Tonefiend Forum

You might look at Seymour Duncan P-Rails - as demonstrated on this very site: https://tonefiend.com/pickups/cheap-guitar-makeover/ They're medium output and lend you a great variety of sounds if you don't mind a few more switches. I've been dying to try some, personally - I have plans for a crazy, irrational "make ALL the guitar noises" guitar build with a trio of P-Rails.

I'm interested in reading other people's ideas - I'd love to discover some new options.

I have some Lace humbuckers that sound pretty good kind of hifi but not sterile. They are a bit dark tho'. You can also get Lace humbuckers that are a combo of 2 of their single coils mounted together as a humbucker. They have various combos that sound good as humbuckers but also great as single coils. Lace single coils are dead quiet but aren't humbucking per se they just reject hum due to their construction and shielding. The only thing about Laces is that many folk (including Lace) say the don't play well with others. So they are recommended to only have Laces in a guitar rather than mixing them with other pickup types (I've not seen that myself) But they are definitely worth considering. They have much less magnetic influence on the strings which contributes to sustain and tuning. I have Lace sensors in a few guitars including a bass, the bass pickups are fantastic IMHO. I bought some used Laces on Ebay at good prices in the past.

There's underwound from PAF designs, there's underwound stuff chasing the Filtertron vibe (possibly with other changes). The Dimarzio Eric Johnson humbuckers are somewhere in that continuum. Their Humbucker From Hell, misnamed as heck, is basically a PAF architecture but wound to sound like a Fender single coil.

Joe has talked about different coils in a PAF to get different vintage to hotrod elements from each coil -- I forget the particular Duncan model, but it had interesting.

Whatever it is, if it's got a four-conductor cable, a Duncan Tripleshot pickup ring with switches can got a lot of non-traditional sounds out of one. As someone who isn't huge on trad humbucker sounds, I'll tell you that paralleled coils make me much happier than the traditional series wiring.

I'm just trying to figure out what's out there. I really dig the Creamery's Wide Range humbuckers that fit in regular humbucker slots. I'll probably stick one of those in the neck, and something a little higher output in the bridge. I appreciate the input, everybody. It's nice to know there are options out there besides PAF, slightly modified PAF, and "holy crap that's a lot of gain".

I think I'm gonna go with a Creamery Baby 71 in the neck and Fat Wide O in the bridge. I really love the way these sound. I'll post a before and after of the Duncans that are in the guitar now and the Creamery pups that are going in soon.