ES-335 Question

I have been up and down on the pickups in my Ibanez AS73.
The stock Ibby pickups are ceramic and around 8k neck and 16.k bridge.
I dont know why they went so hot on the bridge.
I swapped the magnets to A5, and I like the neck but the bridge is pretty hot/ not what I want in a semi hollow.
I keep forgetting but I am going to lower the bridge a bit more.

I would probably go with any decent PAFish A2, likely Guitarmadness on ebay.
I have one of ther 57 Special - supposed to be similar to Gibson 57 Classic in a Jr. I may swap in.
I may put ceramic back in the Ibby in the Jr. as I was eyeing a super distortion clone for that.
 
syscokid said:
What is it about them that you don't like?
Click to expand...

Just the overall tone. I can make them sound OK through the Mesa and the Gibson but not stellar.
I even took the 335 to the near by GC and ran it through a couple Fenders and the p'ups still did not do it for me.
They are not airy sounding at all, and that is what I really want. Which means an unpotted p'up.
 
ChasFred said:
Thank you Robert, when I know what I am going to do I will contact you. What p'up are the Gibsons you have?
Click to expand...

I have no idea. They were take-outs (trade-ins) on a set of Virgil Arlo 59's I installed for a local session guy....I probably install more Arlo's than any other pickup for the session guys I know down here....

www.virgilarlopickups.com

Best PAF Pickups

It seems just about everyone is looking for the Best PAF . Virgil Arlo makes what many Pro players consider to be the Best PAF Humbucker. Many players have gone so far to pull out the vintage PAFs from their guitars from the 1950's and 1960's in favor of the tone a reliability Virgil Arlo Model...
www.virgilarlopickups.com
 
ChasFred said:
Just the overall tone. I can make them sound OK through the Mesa and the Gibson but not stellar.
I even took the 335 to the near by GC and ran it through a couple Fenders and the p'ups still did not do it for me.
They are not airy sounding at all, and that is what I really want. Which means an unpotted p'up.
Click to expand...

Thro-Bak SLE-101's are a very airy, unpotted pickup....
 
I am a big proponent of trying magnet swaps first.
Easy once you get the hang of it.
HB and P90s.

The Ibanez I mentioned above - the stock pick ups and ceramic magnets were just sterile and, Idk flat, like one dimensional no depth sounding - not musical/ words dont describe well. The bridge was just plain harsh, had to roll the tone wayyyy back.

Which is why I want to put the ceramic back in it in another guitar; to retain the treble that gets compressed out under gain.
 
Give 'em hell y'all, I don't need to pipe up with
any commentary much. This community seems to have it
covered. My recommendation would be Gibson '57 Classic
and Classic Plus, I know nothing about SD p'ups or any
of the other boutique makers.

I've had good results with Rose Pickups (who made my P-90s)
and with Golden Age pickups from StewMac. Both are reasonably
priced.

I think the need for wax potting comes from how loud you play.
If you play small venues at reasonable decibels, it's a non-issue.
If you play outside or large venues and crank everything up to
11, you'd better have wax in your pickups as well as your ears.
 
Though Gibson Classic '57s are good sounding pickups - for humbuckers - I wanted a little more "zip" and pizzaz out of them - the neck pickup, especially.

First thing I did was replace the A2 magnet in the neck pickup with a rough cast A5 magnet. That definitely sparkled things up a bit more.

Then, going with a 1M (nominal - measured is around 900k) volume pot and converting the tone pot to being a No-Load pot (a quick and easy pot-mod) helped some more! Nice changes for giving the neck pickup tone more sparkle - allowed more highs to come through.

Being a lover of the richly detailed tones one can get from single coil pickups, I decided I wanted a more detailed, articulate tone than humbuckers generally are capable of providing, so I went with a set of TV Jones TV-HT Hilo'trons (which are a uniquely-designed single-coil pickup).

Once I installed the TV-HT Hilo'trons, BIG WOW! :celebrate2:my Gibson ES-339 studio is singing my desired tones to a "T". Rich, clear, detailed, sparkly bright, articulate - and that's just with the neck pickup! (I play most of the time in a very clean, kind of Eric Johnson tone style. I don't often employ overdrive or distortion pedals.)

Anyway... the ES-339 is a closely-related sister to the ES-335, with a 14" bout rather than a 16" bout and the same center block.

If you're interested in changing up your tones in a significant way, think a little bit outside the box! :cool:

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48724358787_36a2ac60fa_o.jpg


This was my first set of TV Jones pickups and quickly taught me what all the excitement over TV Jones was about. They are awesome pickups! Not inexpensive, but definitely worth the price.
 
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