-
C'mon, we're guitar players here, let's get shallow and talk about cosmetics...
Have you seen what Heritage can do with a sunburst?
Kidding aside, on the Peerless side, the jazz city always intrigued me...sort of a poor man's Sadowsky Jim Hall? Or is that a different model I'm thinking of?
-
08-21-2015 05:36 PM
-
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Seriously thier finishes are awesome, I think they are kicking the butt of most under 5k gibsons. Truthfully, Eastman is doing better finishes than the middle of the road gibsons.
-
The Jazz City is a bit of an odd duck. It has a solid pressed maple top with flame laminate sides and back. 17" 25.5 scale w/20 frets. One routed humbucker. Killer look, with the satin finish. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
It isn't everyone's cup of tea. Maple is a harder wood than spruce, so the tone not as lush as the spruce top models, but it does bite. Personally I am more fond of the Cremona with the carved maple top, but it is $1000 more. It does speak acoustically louder and fuller, IMO, but amplified the Jazz City has quite a nice character.
Same with the Monarch. It amplifies brilliantly although the Imperial has a sweeter acoustic sound. However, both the Monarch and the Jazz City are great jazz boxes for the price ....
Doc DoscoLast edited by docdosco; 08-21-2015 at 06:35 PM.
-
Ah, thought the top was laminate too.
Anyway, solid maple's a cool idea not enough builders exploit. Doesn't have the volume or richness acoustically of spruce, but imparts its own character on the amplified sound, and is a good deal more feedback resistant too.
-
To me, the 575 has kind of a compressed thump sound. Very cool. Not the thunk sound but a thump. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
-
Yeah, bass strings thunk, trebles chime like a carved too. Kind of a nice balance. Originally Posted by barrymclark
Also, nothing like a 175, which is important to note.
-
Precisely and video really captures that. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
-
2b has owned a Peerless Imperial, a pair of Cremona 17's, and a pair of Cremona 16's, and of course a Monarch.
Don't ask 2b how many Heritages he's owned. Over 2 dozen. Sweet 16's, 575's, Golden Eagles, Super Eagles. Not one arrived with the above suggested "12th fret hump" - Knock on Spruce.
As to Peerless fit and finish it's exceptionally good. This from a guy who prefers a nitro finish. I too had a Monarch with the action slammed as low as I've ever experienced, and the guitar played like butter.
But between the Imperial, Cremona, and Monarch, I found the Cremona far and away possessed the sweetest tone. The pickup on any archtop is an easy swap, so I don't see that as an issue. For my money, the Cremona is THE guitar in the Peerless line.
BTW, the woods of the Cremona are a carved top with laminated back and sides.
RE the 575. The price is high for a used 575. I understand that the OP's used 575 is at a dealer, and the guitar is there in front of you. But keep in mind the street value as soon as you buy it...Depending upon how that 575 is outfitted the moment you take it out of the store it's value could drop as low as $500-$600 less minimum. Heritage used prices are all over the board. But if you look around the used market, one can find 575's for as low as $1300...quite often. It's not often to find one with a floating pickup unless it has a Spruce top. Rarely will you find a used 575 above $1600. Again, unless that 575 has a Spruce top. Is it worth it to you to pay an extra $500 to buy a 575 at a dealers premium? That's the question one has to ask themselves. I could understand if we were talking about a rare vintage guitar. But 575's are plentiful everywhere on the used market.
Note too that the Cremona are outfitted with a single routed humbucker. If you don't care for the pickup drop in a '57. I wish my Super Eagles had the neck of the Cremona.
Decisions, decisions. Good luck jazz.Fred!
-
Spot on. A while back, I decided to I wanted to swap out a floating pickup, so I started looking at boutique pickup offerings and was taken aback by the prices being offered. I didn't find the wide selection of floaters that I was hoping for, but I found lots of humbucker options over the $150 mark. I even found a few that sold for over $175 a piece! Originally Posted by jzucker
Honestly, I don't know a heck of a lot about pickup construction, magnets, etc, but I've been as happy with stock Kent Armstrong pickups as I've been with Seymour Duncan pickups costing more.
The only instances where I've been tempted to swap out a pickup were when I wasn't satisfied with the type of pickup installed in the instrument. I haven't yet spent money on trading one standard humbucker for another. What am I missing?
If you have upgraded your pickups, what difference have you noticed? Has the marginal tonal improvement been worth the investment?
-
My head hurts!
-
Other than the basic form factor, there's really no such thing as a "standard humbucker" and ignoring the price and subjective evaluations, not all pickups are created equal. They come in a wide variety of specs including different output levels, brighter, darker, potted, unpotted, braided two strand wire, four strand wire, ceramic or alnico magnet, balanced or unbalanced coils, different gauge wire and they're capable of being wound to a lot of different tonal responses. In fact, a single manufacturer can have many pickups with the same appearance that are voiced differently and intended for different functions. If a pickup is not well matched to the guitar or the intended purpose, then changing the pickup can be a very easy way to change the character of the instrument for a relatively small investment. Originally Posted by Klatu
Last edited by Jim Soloway; 08-22-2015 at 12:25 AM.
-
braiding, stranding, etc., doesn't change the sound. Neither does potting for the most part although non potted pickups do pickup a little acoustic tone. And I disagree that it can change the character of the guitar. It can't. It can change the coloration. IMO of course... Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
-
575.
-
Interesting. Please relate the most drastic difference (improvement) you've experienced through a pickup change of the same type. Thanks again, Jim. Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
-
The following is IMO of course... Originally Posted by Klatu
i also think there *IS* a standard humbucker. The standard humbucker is roughly based on the PAF. 99% of the humbucking pickups out there including kent armstrong, dimarzio, lollar, seymour duncan, etc., are based on that.
I think there is a difference in sound of the various pickups but i believe that for clean jazz tones, almost any decent PAF will sound similar in an archtop. There are nuanced differences of course but I don't think you'll change the character of your tone by switching from a korean kent armstrong to a $500 holmes PAF.
The boutique pickup vendors all want you to think otherwise of course.
Case in point...I had a hofner jazzica. Hated the bright and thin sound. Talked to Kent. Sent him the pickup. He rewound it to sound fatter. Got it back. Guitar sounded the same. Virtually unchanged. I don't doubt he used better materials and of course he was working within the limits of the mechanical housing of the jazzica pickup which is a mini humbucker but its case is very thin. But by and large, nobody would ever hear the difference there. Kent is a wizard but there just isn't that big a difference between pickups that use similar materials. Yes, if you switch from a high output ceramic magnet pickup with 15k worth of windings to a alnico ii pickup with 6k worth of windings you'll hear the diff. But are you changing the character of the guitar or just changing its tone?
-
+1. Originally Posted by jzucker
There have been times when I have wished a pickup could change the character of a guitar, but it's never happened. If you think about the physics of a pickup, it's not hard to understand; they turn string vibrations into corresponding voltages, more or less accurately. Different pickups can and do amplify the sound with varying degrees of bass, mid and treble emphasis, and yes, that can change the coloration, which may be helpful, or not. The type of pickup has an influence; a HB adds phase cancellation, which affects the harmonics and adds a bit of hollowness; A SC like a P90 will give clearer reproduction of bass notes and has no phase cancellation, so generally sounds clearer. A HB might have a midrange 'hump' or emphasis, which can add fatness. Different magnets can emphasise different parts of the frequency response.
But none of this changes the character and complexity of the guitar's string vibration and overtone series in the first place. What goes in, comes out - just with different degrees of coloration.
If a guitar hasn't got the sound or character you want, ( as opposed to the coloration you want) a different pickup can't supply it either. My old pickup box bears witness to that fact.
-
In my humble little experience and opinion, I suspect a lot of pickup, pots value and cap swapping is pretty much having the same effect as an EQ focusing on certain frequencies the guitar can produce. It cannot focus on what is not there already, why Thunk for instance can't be linked to pickup or electronic but on the mechanical characteristic of the instrument: wood, construction, strings ...
I realize that factor even more the day I got the Tal with its classic 57 sounding so warm and woody with lots of overtones while the same classic 57 was not really successful in my poly dipped thick top Regent...Last edited by vinlander; 08-22-2015 at 09:12 AM.
-
I've also gotten to where, if I get a guitar and the pickups in it are "in the ballpark" of what I'm after, I leave it alone. Now, as Jack said, the differences between to very differently built pickups will of course be likely very different in sound. In my heavy metal days, I'd quickly yank those Super 58 pickups out the old Ibanez guitars and load it with EMG's. Totally changed the output. I've come to look at the pickups as more of a translation or output device. These days, I'm less into melting the input stage of an amp. Ha
Ha. Gibson 57's? Awesome. Duncan Seth Lovers? Awesome. Ibanez Super 58's? Awesome. Guild HB1's? Awesome. Schaller Golden 50's? Awesome. Bring 'em on.
I once did the modification thing because I couldn't easily afford guitars so I'd get what I could afford and do my best to make what I wanted. These days, thankfully, this is less of an issue. If I think I have problem with the pickups, I probably have more of a problem with the guitar as a whole. Now, if I were to change so the floater in my Epi for an old DeArmond single coil, that'd be quite a change. I could see doing something like that but less so changing a JS style floater for another.
-
What happened with the Jazzica? You have written a lot of positive things about it, so what changed your mind? Originally Posted by jzucker
I have and early 2000s Jazzica that I love. It provides me a unique sound that complements the more traditional archtop tones of my Heritage and Eastman instruments.
-
Four strand wire doesn't change the sound but it does allow coil splitting (and other configuration changes) that do change the sound very dramatically. Originally Posted by jzucker
Potting has a small change effect on tone but it does have a large effect on functionality. (And I do seem to recall a thread you started a few months ago about how pleased you were with the tonal change going from potted to unpotted pickups)
As for whether a pickup can change the "character" vs the "coloration" of a guitar, I guess I don't understand your use of the words here. To me, changing the coloration of a guitar is changing it's character. With all other things being equal, if a pickup change makes the amplified sound of a guitar significantly brighter or darker, higher or lower volume, more or less likely to make electronically induced noise (all of which we know is both possible and common), then at least from a functional standpoint, you are changing the character of the instrument.Last edited by Jim Soloway; 08-22-2015 at 12:42 PM.
-
I also have a Jazzica Special, c.1998 (earlier pointy headstock style). Great player, but I, too, have never quite bonded with the pickup. At first, I thought it was that maybe I just didn't like floaters, but then I got a sweet Yamaha AEX-1500 two years ago with a great floater that I still have to keep checking that, yeah, it sounds SO good that it just can't be a floater. Ha. Originally Posted by Klatu
So what gives with the Jazzica pickup and IS there a reasonable "remedy" for those desiring a tweak somehow? I mean, if Kent Armstrong can't help us, who can? I, too, would also be interested in JZ's final thoughts on parting with his...
Maybe we should be starting a separate thread on Jazzicas (again, lol).
-
In fact, the primary motivation behind the emergence of the sub-industry of independent pickup manufacturers was the demand for non-PAF style pickups. For years, DiMarzio's most popular offerings were very high output pickups in both humbucker and single coil form factors and they still offer over 20 different high output pickups in a humbucker form factor. In their low output range they offer pickups like the EJ Custom and Humbucker From Hell, both of which are much brighter and lower output that a typical PAF. They also offer the Bluesbucker which is meant to simulate a P90 in a humbucker form with noise-cancelling design. Originally Posted by jzucker
In the boutique sector, Lollar offer their flag ship Imperial in standard, low-wound and high-wound versions, all three of which sound very different. They also offer the El Rayo in the exact same for factor and with the same appearance. It is probably the single brightest humbucker pickup I've ever played.
"But are you changing the character of the guitar or just changing its tone?" ... Again, I don't know how to make that distinction. To my mind, the tone that a guitar makes is part of its character. In fact, I view it as one of the fundamental aspects of a guitar's character. You're welcome to disagree with that but to me that just becomes semantic hair splitting.Last edited by Jim Soloway; 08-22-2015 at 12:43 PM.
-
The point here is that pickups can only change the amplified sound of a guitar, particularly an arch top, to a limited degree - and principally in the area of bass/mid/ treble balance in the amplified mix.
If pickups could do more than that, then by now someone would be selling a pickup that could make an asian poly/ ply arch top sound like a D'A. But no-one is, because you can't add in electronically what isn't there in the first place. Call it 'character', call it whatever you want
The pickup industry has a vested interest in over-claiming what pickups can do. Like many people, I have tried more than once to alter the fundamental characteristics of a nice, but ''could be better" guitar through pickups changes, only to eventually realise that it can't be done. There's not much pickup can do that can't be done with a versatile amp or even a graphic eq.
-
here's a good test. Take your guitar into a small bathroom or narrow hallway and listen to what it sounds like acoustically. By and large, that's the character of the guitar. A pickup can bring out nuances but it's not going to change the basic character of the guitar. No matter what, my 175 is not going to sound like Jimi's strat no matter what pickups are in it.
-
You're right Jack. No pickup is going to make your 175 sound like a Strat. Originally Posted by jzucker
Reply With Quote
“Shearing style”
Today, 05:26 PM in Comping, Chords & Chord Progressions