Best Pickups For Vintage Sounding Jackson

[Trev57]

You are right DonP, thanks. I thought one of them was all mahogany though, maybe the Archtop.

[Mr Metal]

If you're going to consider coil-tapping a JB, I'd suggest you first coil tap the existing Duncan Designed 102B and see whether it gets you where you want to be. As I think DonP touched upon earlier on in this thread, the 102B is basically a JB. According to Seymour Duncan, 102B is the Korean built version of the SD JB (JB is made in USA)

[j2379]

i always like the duncan vintage staggered or flat. as well as the cool rail. as for humbuckers lots of good options but ide go for something less hot than the JB. maybe a 59 or alinco pro....or even a pearly gates.

[vondran]

I have a `83 Charvel HSS with a duncan `59 and two SL-1's (vintage staggered). I get great vintage strat sounds, but a Charvel is closer to a strat in many ways than a Jackson. The neck single coil pickup definitely has a more vintage sound with a 22 fret neck than with a 24 fret neck since it has to be moved a bit toward the bridge with a 24 fret neck. I've also found a neck-thru has a bit stronger fundamental come through which is good, but not the classic strat sound.

[XxKilgannonxX]

Dimarzio Norton is an excellent pickup for all..

Very very underated pickup

[Newc]

Your not going to get a bolt on neck to sound like a set or neck thru guitar. Pickups are only one part of each guitars sound or tone.

That made absolutely no sense in regards to this topic.

[Trev57]

I did another back to back today. My Limited Edition USA Strat with S1 switching and a set of noiseless pickups. Not the Jangliest of Strats in my collection, but it is a guitar I play a lot with the band. I compared it to my 2005 Soloist HSS. I can get Strat ish sounds from the soloist when using the single coils (I know they are really stacked humbuckers, as are the Noiseless set on the Fender, so this is probably a fair comparison) and there simply was no comparison. I have a Tom Anderson with HSH config and a Switcheroo system. This guitar is brilliant! The Anderson single coil is a stacked unit also, but can be tapped, and this is the best comparison with the Jackson, as it only gets really Fendery when I tap it. Used as a stacked humbucker, it still sounds better than the Jackson, but not as good as when tapped. My conclusion from this limited test is that stacked humbuckers can still only give you a compromise between a real single coil and a noiseless pickup.

[necrotechno]

Check out the Lace Holy Grail design. It's a dual-coil design, but it's not stacked. The coils are turned sideways with the pole pieces sandwiched between. Brilliant design. They also do a P90 with the same idea.

And then of course there's Bill Lawrence. The man has pretty much dedicated his life to capturing classic single-coil tones in hum-cancelling designs. Personally, I think he's done it.

[jtr]

Newc, I was just trying to say that pickups alone are not going to get you a vintage sound. The amp you use the way you set it the way you play all are part of your sound. Hot pickup should be a thing of the past with all the high gain Amps out there. This isn't the 60's or 70's where preamps were single stage. If preamp drive isn't what you want get a low wattage amp and crank it to get that overdriven power amp sound.