Pickup recomendation for a maple neck thru with alder wings guitar

Chiguete

Experienced
So long story short I've had a Kramer Sagemaster Custom for more that 15 years and it was my first top level guitar. When I boght it it didn't came with the original pickups in it's HSS form: SD JB and 2 Vitage Saggered, it had a Dimarzio Air Zone, HS-3 and a SD Hot Rails. All was good in my ears back then and I made things work with them, but years went by and things changed... I started buying other guitars and adding them to my collection and then I started to notice the diference between them and didn't like how this guitar sounded: the neck pickup was WAY too muddy, the middle was in the way of my picking so it went as much down in to the body as it could and the bridge pickups was just not convincing either.

So I sold the SD Hot Rails and the Air Zone and now I will try the HS-3 in the neck and I have in the bridge a non label pickup that actually sounds ok but I think I can do better!

BTW I forgot to say that I play basicly 70's and 80's rock and metal and normally that meens a hot pickup to help overdrive an amp from back then BUT that really is not needed when using a modeller because you can boost the signal in a lot of different ways or you can just use a higher gain amp.

So do you think you should choose it differently taking in to acount that you have a modeller? and if you guys would choose a pickup considering the body woods what would you choose?

PS:
In another thread I started just to talk about the approach of choosing a pickup if you have a modeller, that thread is this https://forum.fractalaudio.com/thre...-approach-to-choosing-a-guitar-pickup.149916/
 
I've read through a bunch of conversation surrounding this, and it hasn't changed my approach personally, though I'm thinking about it more now. It seems that with pre-eq and/or input trim settings, you could in theory have a pickup that is "FRFR" so to speak (don't know what the right term would be, but basically a pickup that doesn't color the sound in any particular way), then tune the tone and output using pre-eq and input trim, and get whatever you want. Maybe even be able to get "pickup presets" in a manner of speaking.

All that said, I'm not sure how things like "tightness/looseness" could be done that way, at least I don't how the time smearing, or lack thereof, between different pickups could be replicated. If that can't be done, then there's always value in the pickup hardware itself affecting the feel of how it plays.
 
I don't know if it's just a trick my mind is making think it could sound better... but I will have to further try it out and see.
 
I don't know if it's just a trick my mind is making think it could sound better... but I will have to further try it out and see.

It can definitely sound different. Until you know what "better" actually means though, you'll keep hitting "different".
 
Yeha that's the thing, since I don't whant the specs of the unbranded pickup that it has now then I don't know how to improove/change the sound by changing pickups... thats why I want to give it a go with another pickups and based on those results I would decide.
 
Experiment with pickup height adjustment. If some here are to be believed this is easily one of the greatest chances you can make to your sound.
 
Experiment with pickup height adjustment. If some here are to be believed this is easily one of the greatest chances you can make to your sound.

I wouldn't say it's a great change to the sound, but yes you can add or take away some lows, highs and output by adjusting pickup height. It won't be like changing to a different pickup, or changing amps or cabs though.
 
Hey just so you guys know I tried an original Bill Lawrence L-500 Lead (pre 500XL) that I had in another guitar and it was AWESOME!!! Clear, articulate, tight and transparent that sounds like the it's letting the wood of the guitar breath!
 
I wouldn't say it's a great change to the sound, but yes you can add or take away some lows, highs and output by adjusting pickup height. It won't be like changing to a different pickup, or changing amps or cabs though.

Whenever I listen to audio samples at the major pickup producers 99% of all pickups sound the same to me. That is not to say that I can't hear no difference between single coils, P90's or humbuckers, or low or high output pickups, but play me soundclips of various pickups of the same type after another (like high output metal pickups) and its more or less the same to me.
 
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