How do you find the right pickups?

Hey everybody. Long time lurker, first time poster. I've always owned Strats and Les Pauls, but I finally got my hands on an American Tele. I love it. It feels absolutely great. It was a "well this is it" moment. The guitar came with active single coil EMGs. It sounds is good, but not yet exactly what I want.

My question isn't "what's the best" or anything, it's what do you guys do to find the right pickups for you? I've always stuck with the pickups that came with the guitar, so I feel overwhelmed at all of the options. At the prices of some of the newer pickups, the last thing I want is to go shooting in the dark.

*I searched the forum and could only find specific recommendations. I couldn't find any "this is what I do" posts. I hope this hasn't been beaten to death already.

I don't go looking for the sound any more. Chasing pickups is fool's gold IMO. Either a guitar has it or it doesn't. If you have the money and the time have fun experimenting but it is pissing in the wind most of the time.

Completely subjective, as you note. Lots of trial and error, with an emphasis on error.

That said, I am with you for the most part. I find most guitars don't need their pickups changed to sound good. A little adjustment here or there, learning how to play to the pickups' strengths, and choosing the right amp for the job go a long way.

What sound do want? What price can you pay? What wood in the guitar body? Any site alone( GFS, WD Music, Tonerider, Seymour Duncan, DiMarzzio, Brierley, Lollar, Don Mare etc. etc.etc ) will send your head spinning. Let those first 2 questions -especially the first- be your guide. Good luck

I'm ganna agree with EsquireOK on this one. It is all subjective.

I'm currently in the same boat as you as well, contemplating turning my tele into a long running project, or just selling it. Tweaking things does do alot. Case in point, earlier today I ran straight into my amp, turned my amps tone up (only control besides volume), and rolled my guitar tone back, alot. Did much more than I would have expected. I'm still going to pick up a different set of pups soon, before i fully decide to sell or not.

As for choosing pups, read up as much as you can, more than just reading reviews and what-not. Check into the magnet types, their general sound signatures, windings, and on and on. Listening to recordings/videos can help some, and give you a general idea of what the sounds may be like. Every guitar is different though, so nothing will ever sound exactly the same IMHO.

I've read many of the comments here in which people discuss the pups they use. That led me to SD Broadcaster (bridge) and Dimarzio Twang King (neck) pups. I also installed a SD Jerry Donahue bridge pup in one of my JD Teles b/c that was way the American version of the guitar came from the factory, and I wanted to know what it sounded like.

I've been curious about many of the newer boutique stuff, but I'm pretty happy with what I've got now, so why spend a fortune changing around what I like? If I get another Tele that needs pups, I suppose I might try some Fralins. Not for any mysterious mojo, but because they helped me with a problem I was having with a P-90, and I got the impression they really know their stuff. But in all fairness, you can say the same thing about most of the high end shops. And even Duncan was considered high end back in the day -- I think they still should be considered as such.

So, read, talk to people and do the trial and error thing until you find what you like. IMO though, your pups are just one part of the equation. The biggest part of what you sound like comes from you, not your equipment.

I've read a lot about pickup changing, and know a couple of guys first hand who do a lot of pickup swapping. Personally, I've never seen a big improvement from anything they've done. Oh a little different sound for sure, but for me, adjusting the pickups you have in the guitar to get the most out of them, then playing the guitar a lot until you've really gotten to know what it can do will do more than most anything you can do to improve the sound of the guitar.

Sticking a pedal in front of the amp will probably change the tone more than anything you can do to the pickups. If you want a little different sound try adjusting the pickups up and down, try all the settings you can come up with on the amp, and roll the tone and volume up and down on the guitar. You'll find plenty of different sounds, who knows, one of them may be just what you're looking for.

Sticking a pedal in front of the amp will probably change the tone more than anything you can do to the pickups. If you want a little different sound try adjusting the pickups up and down, try all the settings you can come up with on the amp, and roll the tone and volume up and down on the guitar. You'll find plenty of different sounds, who knows, one of them may be just what you're looking for.

Well put. Too many don't mess with pup heights and/or their amps capabilities/limitations. I always recommend getting to know your gear before any mods.

M

Well said...^ The tone knob with CTS (good pots ) is your friend.

I've been researching pickups the last few weeks as I'm also looking at replacing the ones that came in my telecaster. It's actually the reason I joined this forum last week. I've been so overwhelmed. There is so many people making pickups. There's too many! I reckon it will be months to a year until I finally decide on some.

I think I'd just buy a set of vintage style pickups and then play them for a year and see if you still like them. Something like nocasters or OVs would be a good place to start.

Best thing you can do is speak to a pick up company, and if possible the guy that winds them, and explain what you are looking for

The better you understand the problem you're trying to solve, the better your chances of finding a pickup that will solve it. If you're only goal is to find a pickup that sounds "better", you'll end up getting other people's ideas of what a good sound is and that may or may not work for you.

Figure out what it is you want, talk to the builders and scour the forums. It's likely that someone has probably tried to solve the same problem.

What do you like to do with your playing ? Melody, lots of notes, or how each note sounds individually ? Each notes character; do you like the same sound or do you change the sound. If you change it; where ? High harmonics change (calling Jeff Beck or lots of Country guys) or do you manipulate vowel sounds ( Disreali Gears neck p/up songs, Sunshine of Your Love for example) . What about attack ? Bitey, Smooth or Piano ? Whatever you like doing, get the p/up that has its tone and attack there.

Call(or e-mail) a few of the well known winders and talk to them. Most of them will be more than glad to answer any questions you have. If you have other guitars you could also find out what types magnets and whatnot they have to lead you towards the sound that you consider ideal. Like was said before alot of trial and error takes place but try to learn as much as possible about what makes pups do what they do before opening the wallet.

Ask yourself what is the tonal profile you are looking for from that guitar.
What style of music, songs, artist sound all will help.
Then the question of price is a factor for most but remember quality and design are very important in a pickup just like it is in other products.
Find some makers who you can email or call and chat with about the type of tone you want. Make sure you are realistic about the sound you want from that guitar and your rig.
Good luck in your search

I agree with dada (post #2) and with EsquireOK (post #3). I never found a legit reason to change pickups.

But to complicate the OP's question, here’s a Mike Eldred clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA-CX44fqj4&feature=related

and from about 1:10 to about 1:52, he explains that the neck affects the sound more than the pickups.

Maybe nothing is easy!

Great suggestions! My personal opinion is I can probably make use of almost any professional pickups within the ballpark of sound I'm looking for. But this helps me clear my head about to how to narrow down the search. So far, I'm thinking Lollar Special T's as a first stop (and hopefully last). I'll be contacting some pickup manufacturers before I finally decide though.

ask yerself if yer more of gearhead than player. be honest. your answer will point you in the proper direction for you. aside from that, yer tele has active lo-z tele type pups that are Very different from lotsa other passive true single coil hi-z tele pups, particularly those of vintage build. there is no other way for you to know what pups will sound like in yer guitar, with you playing and through yer rig, unless you try before you buy. and that can be a never ending quest for something that only exists in yer mind and not in reality.

ask yerself if yer more of gearhead than player. be honest. your answer will point you in the proper direction for you. aside from that, yer tele has active lo-z tele type pups that are Very different from lotsa other passive true single coil hi-z tele pups, particularly those of vintage build. there is no other way for you to know what pups will sound like in yer guitar, with you playing and through yer rig, unless you try before you buy. and that can be a never ending quest for something that only exists in yer mind and not in reality.

Ding... ding.... ding.....

We have a winner

I put a SD Jazz & JB into a Les Paul Custom and got exactly the sound I wanted.

But I had no choice, the originals were missing when I bought it used.

Roll the dice and take your choice - it's all guesswork.

I've also installed pickups that just didn't work well - knowing exactly what you are looking for would be a good starting point.

You want pickups to be sensitive to changes in your playing technique, delivering highend without edginess or harshness so you don't have to lose all your highs for an acceptable tone. Helps to try everything with a low capacitance cable!

I’ve been pulling pickups in and out of my guitars for 25 years or so. And now there are even more choices. Even though some of the “boutique” pickups I’ve tried are excellent, the risk can be greater, pricewise. As you are new to changing pickups I would stay with the established pickup makers: Fender, Seymour Duncan, Dimarzio, Lindy Fralin, Jason Lollar or VanZandt. They’ve been around a while, have popular and consistent products, and can serve as a baseline. You usually won’t have to wait for weeks, or sometimes months, for the pickups to arrive like products from the boutique winders. And to be honest, although there is many times a difference—real or imagined— if the components of the pickups are very similar, the difference between a very good pickup and a “great” pickup is really purely subjective. Take all the hype and superlatives found on the web with a grain of salt.

As has been stated already, figure out what kind of sound you want. When I had a set, I found the EMGs to be modern sounding, versatile, but, not really “vintage.”

For example, if decide you want a vintage 50s Tele sound, then do some research on this site and pickup makers’ sites, where you’ll find detailed specs and audio samples. You’d find that the Fender Original Vintage set, found on Fender’s ’52 Reissues, is considered an excellent choice, is not too expensive, and is thought to epitomize the general hallmarks of the 50s Tele sound. Duncan has several options, but the most popular seems to be the Duncan Broadcaster bridge pickup. Dimarzio has the Twang King set. Lollar has among others Vintage T set. This way, you can narrow the seemingly endless choices.

Thanks for the advice guys. I figured out an idea of the sound I'm looking for, did the research, talked to a few builders and decided to pick up a set of Lollar Special Ts at a local shop this morning. Popped them in and I couldn't be happier. Now I'll never think about the pickups in this Tele again! Really glad I went with the Lollars.

It's a crap shoot, but if you do lots of research, you'll find that certain pups are mentioned over and over again and obviously very popular. Probably can't go wrong picking one from the hit list, especially from a top company like Lollar, Duncan, Dimarzio, and Fralin, just to mention a few obvious ones. I haven't done much pup swapping, but my research led me to Lollars (El Rayo neck bucker and Special T bridge). I wanted a brighter type bucker closer to a P90 and a gutsier bridge with more mids and rounded highs. Thats exactly what I got. Love 'em.

You want pickups to be sensitive to changes in your playing technique, delivering highend without edginess or harshness so you don't have to lose all your highs for an acceptable tone. Helps to try everything with a low capacitance cable!


And the guitar manufacturers by now must know this put still put out garbage sounding originals on some models.

Doesn't make any sense to me - the materials are the same, the overhead is the same, the labour cost is the same.

And the guitar manufacturers by now must know this put still put out garbage sounding originals on some models.

Doesn't make any sense to me - the materials are the same, the overhead is the same, the labour cost is the same.

They don't know how to make a profit on their instruments without using the cheapest hardware they can get away with and skipping out on quality-control for the electronics. Unless you know how to build the winders properly to accomodate for the oblong shape of the coil at high speeds, the machines really need to be run at much slower rates to avoid shorts in the coil for the bare-minimum in getting a quality pickup. This is before designing for particular results, which most makers aren't as capable of as much as they'd like you to think. The smaller operations and boutique winders charge higher prices and aren't trying to make as many as possible each day, so there's a higher chance of not getting an unusable product from them. It's funny that people are still trying to achieve the levels of quality that Fender had in their early era.

... It's funny that people are still trying to achieve the levels of quality that Fender had in their early era.

hmm, playing with lots of fenders back in the 50's and 60's, i never realized that early fender had that high a level of "quality". :roll: :cool:

Hey everybody. Long time lurker, first time poster. I've always owned Strats and Les Pauls, but I finally got my hands on an American Tele. I love it. It feels absolutely great. It was a "well this is it" moment. The guitar came with active single coil EMGs. It sounds is good, but not yet exactly what I want.

My question isn't "what's the best" or anything, it's what do you guys do to find the right pickups for you? I've always stuck with the pickups that came with the guitar, so I feel overwhelmed at all of the options. At the prices of some of the newer pickups, the last thing I want is to go shooting in the dark.

*I searched the forum and could only find specific recommendations. I couldn't find any "this is what I do" posts. I hope this hasn't been beaten to death already.

Vince Gill does quite well with an American made tele with EMGs and gets a lot of different sounds.

hmm, playing with lots of fenders back in the 50's and 60's, i never realized that early fender had that high a level of "quality". :roll: :cool:

I didn't say they did :D

Trial and error..is the only way....
your pick dynamics, guitar, amp everything is in mix....you got to try yourself...

Thanks for the advice guys. I figured out an idea of the sound I'm looking for, did the research, talked to a few builders and decided to pick up a set of Lollar Special Ts at a local shop this morning. Popped them in and I couldn't be happier. Now I'll never think about the pickups in this Tele again! Really glad I went with the Lollars.

Congrats!
I have a 2006 American Deluxe that had the SCN noiseless pups. I played it (or tried to) for several years and never could get a pleasing tone from those pups. I did a lot of reading here on TDPRI before I decided on what I wanted to try, but I also knew that I was picking up and rolling the dice. Bought one of Mr. DiStefano's Cavalier bridge pups, and mated it to a Creamery WRHB with a 5-way ToneShaper. Wow, what a difference in sound. One might say it is a completely different guitar. Obviously, this was a major changeover, so it is difficult to isolate which component made the most difference. I love the sound of each of the new pups separately, and they sound great together, and the tone and volume pots now are very very usable (they were not that useable before - but then the sound I was getting was "muddy" even with the tone all the way at treble). So, yeah, I agree with lots of the posts here about subjectivity, holy grail, never finding the sound in yer head, etc., but changing the pups can make a huge difference in tone - and in the happiness of the player.

what do you guys do to find the right pickups for you? Late to the game here but in my case...first adjust the pup height/angle up/down until you like it enough through a good amp at settings you are familiar with.

Then play that guitar a lot and since it is a Tele, use the tone and volume knobs a lot because they make a tremendous difference in tone & that is perhaps the key reason I switched from a Strat to a Tele for most stuff.

Lastly, play around with pedals and IMO the most important thing once your pups make you happy at all: play through an amp that you like. A guy named Johnny Crash or similar used to post a lot here & would often say something like "the amp is very important" in these types of threads. He was right.

Simple example: I just got back from my cottage tonight where I've been playing my main guitar, an AV'62 Tele Custom (all stock) that I've adjusted to where I love it. Played it at the cottage for three weeks thru a cheap PV tube amp that frankly is kinda 'dry' sounding no matter what I do, tolerable at best. I really can't use the bridge pup--my fave--thru that amp much w/o cringing. And yes, I've fiddled with the amp settings endlessly.

Got home, plugged the guitar in to my plain old Pathfinder R using the exact same guitar settings = instant tonal nirvana. Heavenly, rich, responsive, all of that...and this is a cheap SS amp. I've got 'better' amps that do the same.

So...you can swap pups all you want but there are some basic good ones out there, many mentioned in this thread, and if you find a set you can dig at all, get on with all the other stuff that impacts tone so much: amp, pedals, settings...not to mention the venue you're playing in and, well, how you play.

I've really only run across one Fender pup (Tele or Strat) in ownership of many over 30 years that I detested so much I had to change it out, and a bunch of guys here love that same pup. Maybe they got better amps!

OK, I'm done.

I believe the OP asked about personal pickup selection processes,so here goes: First question;what flavor? This is really broad stroke.Do you want to play thrash metal or twang? You obviously don't like active p'ups. I think most people just want their tele to sound like a tele.Easy.

Second,think about any PARTICULAR tele sound you really like. Pagey or Don Rich?

Third, listen to your guitar unplugged. Don't worry about what wood it's made of or whose bridge is on it. Is it bright? Dark? Balanced? Weak in the mids? And don't forget that you have NO IDEA what your guitar sounds like if it's not properly set up.

For me this is enough If I feel I NEED to change I call Jason Lollar or Lindy Fralin and ask them to put me there. I'm sure there are others that can do the same, I've just used these guys and gotten more than what I'd hoped for.

Now the flip side. All the sounds I'm looking for are already in most vintage wound pickups. Luther and Page and Keef and Red are all in there. Tweak away. A turn or two on the height adjustment screws can make a night and day difference.

Lastly, there's a bunch of Duncans,DMZ etc...I like. If they were in a guitar I wouldn't replace them, but I wouldn't seek them out. I think most stock p'ups are more than up to the task. But I think the Lollars/Fralins are the difference between really good sounds and GREAT sounds. It's the same stuff just mo betta.