PRSconvert
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2025
- Messages
- 2
I recently bought a 2018 McCarty 594 Singlecut Soapbar. The neck pickup measured 7.9k DC resistance (through the output jack) and was a bit too wooly for me. I removed the pickups and found that each has a pair of springs for each screw, which limited how far into the pickup cavity the pickup could be lowered. I removed one pair of springs from the front pickup and one spring from the bass side of the rear pickup, and then I could lower the pickups to where I wanted them. I'm much happier now with the tone and string-to-string volume balance of the pickups. (It also helped that I switched from a 10-46 string set to my favorite--for shorter-scale guitars--10-38 set. ) The action is 5/64"/4/64". I suppose if you're playing slide and want a real high action, you might need all the springs to raise the pickups; but otherwise, I think this is a helpful mod.
Interestingly, each pickup required a quite different setup to get equal volume from each string (the front pickup needed polepieces raised on the bass side; the rear pickup needed polepieces raised on the treble side)--I've never encountered this before, and I have 5 other guitars with P-90 pickups from three different pickup manufacturers.
So now the guitar sounds quite similar to my 2018 Les Paul Classic with P-90s, but weighs a half-pound less and has a nice figured top in the McCarty Sunburst finish, which isn't too different from the classic "goldtop" appearance of the P-90 Les Pauls. I bought the LP Classic new from Wildwood Guitars, and it had problems with both the frets and the positioning and slots of the saddles. In my experience, PRS definitely had better quality control than Gibson.
Interestingly, each pickup required a quite different setup to get equal volume from each string (the front pickup needed polepieces raised on the bass side; the rear pickup needed polepieces raised on the treble side)--I've never encountered this before, and I have 5 other guitars with P-90 pickups from three different pickup manufacturers.
So now the guitar sounds quite similar to my 2018 Les Paul Classic with P-90s, but weighs a half-pound less and has a nice figured top in the McCarty Sunburst finish, which isn't too different from the classic "goldtop" appearance of the P-90 Les Pauls. I bought the LP Classic new from Wildwood Guitars, and it had problems with both the frets and the positioning and slots of the saddles. In my experience, PRS definitely had better quality control than Gibson.
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