Sunday, January 21, 2018

Hard tails


Spent the Sunday playing my PRSes, the Mira in the morning...


... the SC250 to close the day. Both guitars were given a fresh set of strings before playing.

I'm not too fond of finished necks so the real reason why I played them today was because I like to hear the Seymour Duncan pickups in action:
  • Mira: JB/ P-Rails
  • SC250: Pegasus/ P-Rails
Mira's partial hollow body dampened some brightness from the JB so it has a strong bottom end response for heavy music, no problems there. The P-Rails in its full humbucking mode sound very wooly in the neck but unlike a Gibson humbucker, there's still clarity in the mix. 

The SC250 on the other hand was pretty much dictated by the Pegasus. On a personal note, it's a prog-esque pickup for that rock-hippie type of tone very prevalent in the 70s but with a strong distortion presence. Technical geeks would love this pickup for its ability to manifest individual notes very well.

After a re-set up following the re-string & thorough cleaning I came to the realization that I could not get a super low, super shredding action simply due to the bridge type of both instruments Yes, a low action was possible but nothing Ibanez-like. It's a different playing experience but nothing hopeless & struggling when fast playing is concerned. Even for Gibson guitars, hard tail bridges are just not cut out for low action settings. They have this fixed height which was compounded by the top mount nature. We can only go so deep/ low & that's it. But I'm rather sick of this sunburst-type finish- no more for me.

Here's wishing you a good week ahead. Remember to embrace difference but ditch it once it makes you feel stupid. 😁

3 comments:

Catman said...

regarding rail-type pickups , is it true that the high e string not sounding as loud as the other strings through the amp is normal? because the rail curves off or something like that.

subversion.sg said...

It's pretty unwise if manufacturers do not match their pickup's rails curvature against the instrument's fretboard radius. In many cases, rail type pickups feature high output so weaker sounding notes are arguably not obvious. Also, we have 1) Flat rails curvature offered by manufacturers (eg: Duncan's Dimebucker/ DiMarzio's X2N) 2) The option to adjust the pickup height (albeit limited) to compensate this weaker signal pick up (forgive the pun) 3) The employment of a compressor to check this deficiency (which is the recommended discourse).

Marcus said...

Will increase height n report back here