Pickups with more bite than 61r-61t in LP 60s

[shannow85]

Hello,

I bought a beautiful 2020 Les Paul standard 60s Lefty and it came with 61r and 61r pickup which were unknown to me and I'm not very fond of them .I have a LP 2019 Tribute which came in with 490r and 490t no covers and I really love  them.

The 61r and 61t sounds as if I was playing with velvet fingers whereas the 490r/490t bites your head off, a sparkly bright sound in comparision. I much prefer this, they sound very dynamic. I tried several pickup heights and polepieces heights and double checked the capacitors/pots (all 500k) but still, the 61r especially, sounds too tame, too gentle. The weird thing is that if I really hit the string super hard with the 61r then it sounds pretty close to the 490r (kinda compressed sound overwise).

Could it be the cover only that makes this drastic tone  change ? I could swap them, but the Tribute has plugs connection and the 60s is all soldered ... not a straightforward reversible process...

I'm on the edge of buying new pickups for the 60s if so I'd go for something else than the 490r 490t as it would be a bit redundant ...

I wouldn't mind something that has even more bite/sparkle/treeble on the neck pickup and something hotter on the bridge. Maybe 57 / 57+ ? Uncovered (possibly zebra) or BB1+BB3 ?. Trying to stay with Gibson brand pickups.

How would ceramics sound againts 490 r and 61r ?  For the neck I'm using them almost always clean and it's diffucult to find a youtube demo not overdriven. The bridge pickup is used exclusively for overdrive so I'm less picky.

I use mostly the LP as such :

Neck = Princeton 65 RI clean

Bridge = Marshall DSL40CR overdrive 1

Thank you in advance

Jonathan

 

 

 

[Twang Gang]

Burstbucker Pro pickups are pretty hot and trebly - you might like those, they are cleaner than 490s but of course you can always use pedals to dirty them up - they are much brighter than the 61s.

[brad1]

8 hours ago, Twang Gang said:

Burstbucker Pro pickups are pretty hot and trebly - you might like those, they are cleaner than 490s but of course you can always use pedals to dirty them up - they are much brighter than the 61s.

I agree with TG.

[shannow85]

Thank you, I might give it a go !  Just on some youtube vid the BB pro do seem brighter than the 490r indeed.

I'm still baffled that the 61r are not very bright against the 490r as they are about the same wound/hotness (although unbalanced) and have alnico V against II.

One would have though they'd be at least as bright.