vaxxine Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 Save yourself some money : don't replace both pick-ups - just replace the neck pickup. If you bought this thing to play mellow jazzy stuff on, then you're probably only using the neck pickup anyway. Many of the mass produced asian pickups are not well balanced as you've found out and full hollow guitars can be a little boomy to begin with. On eBay look for a used Gibson '57 Classic, Duncan '59 or Gibson 490R (the 490R is what Gibson put the ES-165/Herb Ellis model). I've bought all 3 of these pickups used on eBay for a whole lot less than the new price, specifically for installing in import guitars where I wanted to know if a better pickup would help the sound but I didn't want to spend a ton of money (in case it didn't make much difference). It's the way to go as far as I'm concerned. BTW, the Gibson 490R is practically the same as a '57 Classic, but the price is usually quite a bit less. Another excellent but unknown/overlooked choice is the Dimarzio 36th Anniversary PAF Classic. Sadowsky is actually using these on some of his models. Just replacing the caps and pots with better quality ones won't make any difference to what you're describing. Changing the value of the pots and caps could help, but most of your complaint lies with the pickup itself. If you can't get rid of the boominess with just one of these pickups, then you either need a different amp (don't overlook the amp as source of the problem) or you need a different guitar. There are other pickup choices too but they all get more expensive. Good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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