Citation:
Humbucker Shootout - Les Pauls
>The West Coast Tone Freaks are Back<
We have Been Testing Various "Handwound Humbuckers" and Some So Called Humbucker Standards In Historic Les Pauls.
"Testing" Consists of 4 or 5 Les Paul Players coming down to my Recording Studio and Playing and Listening to Gibson Historic Les Pauls and Evaluating the Pickups.
Some of the things we are Listening for are: Balance between Bridge and Neck, Smoothness, Clarity, Cleaning up when rolling back the Volume, and Overall Timbre.
Testing is done with No Pedals, Going straight into a Marshall JTM-45 with Handwired Circut Board, OEI Tranny's, and A Pair of Amperex EL-34's We are also Testing Through an Aiken 18 Watt Invader Head. Both of these Amps are Going through a Marshall Basket Weave 4 x 12 Cab Reissue with Celestion Greenback 25's.
All Guitars have 500k Pots and Tone Controls have been left Wide Open.
We are not Done testing all Pickups, But have now tested about Half of them. Here are the latest Results:
*Tom Holmes - Unanimously the Best Humbuckers Tested so far. Very Smooth Sound, Great Harmonic's, Never Harsh, Great Balance and Clean up exceptionally well! - Top Honors
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Lindy Fralin -Unbuckers - Running a close Second, Very Smooooth, Great Jimmy Page Bride Sound, Great Harmonic's Clean up nicely, Killer Overall Tone.
We were all very Surprised by the sound of this Pickup. Considering the Fralin PAF did not test so well.
*WCR Fillmore - Great Rock n Roll Sound. These would be Killer Slide Pickups. Very Convincing "Duane" sound. But A Bit Overwound. Good Balance between Neck and Bridge. The Volume roll back can get a bit muddy though. But With Volume up all the way - these Pickups Scream!
*Tim White Timbuckers - A Bit Bright Sounding. Somewhat Harsh Treble Frequencies. Cleaned up well with Vol adjustement. Decent Balance between Neck and Bridge. =Overall we were Slightly Underwhelmed.
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Lindy Fralin 59 PAF - Neck Pickup Had a Strange Lack of Mid-Range. The Bridge was Decent, But Overall they sounded Somewhat Unbalanced. But Had good Clarity.
This came as a Huge surprise to us, as some of the Fralin Single Coil Strat Pickups we Tested Last Year - Tetsed Very well, Especially the Steel Pole 43.
* Jason Lollar Specials - Unbalanced Sound Between the Neck and Bridge. The Neck was Dark and Bridge seemed to have too Much Mid-Range. A Mysterious Lack of Bass in Both Pickups. Cleaned up well with Vol Adjustments, These could probably sound fine in a High Gain Amp, But we were very dissapointed overall.
*Gibson BurstBuckers - "They Sound Boring", "Not very Clear on top", "Kind of Boomy on the Bottom", "Unfocused" - Words someone had said. These are Very Lame Humbuckers. - Again, you could Probably get a Decent sound out of a high Gain Mesa Boogie, But As for PAF Sounds These Plain out Suck!
*Gibson 57 Classic's - Not Great, But, Definitly better than the BurstBuckers. Somewhat dark sounding, But Cleaned up Nicely and Had good Balance Between Neck and Bridge. You could get by with these for a while.
-Your Mileage may Vary- We were going for More Classic Rock, Blues Sound. =Page, Beck, Duane, Early Clapton. - Classic PAF Sound