A small story, some observations and possible learnings.
I've had my McCarty 594 double cut for a few weeks now, and like many others I found the 58/15 LT, in the bridge position a little bit lacking in drive. But I was quite aware that it supported the middle position by blending with the neck pickup, and it provided fantastic overall tones from the guitar. additionally it truly is a very good pickup. So I started out convincing myself I can easily go back to the original pick up no problem let's try a few out and see what happens. I really wanted to keep a lot of the original design intent of the guitar.
My preference is for a bright guitar, additionally I selected a 594 with a maple neck. I feel like most amplifiers have way too much bass, every guitar I have seems to have the tone knob rolled to maximum 10 almost permanently, it's so easy to make a small adjustment down if the guitar is slightly bright. But you can never seem to make a bass heavy guitar regain treble frequencies. I always wish I could roll my tone knob to 11 or 12 just a little more brightness. Marshall amplifier FYI.
Day 1: PRS 59/09 bridge, 9.5 K ohms. I suspected that this one was going to have too much gain, this is very good pickup as well, slightly mid-heavy for me, very solid rock 'n roll, I did seem to miss some of the high frequencies. And it seemed to dominate the neck pickup too much with volume and gain. The picking dynamics and subtleties faded away in the low gain settings. But very fun rock 'n roll power chords. decent to excellent coil splitting, very nice authentic single coil sound.
Day 2: PRS 85/15 bridge, 8.6 K ohms A very interesting pick up. This was very close to satisfying across many different songs and playing styles, this one seems slightly opposite of the 59/09 EQ wise it seemed to me slightly scooped in the mids, as I started playing a lot of 70s classic rock then comparing directly with the Les Paul, the only way to get a match was to turn my mid-EQ up to 80% of maximum on the amplifier, confirming the slight lack of mids. The gain structure of this pickup is very pleasing and very flexible. coil splitting was excellent, matching the neck pickup middle position tones very nice. It was just a little bit too difficult to cover the classic rock songs, a little bit too much EQ'ing. super strong contender.
Day 3: Back to the PRS 58/15 LT bridge 7.5K ohms, I love the EQ on this pickup, just had to remind myself what I was chasing. Played all my classic rock songs, but had to add a booster or drive pedal to everything. but such a satisfying pickup in most every way, the clarity, the picking dynamics super fun. split coil awesome. but still lacking that drive and gain where harmonic bloom blossoms.
Day 4: PRS 57/08 bridge pickup 9.22 K ohms, Wow this pickup is killer, absolute perfect EQ. 60s 70s 80s 90s rock instant find it. couldn't stop playing it. Until I tried to blend it with the other pickup. Very nice single coil tone, it was better at playing with the neck pickup than the 59/ 09, but it's still dominated, turning the volume knob down on the 594 is a problem there's way too much treble loss, I think I may need to put a treble bleed circuit in. So the only problem with this pickup is it's not quite playing well with the neck. Super strong contender.
Day 5: Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates bridge pickup 8.00 K ohms, I would say the 57/08 is a near perfect clone of this pickup, the gain structure the EQ the tightness, however this has a slightly better flavor of more brightness in the upper treble regions a few more bell like tones up there, very pleasing,
I chalk it up to the lower windings and lower resistance of the pearly gates. The reason I tried this pickup was because I have an 8.4 K ohms custom shop Pearly Gates in my les paul, which has been extremely satisfying for several years. I just hesitated to put the same pickup in multiple guitars. but this LT version,
Just blends with the 5815 LT absolutely perfectly, and it's absolutely just as satisfying as the 57/08 covered all my classic rock songs with no booster pedals, covered all my David Gilmour songs on the single coil or should I say coil tap. So this is going to be the final pickup I believe this one is not coming out. I can't put the guitar down. Every coil tap every position the tones are not just satisfying they are amazing.
One of the final observations playing the two guitars head-to-head the LP still has some stronger string attack and slightly brighter flavor, and I was trying to figure it out. And it suddenly became obvious, because I had switched out some saddles on a previous guitar from the typical steel alloys, to brass saddles, and the brass definitely takes away some of the high-end trading for some more mid EQ complexities, and it definitely slightly lowers the attack on the string. I immediately took the brass saddles out of that older guitar. So the two guitars definitely are very similar and yet completely different flavors, I believe the brass saddles work extremely well on this guitar I have no intent of changing them. So the LP has a slightly stronger string attack with its titanium saddles, and the 594 has much more complex blooming mid-harmonics. Slightly less string attack. compensated a little bit with the maple neck.
The guitar does have a new look with the black uncovered Pearly gates. I think it looks pretty damn good. But it sounds like a monster. Extremely happy, I spend 50% of the playing time on that neck pickup that's why I invested so much time trying to find a perfect bridge pickup. The 5815 LT in the neck is in my opinion genius super awesome guitar best neck pickup I've ever played The humbucker mode and the split coil mode so useful. Now with a little more heat in the bridge.
