Gibson Burstbucker Pros Install:

Some great reading there and good videos too.

I've been on the fence for a while now - Alnico II's or V's - and I still haven't made a decision.
 
I tend to favor a warmer bridge tone, so, now I'm looking at this holistically. I think my initial setup on the Gibson Les Paul will look like this:

50's style wiring
300k Gibson pots on the bridge
500k Gibson pots on the neck
.022uf capacitor bridge
.015uf capacitor neck

Then, to decide on which pickups to use...
 
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Robert Herndon said:
True, True....faithful in the respect of staying lower output, not 498T/500T with original pot values
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Well, if you go by just the DC resistance rating, you’d think the ‘59s aren’t too hot. I’ve found they can be used for some fairly aggressive styles. They have a slightly mid-scooped tonality.

They are a warm pickup. If you go too low on the pot values, you may find them to begin sounding muddy.
 
smitty_p said:
Well, if you go by just the DC resistance rating, you’d think the ‘59s aren’t too hot. I’ve found they can be used for some fairly aggressive styles. They have a slightly mid-scooped tonality.

They are a warm pickup. If you go too low on the pot values, you may find them to begin sounding muddy.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm...yes, trying to work out a sound approach to this in my head.

Let me tell you this - i have 50's wiring with 500k Bourne pots in the SG and the Gibson Burstbucker Pro is super bright in the bridge. It requires treble compensation to get a good, warm sound out of it. Now, fortunately, I have a ton of EQ-ability on tap, but its shocking when you switch from the Double Neck (with 8.4k long unoriented A5 Thro-Bak SLE-101's) to the SG - you gotta change the EQ settings big-time.

I almost feel that a 220k ohm resistor on the bridge pickup (a Bill Lawrence tip) might me beneficial on the SG.
 
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Right now it looks like either the SD 59's or the SD Alnico II Pros is what I am going to use in the new Les Paul.
 
I think the SG has some usefulness, but it's just a very different sound than the doubleneck. The double neck (8.4k Alnico II) is warmer and fuller sounding - huge sounding actually - and the SG is thinner and more bright, but fills out nicely when I roll the bridge tone back to about 5 or 6. Some of this is likely due to the placement of the bridge pickup in the double neck, which is illustrated in the photos below:

Gibson SG.jpg

Doubleneck April 2018.jpg
 
smitty_p said:
Well, if you go by just the DC resistance rating, you’d think the ‘59s aren’t too hot. I’ve found they can be used for some fairly aggressive styles. They have a slightly mid-scooped tonality.

They are a warm pickup. If you go too low on the pot values, you may find them to begin sounding muddy.
Click to expand...

DC resistance is about the worst metric I can think of to use in order to try to figure out what a particular pickup will sound like. Knowing what magnet type and number of winds on the bobbins will tell you a hell of a lot more than resistance. It's a useless spec propagated by marketing departments.
 
gball said:
DC resistance is about the worst metric I can think of to use in order to try to figure out what a particular pickup will sound like. Knowing what magnet type and number of winds on the bobbins will tell you a hell of a lot more than resistance. It's a useless spec propagated by marketing departments.
Click to expand...

I guess all other things being equal, it might say something about how hot a pickup is, but I agree.
 
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