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I'm a pickup snob. I particularly like WCR pickups, and I'm quite fond of vintage Guild HB1 pickups. My recent Guild purchase has Fender psuedo-HB1s, of which I am not a fan.
But I decided to give them another chance because this is a very different guitar than I've ever owned. That's when I was surprised.
In this guitar, I actually like them through a clean amp. Now, this guitar is wired for coil-splitting and phase reversal, so it has a lot of tonal options, but the fact remains that in almost every position through a nice clean amp (My Fender Champ clone, for example), I really dig the tone.
The problem I have is when I add any crunch at all. As soon as I kick in some drive, the tone turns to crap. The pickups become muddy - completely devoid of any articulation. Now why would that be? Why would a pickup that sounds great clean sound so terrible when overdriven?
Any ideas?
But I decided to give them another chance because this is a very different guitar than I've ever owned. That's when I was surprised.
In this guitar, I actually like them through a clean amp. Now, this guitar is wired for coil-splitting and phase reversal, so it has a lot of tonal options, but the fact remains that in almost every position through a nice clean amp (My Fender Champ clone, for example), I really dig the tone.
The problem I have is when I add any crunch at all. As soon as I kick in some drive, the tone turns to crap. The pickups become muddy - completely devoid of any articulation. Now why would that be? Why would a pickup that sounds great clean sound so terrible when overdriven?
Any ideas?
