Hughie Thomasson guitar tone with new "Lynyrd Skynyrd"?

[Jay H]

Also, can you recommend a good Seymour Duncan Strat pickup for the middle and neck? The Twang Banger I bought is apparently reverse polarity from the stock MIM Fender pickups and even though I have the wires reversed the compensate, I lost the hum canceling effect.

To be honest with you I am not a good reference for Duncan pickups lol. I have owned a couple different ones but I just never bonded with them.

I have been a DiMarzio user most of my 35 years of playing. Having always been a "bar/club player" with all the "hum producing" neon beer lights and the real sketchy electrical outlets associated with such places I have been very happy with the DiMarzio Area and Virtual Vintage pickups "noiseless" pickups. They are stacked humbuckers in a single coil size but sound like single coil pickups and have very very minimal hum. DiMarzio's Area line consists more of traditional sounding single coil pickups while the Virtual Vintage line starts to break away from the traditional sound. I am a person who spends most of my time on the bridge pickup and the Virtual Vintage line isn't as "trebley" or as "scooped" as a traditional strat bridge pickup.

Stacked Hum Canceling Strat | DiMarzio

www.dimarzio.com

 

[karlx]

To be honest with you I am not a good reference for Duncan pickups lol. I have owned a couple different ones but I just never bonded with them.

I have been a DiMarzio user most of my 35 years of playing. Having always been a "bar/club player" with all the "hum producing" neon beer lights and the real sketchy electrical outlets associated with such places I have been very happy with the DiMarzio Area and Virtual Vintage pickups "noiseless" pickups. They are stacked humbuckers in a single coil size but sound like single coil pickups and have very very minimal hum. DiMarzio's Area line consists more of traditional sounding single coil pickups while the Virtual Vintage line starts to break away from the traditional sound. I am a person who spends most of my time on the bridge pickup and the Virtual Vintage line isn't as "trebley" or as "scooped" as a traditional strat bridge pickup.

Stacked Hum Canceling Strat | DiMarzio

www.dimarzio.com

That's what I suspected. It's hard to get a read on pickups because so few demos are any good. For neck and middle I've been thinking about a pair of 61s vs. the 54 Pro. They're the closest to each other in the line, but the 54 Pro is a little hairier and a touch more bass, but nothing like the Heavy Blues 2 or Injector Neck, which are both quite round and humbucker-like. I have a 500k volume and a no-load tone pot so I think the Area pickups would be too bright with the knobs are wide open.

 

[Jay H]

That's what I suspected. It's hard to get a read on pickups because so few demos are any good. For neck and middle I've been thinking about a pair of 61s vs. the 54 Pro. They're the closest to each other in the line, but the 54 Pro is a little hairier and a touch more bass, but nothing like the Heavy Blues 2 or Injector Neck, which are both quite round and humbucker-like. I have a 500k volume and a no-load tone pot so I think the Area pickups would be too bright with the knobs are wide open.

I run a Heavy Blues 2 in the bridge and a 54 Pro in the middle. I like the 54 Pro in the middle but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it in the neck unless you are wanting a darker sound. I think the Heavy Blues 2 and the 54 Pro complement each other pretty well. But that is with 250k pots.

With your 500K pots the 54 Pro might make a good neck pickup but I think you are right in your thinking about the 58, 61 and especially the 67 being too bright with those pots.

The Heavy Blues 2 isn't as bassy as the tone chart suggests in my opinion. They are a "midrange forward" pickup so the wound strings don't sound bassy or woofy like a lot of Fender or Duncan pickups that are scooped in the mids on the tone chart are but rather the Heavy Blues have a "cut" in the sound I like for what I play.

 

[IMMusicRulz]

Hughie Thomasson mostly used Strats during his tenures with The Outlaws and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Most of them had modified pickup selector switches and modified Seymour Duncan pickups. He also played Les Pauls and a black Gibson ES 355.




I especially like how Hughie used the bridge pickup on his Strats, they created a very warm, Eagles like guitar tone.