Lollar CC review...

[Cobra]

The Lollar CC is truly a different and unique sound: Big, bold, and similar to a P-90, it's quite a contrast to a Tele bridge pickup, but not too much. It excells at rythym for any style of music, but especially when used for blues of the west coast variety, & jazzier jumpswing, which is how I primarily used it. It also sounds excellent when soloing, from SRV to BB, and everything in between, it can get funky, & rocks just fine thank you...


Adjusting pickup height is important on any guitar, & the Lollar CC is no different. Since the magnets are below the coil, you have a lot of range of adjustment without the stringpull you get with typical singles when too close to the string in the neck position. You need to play around with pickup height on both the CC an the bridge pickup to find the sweetspot where they are matched best. Once you find that sweetspot, the guitar will become extremely versatile, with a major surprise! The surprise is how amazing it sounds when using both pickups. It's worth it for this one sound alone, because it yields a sound like no other pickup combo I've heard anywhere. Very sweet, angelic, and bell-like when played clean at lower volumes, dig in & it starts to show another character. It still has enough brightness to retain clarity, but now it's speaking in a voice that's husky, with a smokey vibe that is very authoritative, and yet has this amazing horn-like touch sensitivity that can turn almost any any rig into a psuedo-dumble with the right dynamic touch. Crank it up dirty, and it has a very dense sound, like a firehose of tone, raw and hairy, but still has the clarity. Roll the tone back & you can get very jazzy, horn-like sounds and attack, from modern smooth jazz, to some of the best vintage jazz tones ever recorded. I also found that using an RS super-pot above 280k, and a .022 tone cap sounded the best with the Lollar CC...

It's a way-back machine for any tele, where many Tele neck pickups are either non-descript yawners, or just don't sound right... The Lollar CC can turn a Tele into a guitar that is truly distinctive, and much more versatile than most.

[cacibi]

Thanks for the review. I've been looking at a second set of Lollars for another tele (I have the Vintage T's in one guitar already) and have been debating which pickup for the neck.

What bridge pickup are you using with the CC? I emailed Lollar yesterday as I was concerned about how my three candidates for the neck (CC, Firebird or mini-humbucker) would balance with the Vintage T I already like so much. His response was that with the CC, I would need to go with one of his higher output Special T bridge pickups, but the Firebird could be adjusted to balance with the Vintage.