Anyone put Fralin Unbuckers in their CE24's?

[Jostein]

I have an old 1990 CE24 with the HFS and Vintage Bass pickups. I haven't played it in years, it needs some new frets and some tweaks. I am considering switching pickups in it and I am wondering if anyone has put these Fralin's in a CE24. The original pickups in the CE24 are cool, but maybe a little too hot for my taste(bridge) and I'd like to see if there are any other options there with good split sounds. Thanks in advance.

 

[Malloc]

I had some in a Hollowbody II for a short time. The split was ok, but in my opinion not that much different than the PRS style split with resistor mod (except for noticeably more hum on the Fralins). As a general PAF style pickup I thought they were :again: ok, but not different or better enough to replace the 57/08's it had before. If I had to pick a PRS pickup I thought they sounded most like it's probably 58/15LT (just my opinion, no measurements to back it up).

 

[John Beef]

Yeah, if you're not doing the resistor mod, then by all means, you should be. I've got a mod to the resistor mod that I'm slowly adding to all my guitars, regardless of the pickups. It's tough to explain because I have zero electronics edu-ma-cation other than Physics 101. Anyway, just did it to my SE277 baritone recently, and it's really cool.

That said, Fralin's pickups are great.

 

[Jostein]

I had some in a Hollowbody II for a short time. The split was ok, but in my opinion not that much different than the PRS style split with resistor mod (except for noticeably more hum on the Fralins). As a general PAF style pickup I thought they were :again: ok, but not different or better enough to replace the 57/08's it had before. If I had to pick a PRS pickup I thought they sounded most like it's probably 58/15LT (just my opinion, no measurements to back it up).

Thanks for the input. My old Hollowbody Spruce has the archtop pickups, I might upgrade those too.The Special 22 I just got has those 58/15's in them and they sound great. Maybe those would sound good in the CE24. Not sure if they sell them separately though.

 

[Jostein]

Yeah, if you're not doing the resistor mod, then by all means, you should be. I've got a mod to the resistor mod that I'm slowly adding to all my guitars, regardless of the pickups. It's tough to explain because I have zero electronics edu-ma-cation other than Physics 101. Anyway, just did it to my SE277 baritone recently, and it's really cool.

That said, Fralin's pickups are great.

Hi, not sure if I am familiar with that mod.

 

[John Beef]

Hi, not sure if I am familiar with that mod.

It's adding resistors to the split circuit, you can see some on the schematic here:

https://www.prsguitars.com/documents/mccarty_2017.pdf

What is does is rather than routing 100% of the signal to ground and nothing is audible from the one coil, you rout only partial amounts to ground, so you get less volume drop and a less anemic tone.

 

[Malloc]

Thanks for the input. My old Hollowbody Spruce has the archtop pickups, I might upgrade those too.The Special 22 I just got has those 58/15's in them and they sound great. Maybe those would sound good in the CE24. Not sure if they sell them separately though.

58/15s aren’t sold separately (yet). They occasionally pop up on auction sites though.

 

[Jostein]

58/15s aren’t sold separately (yet). They occasionally pop up on auction sites though.

Looks pricey! I think the Fralin's would be my best bet at this point.