Did trying more than one pickup in a guitar (height and pole piece adjustments not withstanding) work enough to be worthwhile for you?
I know we have lots of different players on this forum; some have one guitar some have 100. Some folks swap pickups hunting for “it” and some people just change strings.
How has the pickup rabbit hole worked for you?
Getting things dialed in here. Many of my guitars have had pickup swaps and have custom wiring setups.
The only one completely stock is the violet Custom 24, Adèle. PRS nailed that one. I briefly swapped hot and ground on the neck pickup wiring once, to try OOP, but the 59/09 pickups didn't play nice with it, so I put it back instead of putting in a pull switch tone pot to make it a permanently available option.
The orange tiger Studio, Hobbes, has all stock pickups but I put in the Custom 24 5 way lever switch to give it the possibility of swapping the middle pickup for the neck + Bridge combo in the middle switch spot.
Incidentally, the triple P90 Custom 22 has its switch set up permanently wired for that option. It got the Fralin hum free P90s that I initially put in the Noventa JM. Gotta sell that.
The SE24 Standard that started the PRS kick has my version of the 24-08 wiring, which swaps coil splits for series/parallel switches. Added a 1/2 OOP on the tone pull switch. 12 total different sounds. Also swapped the switch for a good Tele switch, for a more positive feel in the detents and likely longer service life.
The 245 was just rewired like a Gretsch, so it has master volume and tone, and individual "blender" volume pots per pickup that are reverse audio taper for better control at the top part of the pots' rotation. The series/parallel switches got moved to toggles and the one remaining tone pot's pull switch does the 1/2 OOP thing.
All 3 Teles have 5 way switches. Basically, all the 4 way choices, but with 1/2 OOP added as the 5th option on two, and middle + bridge instead of series on the red one, which actually retained the Fender neck pickup (albeit, relocated to the middle). Red also gas a tone knob pull switch to select series mode on the neck SD Jazz pickup when it is on alone. The two combined positions are auto-split by the 5 way switch, to make hum cancelling with the bridge pickup in the neck + bridge and neck 1/2 OOP + bridge spots.
The SG Special had DiMarzio P90 sized pickups with series/parallel switches on the tone pots. I installed them along with a ground-up rewire, which it needed due to the PC board mounted jack going crackly shortly after bringing it home. Might have already been crackly at the store. Got a good deal on it. Maybe that was why. Anyhoo, I pulled those and stuck a pair of Kinmans in. Wow, what a difference!
The BluesHawk comes stock with a series resistor to help tame the neck + bridge level, as the "Blues 90" pickups are series-wired. I upped the resistance a bit and bypassed it with a small cap to preserve the top end. Other than that, it works out of the box.
The HLK Lucky Lady got a pair of Lawrence L90 pickups - a 2H at the neck and a 4H at the bridge, along with rewiring the controls for master volume and passive treble and bass controls. Might someday add a switch for 1/2 OOP on the treble pot.
The Strat has seen many different setups in the 20 years I have owned it, including a long stint with a Lawrence L298TL Tele bridge pickup and a pair of L220? pickups in the other two spots. Currently it sports passive bass and treble, master volume, a series/parallel switch for the bridge L90-4H, which gets auto-switched to a default parallel wired config regardless of the mini toggle's position when the lever is in the middle + bridge spot. A second mini toggle swaps the middle spot on the lever from middle to neck + bridge.
What was the question?
All "rabbit holes" carry similar characteristics, and
