So I installed some Wolfetone Marshallheads in my already perfect Yamaha SA2200

Wilmer X

Wilmer X

SG-smasher
It´s a slightly tricky guitar to find new pickups for. First it has a split-option that is useful, so the new pickups must be 4-conductors. And second, the guitar has shiny gold hardware, so to put some used nickel covered pickups found on Ebay will look strange. And third: the stock Yamaha Alnico V pickups sounds very good, and they have a 3-screw thingy to attach the pickup in the pickup ring. So the new pickups must be extremely good, so one can say it was really worth the money - and work to get new pickup rings.
I did many searches on the Internet and looked at Gibson, Bareknuckle, Fralin, Sheptone and so on, but finally find that some Wolfetone Marshallheads could be nice. I contacted Wolfe via email, a very friendly guy, and he winded a set for me, 8,2 neck and 9 bridge, 4-conductors and shiny gold covers - and creme bobbins under the covers if I want to take the covers off in the future. And they arrived to Sweden and was installed with new pickup rings.
Here´s two short clips with my Iphone. First after breakfast with some overdrive, where I show the sounds with different options. I play the same licks all the time and start with 2 pickups and the bridge split, then only neck no split, back to 2 pickups with bridge split, then 2 pickups no split, then bridge no split and finally neck pickup no split - 64 seconds:
http://fandalism.com/stefanthorpenberg/dT9V

Then I put on some clothes and made a second clip with the bridge pickup only, and full distorsion - 62 seconds:
http://fandalism.com/stefanthorpenberg/dUac
 
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Same question as bsman, and still I have to say that those pickups sound very good. I'm sure they sound even better in person.
 
I see that as a very logical question. There´s a lot of people on, say, Seymour Duncans website who change pickups almost every day but still never reach the point where they say: this is perfect, this is exactly the sound I want.
But the original pickups were more on the bass side, and sounded more "jazz". Somewhat stiff, not so much sparkle.
The new pickups sounds cleaner, have more sparkle and less bass and has some strange treble dist also on low overdrive when hit hard.
The guitar sound exactly how I want it to sound.
What more to say?
 
Honestly, between the iphone sound and all of the effects, it's pretty hard to notice anything that makes them tonally distinct.
 
Wilmer X said:
I see that as a very logical question. There´s a lot of people on, say, Seymour Duncans website who change pickups almost every day but still never reach the point where they say: this is perfect, this is exactly the sound I want.
But the original pickups were more on the bass side, and sounded more "jazz". Somewhat stiff, not so much sparkle.
The new pickups sounds cleaner, have more sparkle and less bass and has some strange treble dist also on low overdrive when hit hard.
The guitar sound exactly how I want it to sound.
What more to say?
Click to expand...

I completely understand that. I have an Epiphone LP that sounded pretty good, but not quite perfect to me. I changed the pickups to Gibson Classic 57 (neck) and Classic 57 Plus (bridge). Now the Epi LP sound perfect . . . to me.
 
I can understand that. I tried to be a bit self-ironic in the thread title: "I changed something that was already perfect" - how stupid I am. But even if the stock pickup was very good, the voice of the guitar changed, less bass, more nervous, it gives some treble distorsion on the neck pickup when I hit it hard. And I suddenly hear what it sounds like. I had a Gibson ES335 1963 in the early 70s, which had PAT-pickups, with Alnico V magnets, and these pickups sounds like those. Perfect....to me.
 
Hey Stefan! I found this site while doing some searching for our Kickstarter campaign shares and judging response.. Now that I'm not bogged down with catching up on email, I'll give those clips a listen to! Sounds good!
 
Why did he put new pickups in a "perfect" guitar? Because he CAN, of course. It's what we do. It's who we are...
 
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