My Pickup Predicament

When I first started playing guitar, pickups were pickups. As long as they made noise, they were good. Eventually I started listening to how pickups did their job, which started my journey to finding my sound. My inspirations span a wide variety, so I've decide to allow each guitar to tell me what their voice is. Being a broke bedroom rockstar I also need to find my sound on a tight budget, which wasn't always possible. Back in the day unless you shelled out money for a guitar already equipped with good pickups, or you shelled out money to buy better replacements, you were stuck with the cheapest space fillers it came with. Most of my guitars still have their stock pickups due to that fact, which is fine for some, but others leave quite a bit to be desired.

 

Such is the case with Cherrie, who I genuinely feel isn't reaching her full potential because of  the stock "Peavey Humbucking Pickups". Every guitar has a personality and a voice, in this case I feel her pickups are actively working against her, and not allowing her true voice to come through. These pickups are just your standard import pickups of the day. They were designed to span all genres and allow the player to decide what they wanted to play. Cherrie truly sounds her best when we're playing something bluesy. It feels as if she relaxes and she's comfortable in her element. The stock pickups aren't horrible, in fact the neck pickup is actually pretty nice, after some adjustments. My main complaints are the neck pickup still gets a bit muddy with chords, and the super hot bridge pickup just doesn't feel right. These pickups would feel more at home in a metal centric guitar, but for Cherrie they're just not vibing.

Given that Cherrie wants to be a blues guitar, she would probably benefit the most from PAF style pickups. The problem being PAFs were never uniform, so the term PAF is a fairly broad definition rather than an exact formula. When it comes to modern PAF copies some people want to argue about nickel-silver content, long legs vs short legs, maple vs plastic spacers, all of the different magnets alloys, winds per bobbin, etc. I've heard real PAFs sound like dying cats, and I've heard super cheap PAF clones sound fairly decent, and everything in between. What's most important to me is how do they sound?  I think Cherrie wants a set of PAFs that give her that Burst Killer tone, while also being a refined blues lady.

When it comes to true PAF copies, I guess most people would look at Gibson, as they're the ones who started this whole mess. If it hadn't been for Seth Lover's partnership with Gibson, who knows what music would sound like today. My Les Paul has Burstbucker Pros in it, and it gives me all that raw PAF snarl that I need, and a touch more, so I would certainly consider Burstbuckers, but they're a bit on the expensive side for me. Hot on the heels of Gibson, I think, would be Seymour Duncan. Seymour Duncan makes a myriad of PAF style pickups, but again some of these aren't within my reach. A lot of people would argue Throbak are superior to both Gibson and Seymour Duncan, I wouldn't disagree, it's just you can't touch a decent set of Throbaks with broke, bedroom rockstar money.

Another brand that makes a lot of PAF style pickups are DiMarzio. The sad fact there is I've never met a DiMarzio pickup that I liked. When I bought my Westone Dana, used mind you, it came with a DiMarzio FRED in it, and I hated it. This has been over 30 years ago, so I can't quite remember why. A few years back I bought a DiMarzio HS-3 for my Yngwie on a budget clone, and I absolutely hated it too. I knew it was super low output, but trying to get distortion from a DiMarzio HS-3 is like trying to fart with a speculum up your ass. I'm not against DiMarzio, they've just never given me what I wanted to hear, so I'll pass.

Again, since I'm a broke ass, we're going to skip all of the boutique brands like Throbak, Wizz, Monty's, Bare Knuckle, Vaughn Skow, etc. I'm going to have to look at the import market. There are some import PAFs that seem to have a really good reputation. Epiphone's Probuckers, ToneRider, and even super cheap $30 ebay no name, or Donlis PAFs all seem pretty decently appreciated. The Amazon route isn't something I oppose. The Powersound humbuckers in my RG270DX sound horrible, so I later replaced them with an Amazon DiMarzio style set that look and sound so much better. This is where waters get muddied, but not in a completely bad way. Having more options is a good thing, and a bad thing, if you're like me. I wish I had $30 per set options that sounded decent when I was a kid. 

My problem is I've been researching affordable PAF style pickups for a few months now, and it's become option paralysis at this point. With manufacturing costs being dirt cheap in the far east, decent sounding pickups for affordable prices are all over the place. Yet there are still caveats of knowing exactly what you're buying. Within my brain there is a battle between being frugal and getting the best price on good sounding pickups, or pay extra to avoid the pitfalls of potentially buying junk and just getting a known good sounding set of PAFs. I want the best PAFs I can get for Cherrie, within my budget, but I don't want to miss out on a really good set that could also save me some money. Probuckers seem great, ToneRiders aren't bad, but the much cheaper Donlis sound pretty good too. Heck, I may already have a set of Donlis PAFs. I bought a set of cream PAFs on Amazon a few years back that. They look exactly like the cream Donlis PAFs that apparently are so good they go head to head with the big boys.

So what do I do about replacing the humbuckers in Cherrie? I don't know! For now, the eternal search continues to find that balance of price and tone. Wish me luck!