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King Loudness « A wonderful take on the P.A.F! »
Published on 04/29/11 at 18:36I have one of these pickups stock in the bridge position of my Gibson Les Paul Traditional Plus, and from day one I've been pleasantly surprised by how good it is. I assumed that when I bought the guitar that I would need to eventually swap out the pickups to ones that were higher output. My primary plan when I bought the guitar itself was to use it for classic and hard rock tones, and I figured that I would need pickups with a little more kick. I had tried Les Pauls with Burstbucker Pro pickups and really liked those for hard rock, so I figured the '57 Classic/Classic Plus set would simply be too low output for what I wanted to do, probably more suited to blues or jazz. However, from day one of actually owning and using the guitar with these pickups, I've been suitably impressed. They are both lower output when compared to say, a Duncan JB or a Suhr Doug Aldrich, but that doesn't mean that they can't rock.
The Plus in particular has impressed me quite a bit with its general versatility. At its core, I would liken it to a P.A.F pickup, but on steroids. It's a clean enough pickup to work really well for tones where gain is not a player in the sound (IE: country or certain blues tones). The Classic Plus is great for country esque tones that sound surprising for a full (IE: non coil split) humbucker. The drive tones though are definitely my favourite. It can do classic tones with a mid gain sound very well, and considering its output level, that is what you would think would be its niche. However in addition to this there is a really nice top end punch that is perfect for seventies/eighties hard rock tones. It's the type of pickup where you run it harder and use your pick attack and gain from the amp or a pedal to get your saturation as opposed to coming from the pickup itself.
My only problem with the pickup is that it's 2 conductor wired. I want a Jimmy Page coil splitting/phase setup for the guitar at some point, and with these pickups I am unable to do this. That may mean I do finally swap them up, but as it stands right now I've had this bridge pickup in the guitar for 13 months and for now, it is staying.
The Plus in particular has impressed me quite a bit with its general versatility. At its core, I would liken it to a P.A.F pickup, but on steroids. It's a clean enough pickup to work really well for tones where gain is not a player in the sound (IE: country or certain blues tones). The Classic Plus is great for country esque tones that sound surprising for a full (IE: non coil split) humbucker. The drive tones though are definitely my favourite. It can do classic tones with a mid gain sound very well, and considering its output level, that is what you would think would be its niche. However in addition to this there is a really nice top end punch that is perfect for seventies/eighties hard rock tones. It's the type of pickup where you run it harder and use your pick attack and gain from the amp or a pedal to get your saturation as opposed to coming from the pickup itself.
My only problem with the pickup is that it's 2 conductor wired. I want a Jimmy Page coil splitting/phase setup for the guitar at some point, and with these pickups I am unable to do this. That may mean I do finally swap them up, but as it stands right now I've had this bridge pickup in the guitar for 13 months and for now, it is staying.