Les Paul Madness: A Guitar, A Case, A Great Deal, And A Lot Of Work
I really enjoy playing my Epiphone Les Paul Custom. I performed a lot of work on it to make it play this awesome. But I had a problem. (A white people problem.) I did not like the bridge pickup at all. So I made a few changes. Here's the list.
As I wrote in Part 1 of this blog post, I started with a Dean Mountain of Tone pickup in the bridge position. Basically it's Dean's version of Seymour Duncan's Custom 5 pickup. I hated the lack of mids in it. It just wasn't my sound.
What's funny is that I actually have a Seymour Duncan Custom 5 in my parts drawer. Since I really disliked how it sounded, I performed a magnet change on it. I learned about changing magnets from the Seymour Duncan Forum. It's been a great way to achieve new sounds from pickups.
For those who don't know the Custom series pickups are all the same wind with a different magnet.
Custom = Ceramic magnet.
Custom Custom = Alnico 2 magnet.
Custom 5 = Alnico 5 magnet. (AKA, jokingly called the "Custom Custom Custom.")
So I changed the Alnico 5 magnet out for a ceramic. That way I would end up with the original design of the Custom pickup. It had a bit more mids, but I still didn't care for it. So back to the workbench.
Next, I changed the ceramic magnet for an Alnico 8 magnet. Now, Seymour Duncan doesn't actually make a "Custom 8" pickup, but that's what the folks on the Seymour Duncan forum call it. I tried it, but I still thought it was thin and just not that great.
I was aiming to change the Alnico 8 magnet for an Alnico 2 magnet. However, I saw and bought an interesting pickup off of Ebay. Anyone who knows me, knows I love bladed pickups. And on Ebay I saw a bladed pickup with a silver baseplate for only $19 plus free shipping. I thought, "I have to try this out."
So I tried it out. You know what? I loved it. The sound fell right between a Bill Lawrence (Wilde pickups) L-500-R and an L-500-L. And that's the sound that I have been looking for. For years I've used an L-500-R in the bridge. It is a very PAF meets bladed pickup sound. In other words, mid-scooped with lots of bite.
I've tried the L-500-L, and it's a bit compressed for my taste. The L-500-XL does metal really well, but I wouldn't use it for anything else. So this new pickup is what I have been looking for, for a long time.
You can find it listed as: Twin Blade High Output Bridge Output Humbucker Pickup Black Nickel Silver Baseplate. The seller is sanman8753.
So I thought, "Why stop there? Let's find a matching neck pickup." Well, the seller didn't have a matching neck pickup, so I searched for one. 95% of the bladed pickups were for the bridge position. However, I found one neck pickup that intrigued me. What got my attention was that it also had a silver baseplate. It was, however, a bit more expensive than the bridge pickup. It cost $38, but had free shipping. It still cost less than a GFS or equivalent pickup.
You can find it posted as: New Alnico V Twin Blade Rail Hot Humbucker Guitar Pickup Neck or Bridge - Black. The seller is: Allsoundstore.
If you will notice, the blades are a lot thicker on the neck pickup. I think this brought out a much thicker sound. It has a bit more mids than an L-500-R. I'd say the treble is about the same. The real difference is that the bass is huge on this pickup. I will say it had a lot more compression than the L-500-R.
I brought the treble side up to the strings where I normally do, but I had to lower the bass side since the bass was too overwhelming. After I did that it seemed to find it's sweet spot.
The good news, is that, the pickups blended well. I really dig the sounds I can get out of this guitar now. Surprisingly, I can achieve some really interesting and usable sounds using the tone controls. I didn't get to play it as much I would have liked today, but I am looking forward to playing it in the future.
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