Looking for that sweet vintage sound

Jason Lollar makes a superb humbucker. So good that out of just about every reputable winder on the market, none other than Bill Collings chose Lollar pickups for his line of electrics. And that's saying something, because calling Collings a perfectionist is a monumental understatement.

 

Alnico Pro 2's are very good/vintage.

 

I've got a couple of sets of Sheptone pickups and they are increble...check out his website http://www.sheptone.com/landing.html.

My first set of pups from him were delayed a week because he had an emergeny order come in.He e-mailed and apologizedan a last minute ord had just come in from.. the Allman Bros! Derek trucks was needing a pup for his new Number 1. That says alot about his work...

Dave

 

I put Seymour Duncan '59's on my Ibanez AM50 a couple of years ago and I'm well impressed. I've had Seymour Duncan's on a couple of my strats and have had a SD Jeff Beck a few years ago on an ESP strat. To be honest I've enjoyed them all, and they've been very tue to the discriptions on the SD website.

The great thing about the '59's is that if you lower them down they have lots of top end and sound really open. They really have that old PAF feel about them to my ears.

I know that Seymour Duncan are not the flavour of the month on this forum, but I really think that the '59's are about as good as a vintage sounding PAF sytle humbucker gets (unless you are playing a $5,000 1959 LP reissue in which case I fully understand your need to be ultra picky).

 

I have the StewMac's Golden Age pups loaded in my LP and they have the nice bright and clear sound of the vintage PAFs. They are probably the cheapest PAF clones out on the market running at $50 per pup straight from StewMac. The only thing is that these pups are Alnico 5 so they are brighter than the other clones by SD, Burstbuckers, etc. which I believe are Alnico 2. I left the volume pots of my LP unconnected to the tone pots to get the most genuine straight pickup sound and even then they sound amazing. The neck pickup, even while being alnico 5 magnets, sounds very warm and creamy while the bridge pickup sounds clear and high but not shrill.

As you probably know, getting that vintage sound is a mix of all kinds of things: wood, hardware material, wiring, caps, pots, etc. If you want to get as close as possible with a limited budget, I would suggest putting in some bumblebee clones or even authentic ones if you can find them (if you haven't already) and pickup the stewmac's. You'd probably still spend less than the amount you'd pay for Antiquity's or SethLovers.