[cahumb]

Hello
First let me thank you for all your help in advance!
Now lets cut straight to the chase.
I need some help choosing pickups, I've been looking at a new set for my Epi G-400 custom (That's the triple humbucker one), however I can't decide since this would be my first pickup swap ever!
I'm interested in having a screaming lead tone, like a bareknuckle nailbomb (unfortunately not available where I live, plus to have them shipped would be a fortune), but also I became interested in playing jazz recently, so it would be awesome to have a decent clean tone for that and funk too.
I can't really afford a new guitar now, I'd much rather fix up my old trusty Epi, plan on using coil splits, etc to make it as versatile as I can so it can cover to a fair extent a decent range of styles.
So what are your suggestions?
Thanks for your help again!

[jazzfromhell]

Since you want to cover a lot of musical ground, and you want convincing clean sound, its probably a smart idea to stay on the lower side of the pickup output scale instead of choosing a Deathbucker. Its a lot easier to distort a low-output pickup than to get great cleans out of a high-output pickup I think.

Leaving the middle HB aside as I have no clue what to put there Id probably go for a PAF Master or 36th PAF set in neck and bridge or if you must have a bit hotter pups the Transition set. The Transitions are Steve Lukather signature and you'd be hard pressed to find a more versatile player than Luke so those could possibly work well for you too.

[Matt_B]

For versatile I would go for PAFs. I'm partial to the 36ths but I haven't tried the PAF Masters yet either. I tend to let the pickups be somewhat neutral and let my modeler (Axe-FX) do the heavy lifting.

A little EQ between the guitar and the amp can do wonders for versatility.

[corypheus]

Most versatile set from DiMarzio I tried had to be Norton/Air Norton (b/n), although you cannot really go wrong pairing Norton on the bridge with either the PAF Pro or even 36th ann in the neck.

[slim_blues_boy]

36th PAF for neck and mid, with Super Distortion for bridge.