NGD... Gibson Melody Maker (Now With Pics)

[elessar820]

Well, I picked up a new Melody Maker from Alto Music yesterday. For a cheap guitar, it's pretty well built. It plays well, feels great and looks good, the stock pickup has got to go though. I bought the sunburst model, great finish. The main reason I picked it up was mainly to do some mods, I'm going to drop in a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails or possibly a Blackout single coil and maybe a killswitch. I was thinking of a P-Rail, but I don't feel like routing the body out. I'll post some pics tomorrow or later on tonight.

[elessar820]

Here are some pics of the Melody Maker, I had to run back to the shop to get an adjustment tool, (the one for my BFG is at my parents house) the kid said he'd do it but had no clue what he was doing, he tried using an allen key. Anyway, he just gave me the wrench to take home. When I got home I realized I didn't have the truss rod cover anymore. I ordered one off Sweetwater, I didn't feel like driving another half hour back to the store to get it back. So... here are some pics:

[Ian Martin]

Can you explain why you don't like the stock pickup?

 

I'm just curious, I've heard many opinions on it both good and bad...and you seem like you might know tone a little better than some might.

[elessar820]

I'm hardly an expert on tone or anything, but I do find certain pickups and pickup combos more pleasing to my ears than others. I find Ibanez stock pickups for the most part too harsh and very muddy, so I've switched them out in every one I've owned with Seymour Duncans and I've experimented with lots of combos, mostly buying used of eBay. I bought the Melody Maker planning on putting in a different pickup due mostly to my extreme dislike of distorted single coil hum, which is why I switched out the stock Custom '69s in my Strat for Hot Noiseless, that and the 69s were very thin sounding. The stock one isn't half bad. It's bright and fairly loud for a single coil, nice rock tone when distorted and a cleans up pretty nice. The more I play my BFG the more I want to see if I can fix the BB3 and put it back in. I swapped it out because if the pickup was touched and rocked back towards the neck, it'd cut out. I had a Screamin' Demon in there then put in the Dirty Fingers. It's a good pickups, nice harmonics and it has a lot of clarity with heavy distortion, but I kid of liked the fact that my bridge pickup was supposed to sound like an early LP. I'm probably going to put in a Lil' 59 in the Melody Maker to try to keep the same kind of vibe that the BFG was supposed to have. I may even route the cavity slightly to fit in a full sized humbucker, but since it seems like too much work for someone with not enough time, I doubt I'll do it.