Herr Squid
I was severely impressed
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2012
- Messages
- 2,093
So now I'm curious as to why everyone considers the 57/08s the holy grail of pickups. Haha from what it seems they're kinda meh
The 57/08s are freakin' fantastic pickups if you play vintage-style amps like an old dimed Marshall or Fender that's getting its grind from the power tubes, i.e. non-master volume amps and their modern emulations. If you're playing an amp with a really gainy preamp (Boogies, Rectos, 5150/6505, Uberschall, Diezel, etc), the pre-2008 pickups were designed for that kind of amp and suit them really well. Paul loved his preamp gain back in the day.
But before the 57/08s came out, people would routinely replace the pickups in their brand new PRSi. After they came out, that pretty much just stopped!
TL;DR: Run the master high? Use 57/08, 59/09, or 53/10. Run the preamp gain high? Stick with existing Dragons or HFS. I couldn't say about Tremontis or \m/'s.