58/15 Low Turn Pickup Alternatives

What's your opinion of unpotted pickups? Seth Lover's or Antiquity's in particular. I have Seth's in a Heritage and they are as you described, "sweet, warm, and clear".
 
What's your opinion of unpotted pickups? Seth Lover's or Antiquity's in particular. I have Seth's in a Heritage and they are as you described, "sweet, warm, and clear".

I have used both numerous times and I really like them. It has been a while, so I can't remember accurate details - I just remember they were my go-to pickup for a couple of years.
 
Thro-banks are good too. Their Peter Green set is great (pg-102?). They're pricey though.
 
Since last posting here, I confirmed the 58/15 LT coils are NOT unbalanced. I measured mine and each coil was exactly half the total resistance. Mine measured 7.78k bridge and 7.76k neck. Paul in the UK did a pole piece swap on his SC594 and did find some wax, so they're at least lightly potted.

The classic Seymour Duncan 59 set would probably work well. I have also recently become aware of Creamery pickups, and they have a few good lower output sets.
 
Since last posting here, I confirmed the 58/15 LT coils are NOT unbalanced. I measured mine and each coil was exactly half the total resistance. Mine measured 7.78k bridge and 7.76k neck. Paul in the UK did a pole piece swap on his SC594 and did find some wax, so they're at least lightly potted.

The classic Seymour Duncan 59 set would probably work well. I have also recently become aware of Creamery pickups, and they have a few good lower output sets.

Thank you! This is really helpful. I've been looking for info on the DC Resistance for the 58/15 LT and couldn't find it anywhere else.
What's your opinion of unpotted pickups? Seth Lover's or Antiquity's in particular. I have Seth's in a Heritage and they are as you described, "sweet, warm, and clear".
I'm willing to try umpotted pickups. Thank you for your suggestion. I'll look into these.
 
I'm willing to try umpotted pickups. Thank you for your suggestion. I'll look into these.
The Antiquity's are pretty much just like the Seth's except they have been degaussed a little to mimic the aging of a 58 PAF. Some of the strength of the magnets has been taken away which may sweeten them up a little. I had some once but didn't get to keep them long enough to see if I liked them better than the Seth's.
 
I somehow hadn't heard of Electric City before. Looks like some cool stuff.

I feel a bit silly about my last post. I realize now I didn't pay much attention to the math because the coils are indeed slightly unbalanced on my LT set. Bridge is 7.78k total and 3.94 at the series connection, Neck is 7.76k and 3.93, so each pickup has a 100 Ohm difference between coils.
 
Hi, I'm sorry I'm a little late to this discussion.
Hello everybody, my name's Karan & I live in India and I believe I have the answer to what a lot of us on numerous forums have been frantically looking for.

At the start of this ultra wrong rant, Paul if you read this, I probably would not have gone white whale hunting if you could made the 58/15 regular available to the masses or probably make it optional on the 594? I don't know, your the Guru so I cannot argue with what you guys are doing. I truly do believe it's brilliant but it's just missing that small something.

I'm the proud owner of a McCarty 594 Singlecut $16 235108 Goldtop.
If you're like me and love coursing the Sweetwater & other retailer inventory in your bat cave every weekend/free time/anytime, that's the gold top you'll see as the demo model if they don't have one in stock.

I love the guitar and it's everything I expected it to be and more.
However here's a couple of points I wanted to share after having played that guitar exclusively for nearly a year & a half now.


1. Acoustically I have always found it to be the best instrument I've played in the past 20 years
2. I find that at least 5 minutes are spent while my tubes warm up playing it acoustically and I need to remember I'm to put the standby off and start it up
3. The pickups sound excellent but after a while you tend to get bored.

I feel Paul is very right in what he says, Holy Grail tone is different for each player and the 58/15LTs are definately the Holy Grail for a few and might not be for others.
So if it's your sound, please do refrain from bashing me. They are brilliant pickups, just not what I seem to be getting inspired by when I play.

The neck pickup according to me is near perfection @7.5K, however from the moment I plugged in to now I've never felt satisfied on the bridge and here is why.
1. It is, underpowered! even raised all the way close to the strings it fights to create enough drive whereas the neck does it beautifully
2. Although the notes are very clear, supremely articulate at any volume it lacks a minor oomph you need to get your motor runnimg
3. It's brilliantly hollow and thin which is what a PAF is expected to be. Though here's the trouble. it's too much of that! There's a certain lower midrange that's nowhere to be found and a top end that tends to get head slicing. You need some of that to cut in a mix but it's a hair too much
4. Conversely, the neck has a tad too much bottom end, a hair too much top end (but that one might just be me being picky) & a certain lack of mid range in the higher registers

On a separate note, there's a certain shrill glassiness to PRS pickups (barring 57/08s) in general, especially these 58/15LTs that I feel sets very very well in a mix. However if your like me and you don't mind a bit of warmth to the sound that you can alter by using a good boost/overdrive when you need to stand out that extra 5%. They just don't inspire a good play when trying to pour yourself into the instrument at the end of a long day that 1 hour every evening.

After 16 months of regular play, I've decided to do the following & I hope this helps you guys too. I'm certainly hoping it works because it is an experiment ultimately but with the pickups and materials I have used before and know well.
1. I'm changing the bridge to a Bareknuckle Mule @ 8.4K. I've contacted them letting them know what my problem is and how I want a little bit more this & that. Chris Rowberry from there has been been responsive to it
2. In hopes of getting some of that glassiness out, I'm getting the wiring changed to a Jonesyblues historic with Luxe PIO .22 bees. In my experience the capacitor radically changes the feel, warmth and touch sensitivity. I've A/Bd between mallory, PIO, PIW & Poly @.22 before and it makes a difference at least to my ears.
3. I never use a coil tap on the bridge so that's entirely removed but the neck I'm retaining it and Jonesy is wiring that with a 500K push pull. The rest of it is historic spec (don't roll your eyes if you read that Paul, I apologise but it's just me)
4. I've used a Alnico 2 Pro by Seymour Duncan before & a Pearly Gates. I can tell you that this neck is pretty much in the same litter but it's either the golden puppy or the odd spotted one depending on how you see it. So I contemplated just yanking one of them out the other guitars and experimenting with them in the 594 but I'm kind of going custom shop with them & getting a best of 3 between all of them done with PAF materials with a voicing that's around 80% based on the 58/15LT Neck @ 7.5K.

Arwin Hojjati from the custom shop has been just super responsive to me and really gone over my being super picky and chewing their brains out. I'm quite confident the answers to the tone lie in those 3 pickups for me

So go out and experiment with this, I sincerely recommend trying the Mule in the bridge having used it in a guitar I had earlier that I sold off about a year ago. I'm hoping BKP can tweak it a tad to suit me in the 594 bridge. Unless you a stickler like me, the 58/15LT neck is near what perfection is.


Cheers!
Karan.
 
I'd have to agree with Karan on the 5815 bridge pickup. It's the same on the 8515 bridge as well.

I got a set of 8515s pretty cheap a while back. I quickly stuck them in my 2000 mccarty. Immediately I absolutely loved the neck pickup but immediately I wasn't so into the bridge pickup. The 594 I owned for a while was the same.

With the tone rolled down a little bit, the neck pickup sounds fantastic. The cleaner the better.

I notice most of the time I see a guitar with these pickups the bridge is always cranked up in height. I replaced the 8515 bridge with a 5909 bridge and it's much better. I do feel like the 8515 neck still overpowers the 5909 bridge but not as bad as the 8515
 
I'd have to agree with Karan on the 5815 bridge pickup. It's the same on the 8515 bridge as well.

I got a set of 8515s pretty cheap a while back. I quickly stuck them in my 2000 mccarty. Immediately I absolutely loved the neck pickup but immediately I wasn't so into the bridge pickup. The 594 I owned for a while was the same.

With the tone rolled down a little bit, the neck pickup sounds fantastic. The cleaner the better.

I notice most of the time I see a guitar with these pickups the bridge is always cranked up in height. I replaced the 8515 bridge with a 5909 bridge and it's much better. I do feel like the 8515 neck still overpowers the 5909 bridge but not as bad as the 8515

I think 85/15s are voiced to do what PRS Customs do best!
The official brief on them is that they're the original design from 1985 with updates in 2015. Kind of like Windows 98/18 if there was someone with extra time on their hands to do it.

Customs really are meant to be a classic 7 blade Swiss Knifes (the other 2 being the Trem and locking tuners) meant to do what people back in 85 were looking for. Stratocaster meets Les Paul territory with perks and the market for that is just as strong or even stronger than Late 50's tone chasers till date (keeping in mind all manufacturers).

Personally I feel 85/15s are a completely different species. My induction to guitar was hearing my older brother rock out on his Mid 90's CE24 with those original pickups on it and they sounded drastically different. It was also the 1st electric guitar I ever played or laid my hands on and the sound you hear at that age 10-13 kind of sticks in your head. I was super excited when they relaunched it, but I take 5 seconds on a YouTube video of the CE24 the moment it was released and think, "brilliant but not quite the same there" the old one sounded much more like the old Custom 24s.

That's him with the CE24 at a gig back in '99.

45587d33_0a2b_407b_a489_7c44ce983a60.jpg


The point is, they're a lot more complicated under the hood than meets the eye, for eg: the way they add coils back to a the wind during a coil tap or compensate for volume drops during coil splits. I don't think that's entirely in the pots & wiring, there's some genius level stuff going on within the bobbins and the coils that's going beyond just how they're wound and connected up.
That's Paul for you right there!

McCarty's were really more of a homage to McCarty's creation in conjunction with Les Paul. I've never even seen one in person let alone played so I wont presume to comment on those. 594s on the other hand I think were created keeping in mind a dead on point of being thoroughbred Arabian Stallions with a single minded purpose but somewhere on the pickups they subtly said, ok maybe it wouldn't hurt if they do this too.
I have to agree with that attitude but not the sound of the Bridge.

A 85/15 in a 594 would kind of be like a fish that can swim sweet & saline waters.
It's never going to fit in with a mix because it's made with tremolo spacing in mind and all those extra abilities inside are doing absolutely nothing.

59/09s, nice but really aggressive to be called vintage sounding.
 
All of this is why I like 57/08s. If I need power and grunt, I raise 'em up. If I need them to be sweeter, I drop 'em down a bit. When recording I will actually raise and lower the pickup for different takes to get different tones. Live everything is loud so it doesn't matter - except to guitar players. If I have the midrange vibrating the way I like I can play everything I need to play. The 57/08 will cover it.
 
I like 59/09s best for the bridge. I tried the 57/08 bridge in a 594 with Braz neck (since sold) and it got closer to what I wanted but not quite there. But everyone’s ears are different :)
 
I like 59/09s best for the bridge. I tried the 57/08 bridge in a 594 with Braz neck (since sold) and it got closer to what I wanted but not quite there. But everyone’s ears are different :)

Yes to that. While not a 594, I have that setup in a WL Ted (DC) with rosewood neck and board. A great match. at least in that guitar. ALMOST good enough to make it my number one. Not quite, but close.....I am currently loving guitars with a longer scale.

Having exposure to other PRSi with a set of EITHER two 57/08s or two 59/09s (each of which are great), I like that particular Ted setup better.
 
I like 59/09s best for the bridge. I tried the 57/08 bridge in a 594 with Braz neck (since sold) and it got closer to what I wanted but not quite there. But everyone’s ears are different :)

The 5909 is the best bridge pickup ever.

I've got a pair of 5310s in a mahogany ce22 and that guitar sounds really good. My old band played this dive bar and for some reason my rig sounded incredible with that guitar. Not sure what it was but holy s___ it was glorious.

One of the string slots is messed up now. Not really sure what happened but it buzzes badly so I haven't played it in a while. Bummer
 
Hey Ya'll. So everything's just arrived.

I got The Mule for the bridge, a custom wound Duncan for the neck with a coil split and a vintage wind pattern. I was recommended a Alnico 4 for that as well so thats what we did.

Got the wiring in 50's style from Jonesyblues with a push pull on the neck tone pot to split the coil

The piece de resistance: the neck pickup has it's magnet in reverse polarity.

I'll put up a before and after video for you guys to scrutinise


Cheers!
 
You already got the Mule, but hey, here’s my 2cents.

The PAF by Monty’s Guitars. They have that harmonic richness that other pickups don’t get. They are better than the Mule, I’ve had 2 sets of Mules over the years, the Mule sounds flatter.

Monty’s sound more detailed, they’re snarlier and seem to have as much power even though they’re 7.6k. It’s mental, DC res really doesn’t equal power.

On overdrive, the Monty’s feedback and have the harmonic note that changes through the note. They’re amazing.

I’ve tried a lot of the PAFs out there. To be honest, I've found the 59/09 pickups too fat in the mids and too boomy in the neck.
 
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You already got the Mule, but hey, here’s my 2cents.

The PAF by Monty’s Guitars. They have that harmonic richness that other pickups don’t get. They are better than the Mule, I’ve had 2 sets of Mules over the years, the Mule sounds flatter.

Monty’s sound more detailed, they’re snarlier and seem to have as much power even though they’re 7.6k. It’s mental, DC res really doesn’t equal power.

On overdrive, the Monty’s feedback and have the harmonic note that changes through the note. They’re amazing.

I’ve tried a lot of the PAFs out there.
I was actually searching for something with an even freq response. No doubt the Monty’s might be great. I just wanted a flat EQ to let the guitar’s natural tone through and the amp to do it’s thing
 
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