Looking for pretty nice but generic sounding PUs

[bfhoo]

Hi all,

I'm beginner pickup winder who was pleasantly surprised that my clumsiest first builds sounded pretty good.
Now I'm planning to go further and try to make things more systematically.

I am having now slight problem with comparing sounds of pickups. I own some single coils and humbuckers, but none of them have something that would be called "generic" sound of that particular pickup - they have too much personality!

To be able to hear how my pickups sound against average pickups, I am planning to buy some single coils and humbuckers that are not lowest quality, but no great either, preferably with no distinctive character. Do you have any recommendations - or are the best bets usual Strat and LP stock pickups?

[belwar]

For a humbucker I would say buy a humbucker that someone has yarded out of a recent Les Paul. Im sure if you put a post of the les paul forum that you'dd have tons of responses within a few minutes. So many people pulled out thier stock pickups for throbaks

[xxxchange]

To be able to hear how my pickups sound against average pickups, I am planning to buy some single coils and humbuckers that are not lowest quality, but no great either, preferably with no distinctive character. Do you have any recommendations - or are the best bets usual Strat and LP stock pickups?

This is not exactly what you've asked, but I thought you might be interested by the information: to my ears, I don't know why, but pickups used by Ibanez in the early eighties sound very cool. Particularly the P-bass pickup of the Ibanez Blazer. They sound -IMMO- even better than the originals.

I like them and cherish them too much to take them appart and see how they're done...

Maybe you can profit more from analyzing the PUs whose sound you like, instead of looking for a "neutral" sounding one. Or the reverse, get some you don't like and try to see why is it so. I am afraid that in music there's a lot to do with personal taste, anyway.

If you're interested PM me and I'll see how you can get a sound sample from my collection of old Ibanez -and some other Japanese makers- PUs.

[bfhoo]

Maybe you can profit more from analyzing the PUs whose sound you like, instead of looking for a "neutral" sounding one. Or the reverse, get some you don't like and try to see why is it so. I am afraid that in music there's a lot to do with personal taste, anyway.

That is true, but I am beginner and I think I have to learn basics before I go experimenting. I did one weird blade-minihumbucker-style pickup which I thought sounded awesome with my Princeton clone and Tube Screamer - but when I played it with my cranked-up JCM 800 Marshall, I couldn't get nice tone whatever I tried. I want to learn why it is like this.

Maybe some day I'm selling that particular pickup , but I have to know where it works and where it does not.

I have done some mixing and one of basic rules is always compare your mix with published records, otherwise you might end up with some very strange sounding stuff. That might be sometimes cool, but I would like to do it intentionally, not by an accident. I think that some generic pickups would be like reference CDs in mixing - not something you should aim at.

[xxxchange]

I have done some mixing and one of basic rules is always compare your mix with published records, otherwise you might end up with some very strange sounding stuff. That might be sometimes cool, but I would like to do it intentionally, not by an accident. I think that some generic pickups would be like reference CDs in mixing - not something you should aim at.

OK, I like your basic idea, you sort of want to have a "callibration" device.

One thing that I like to do myself, whenever trying to find something just right in music, is to consciously do too much and then too little, of whatever it might be, be it a ritardando, a tempo, anything,... Once you know what folds out of the "zone", you can concentrate in getting it just right.

I reckon this is nothing new -what I'm saying-, but it might be worth applying to pickup design.