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The Pickup Place / Re: PAF Pro/Air Zone not quite doing it for me

« on: February 07, 2019, 01:31:27 PM »

I think the problem is that the whole rig is bright. No matter what guitar I use, the bridge is always very bright compared to the neck. I'm going to try using a 250k pot for the bridge on this guitar before doing anything else.

The speakers are Peavey Sheffield from what looks like the late 80s. I don't know if this is the matching cab for the VTM, but it is certainly a contemporary of it- possibly for a Butcher or Roadmaster (it does not have the silver panels, but a black metal grille).

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The Pickup Place / Re: PAF Pro/Air Zone not quite doing it for me

« on: February 01, 2019, 03:21:23 PM »

Thanks for the insight. I'm thinking of getting the 36th anniversary bridge and trying it in the neck with the PAF pro in the bridge, and then vice versa. If I go with it in the bridge I'll probably buy the matching neck version. I almost bought a set of 36'es but I thought they wouldn't be "modern" sounding or hot enough.

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The Pickup Place / PAF Pro/Air Zone not quite doing it for me

« on: January 30, 2019, 03:23:44 PM »

Hello Forum,

I recently put the PAF pro and the Air Zone in my guitar and while they sound great, I don't think they are 100% what I am looking for. It's an Ibanez ST105 from 1979. 25.5" scale, what seems like a neck through of maple with mahogany wings. I got a PAF Pro in the neck and Air Zone in the bridge. The PAF pro is just about right but it could be a little more dynamic, and the Air Zone breaks up a bit too early and is overly bright for my rig.

Also, they both have this vowel quality to some of the notes that I associated with shorter scale lengths like Gibson guitars, but I now think it might be PAF style pickups that have that sort of sound to them and it's not the scale length. It sounds like the coils are out of phase with each other a little bit- a touch hollow and quacky. I don't know if it's common for pickups like these to be scatterwound but maybe that's what it is.

I use several drive pedals- a rockett klon, ocd, amptweaker tightrock, and a ds-1 into a relatively high-gain amp (Peavey VTM). I'm looking for a relatively high gain sound out of the bridge, but with the ability to be dynamic- cleaner on single notes or arpeggios if I want. I think what I did wrong was go with a pickup that was too high gain, considering the pedals and amp that I have. The neck could be a touch brighter and more dynamic but raising it would probably fix that. However, it would still have that "aw" or "eu" sound to it and I'd rather it have a more neutral, fender-like "ah" or "er" type sound to in. I think what I need to do is go for more modern voiced pickups that are lower gain. I would like alt rock tones ranging from a dynamic clean-sh sound to something large like nirvana or weezer when I use the pedals.

Here's what I've considered:

Moving the PAF pro to the bridge
Duncan custom or custom 5
Duncan Slash bridge or the set
Duncan Perpetual Burn (maybe too high gain?)
Dimarzio Norton
Dimarzio Air classic
Dimarzio 36th anniversary bridge or set
Steve's Special
Mo Joe
EMG Hot 70s

Thanks all