups. If you want to gamble your money, look on eBay for ProBuckers that have Epiphone’s proprietary plastic clips on them. If they don’t have the clips, they’re fakes. If they DO have the clips, they might be real. But, I mean, for $150 a pair for the real pickups, you might as well not gamble.
Conclusion
If you own an older Epiphone Les Paul that came with some Epiphone Classic Alnico Mudbuckers, you might consider spending $150 on a set of ProBucker pickups. It’s a fairly inexpensive way to upgrade your guitar. But check your connectors first – if your guitar doesn’t use the QuickConnect ends, it won’t be an easy upgrade – you’ll have to solder and all that stuff.
