Good Humbucker Pickups for the neck (or Bridge)?

[arnie65]

I have a Fralin Unbucker in one of my guitars and it is a fuller, airy, more clear, with a rounder tone than any of the PAF pickups I have in other guitars. One of the traits of the early 50's Gibson PAF's found in early jazz boxes (not exclusively) was the fact that most were unbalanced coils. That might play a role on the tone of the Fralin Unbucker, it is exactly that; an unbalanced humbucker by design, that is largely used to tap the stronger coil for additional single coil tones, but as it turns out makes a great neck humbucker for jazz!



Cheers,
Arnie...

[FredC]

I would NOT recommend the Duncan Jazz pickup for Jazz.

If you want a PAF style pickup, I would recommend the Bartolini PBF 55 neck pickup. This pickup will work very well for Jazz.

[coolvinny]

I'm a big fan of the Lollar Charlie Christian humbucker-sized (i.e. drop in replacement) pickup. I replaced a Lollar Imperial Humbucker (Standard) with the CC and it sounds *amazing* in my 16" x 2 7/8" hollowbody laminate archtop.

Having said that, I actually took the CC out of a different guitar (a smaller, 15" x 1.75" hollowbody laminate archtop) I had and put the Imperial into that one - both guitars sound better. So my conclusion is that smaller guitars don't need the clarity of the CC whereas larger guitars (especially if played through 12" open back cabinets) can benefit from the extra clarity.

I'd never bonded with anything but a PAF-style humbucker until using this CC into the 16" full depth hollowbody.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Zombie thread is 11 years old!

[339 in june]

"The dead don't die"
Jim Jarmusch