I’ve owned and loved my HBII for over 20 years. It’s drop dead gorgeous and plays like a dream. BUT, the more I hang around this insane asylum (and the more I ‘woodshed’, instead of playing in a band), the more I perseverate over subjective minutiae that never used to bother me, so here goes.
I recently treated myself to a Mesa Rectoverb 25 1x12 combo, because my old 2x12’s are just too big and heavy for me to lug around anymore (I’m about to turn 64). The Mesa amp is everything it’s cracked up to be, and I can easily dial in the creamy, liquid, saturated sound I want with either of my Gibsons - a ‘96 LPS with 490R/498T, and an ‘01 SG Special with P90’s (a truly badass guitar, btw, if I’m allowed to say that in this forum). However, for reasons I cannot comprehend, I am unable to get the Hollowbody II (OG ‘Archtop’ pickups) ‘there’. It always seems to want to lean more toward breakup and less toward saturation. I play mostly Dead, phish, Allman Brothers, etc., so I’m looking for that warm, smooth, searing Fillmore East sound, overdriven but not to the point of breakup - no heavy metal crunch going on here - and while I feel like this guitar should have it in spades, it just doesn’t. I’d consider a pickup change as a second to last resort (the last resort being to sell it and buy a figured ES339 semi-hollow), but maybe the gurus here have some other ideas.
If not, how difficult is it to change out the pickups on a Hollowbody? I can do it on a solid body, but the hollowbodies seem to have no points of access to the electronics - I wouldn’t know where to begin.
Your relevant thoughts and good advice would be most gratefully appreciated. I’m making myself NUTS obsessing over this.
Thanks.
✌
I recently treated myself to a Mesa Rectoverb 25 1x12 combo, because my old 2x12’s are just too big and heavy for me to lug around anymore (I’m about to turn 64). The Mesa amp is everything it’s cracked up to be, and I can easily dial in the creamy, liquid, saturated sound I want with either of my Gibsons - a ‘96 LPS with 490R/498T, and an ‘01 SG Special with P90’s (a truly badass guitar, btw, if I’m allowed to say that in this forum). However, for reasons I cannot comprehend, I am unable to get the Hollowbody II (OG ‘Archtop’ pickups) ‘there’. It always seems to want to lean more toward breakup and less toward saturation. I play mostly Dead, phish, Allman Brothers, etc., so I’m looking for that warm, smooth, searing Fillmore East sound, overdriven but not to the point of breakup - no heavy metal crunch going on here - and while I feel like this guitar should have it in spades, it just doesn’t. I’d consider a pickup change as a second to last resort (the last resort being to sell it and buy a figured ES339 semi-hollow), but maybe the gurus here have some other ideas.
If not, how difficult is it to change out the pickups on a Hollowbody? I can do it on a solid body, but the hollowbodies seem to have no points of access to the electronics - I wouldn’t know where to begin.
Your relevant thoughts and good advice would be most gratefully appreciated. I’m making myself NUTS obsessing over this.
Thanks.
✌