The Steel Guitar Forum

The stock pickups on my Asher EH Jr.,two ??? humbuckers, have always seemed a little muddy to me (I play through a blues jr. or peavey classic 50, in an open D tuning with admittedly thick strings). What are your experiences with replacement pickups? Any favorites?

Asa

When I had one, I put a Duncan JB wired in series in the bridge, and a Rio Grande Tallboy wired in parallel in the neck. It's a good combo! A SD jazz wired parallel in the neck also worked, just not quite as good as the Tallboy (for my taste!)

For what it's worth I find most series neck humbuckers too muddy if the amp is tuned to a good sound from the bridge and most bridge humbuckers too shrill if the amp is tuned to give a good solid sound from the neck. Guess I'm just a single coil kinda guy!

At the moment I have a Duncan Seth Lover humbucker at the bridge and a SGF Dream 90 (P90 in humbucker size) at the neck.
Sounds good, but I will replace them with the same Vintage Vibe Guitars pickups I have in one of my Teles, as soon as I can afford them:



They're also P90s in humbucker size and sound gorgeous. One cool thing about the pickups from Vintage Vibe is that you get them with two sets of magnets of your own choice so you can experiment. I got these with Alnico 2 and 5, decided to keep the 2's installed, love the warm tone and great natural dynamics.

Asa Brosius wrote:The stock pickups on my Asher EH Jr.,two ??? humbuckers, have always seemed a little muddy to me (I play through a blues jr. or peavey classic 50, in an open D tuning with admittedly thick strings). What are your experiences with replacement pickups? Any favorites?

Asa

I had asked pretty much the same thing in another thread...

...Stephen Seitz wrote: Quote:
Hey Bill, if you were going to mod the pickups on an EH Jr (recent vintage) what would you do ?

Thanks!


I have been offering upgrades for my EH-JR with Lollar imperials -low wind in the neck. Many other options are available but we went with this as our standard after working with Bruce Bouton in Nashville. We put a set into his Asher Junior for the Reba Mcentire tour and he was extremely happy with the tone in all pickup settings. He noted it added much more clarity to the low end of neck pickup, the bite and sustain increased for the bridge pickup, and the combination he said just sounded cool. Lollar builds them for me in the wider pole spacing and we stock them, so shoot me an email if you want a set. Thanks -Bill

I ended up with Twayn's guitar, and now I've got a Duncan Fat Cat P90 in the neck along with the JB in the bridge. Pretty good, especially with overdrive. Those Vintage Vibes look interesting.

My Asher EH Jr. has a single bridge pickup. The stock humbucker wasn't doing it for me either. I called Jason Lollar, and he suggested the Duncan Fat Cat. I called Lindy Fralin, and he got interested enough to make me a custom P90-style pickup that fits in the humbucker rout. Sounds great now.

Hey Steinar, those Vintage Vibe PUs look familiar...

Here are mine:



I've got the same HB-sized P90 at the bridge, and the HCC (a HB-sized version of the CC-Rider pickup) at the neck - I guess that one would also make a great lap steel pickup, as it is a bit cleaner sounding (less raunchy mids) than a P90.

Seth Lover's here. I'm very happy with them. I found the originals a little muddy too.

Mark van Allen wrote:I ended up with Twayn's guitar, and now I've got a Duncan Fat Cat P90 in the neck along with the JB in the bridge. Pretty good, especially with overdrive. Those Vintage Vibes look interesting.

Good to know that guitar is getting a proper amount of usage! I thought of putting in the Fat Cat's when I owned it, but decided to sell it instead.

I think a real advantage to those EH Jr.'s is they accept standard 6-string guitar parts, which means there's a ton of options available out there.

Roman Sonnleitner wrote:Hey Steinar, those Vintage Vibe PUs look familiar...

I owe you big time for turning me on to their pickups over at the TDPRI. In addition to the ones in my black Tele I also have a set of VVG T-90s in my other Tele. They both sound great!

I'm thinking of swapping out my pickups with a set of PhatCats, wondering how bad the single coil hum is with these pickups.

Thanks,
Joe