Re: Pickup Poll

[tEd ® KiLLiAn <tedkillian@charter.net>]

Phil,

I don't know if this question was purely rhetorical or not.

I tend to favor Seymour Duncans (since I used to work there in the  
'90s).

Specifically, I favor humbuckers, but occasionally I want that snarky  
single coil notch position Strat sound, so I use switches for coil  
tapping on them.

My Gibson RD has a JB in the bridge position and a Jazz in the neck.

My 3-pickup Surfmaster has the same but with a 59 in the middle  
position between them.

Alas, my Tele copy is just a Tele copy with whatever stock no-name  
pickups it came with.

It's mighty quiet for just having single coils though.

Yeah, noisy pickups can be a bugger if you're looping.

I have a Jazz Bass that's a bit noisy, and my Surfmaster used to have  
P-90s which were sortta prone to hum and buzz despite having a very  
creamy-glassy sound that was way cool otherwise.

I hate extraneous noise though.

But sometimes you run across a guitar that sounds so good despite some  
little niggling extra hum or noise that it's a keeper anyway.

Sorry to hear that you didn't like your new pickups.

Duncan makes a couple of different kinds of single-coil sized  
humbuckers.

There are the "Rails" variety and the "Stacked" varieties  . . . and  
they also make a very narrow side-by-side model typified by the George  
Lynch Sreamin' Demon model.

Frankly they make so many different kinds of pickups these days, and I  
have been so long out of the loop in the industry, that you'd be  
better off to get a current catalog from them (or any other  
manufacturer you favor) and check what the tone charts say for each  
model.

Some sort of hum-canceling type of pickup may be required to get rid  
of the noise - or much better shielding in the wiring and control  
cavity (and double check the soldering joints while you're at it).

Just suggestions.

Best,

Ted

On Aug 11, 2011, at 10:23 PM, Phil Clevenger wrote:

> Say LD-people,
>
> What kinds of pickups are you using in your electric guitars?