594 bridge pickup.....
- Thread starter WEDGE
- Start date
gauchosilvertone
New Member
Lazarus post here, but I'm wandering because I got a 594 back in July.
The matching pickup thing is in line with the vintage idea the 594 is all about. Pickups were generally matched until the Advent of the aftermarket pickup industry. The matched sets mean the bridge pickup has to be much closer to the strings to more or less match the volume of the neck. They yield wildly different sounds because pickup placement has more to do with the sound than pickup design itself (all other things being equal). Plus in my view, the bigger gap between the strings and neck pickup necessary to match volumes between pickups yields part of the sweet, airy sound we associate with vintage neck PAFs.
In other news, I now have a DiMarzio Norton in the bridge and Air Norton in the neck. My idea was to unlock more punchy bridge tones without kicking the guitar entirely out of "PAF' range. I find now i would have rather just gone for it with a full on heavy hitting set than to be in the middle, which still sounds GOOD, but honestly is in a bit of a no man's land.
Dusty Chalk
alberngruppenführer
Yeah, I actually now have a couple guitars with the same pickup in the neck and bridge positions...they do end up sounding completely different because physics. That said, when I was given the opportunity to have one of my favourite neck pickups "over" wound for the bridge position, I pounced on the opportunity.
Karan D. Taktawala
Karan
Hi, I'm sorry I'm a little late to this discussion.
Hello, 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 are a stickler like me, the 58/15LT neck is near what perfection is.
Cheers!
Karan.
