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So i've been comparing the JB in my les paul and charvel to the pickguard mounted dimarzio evolution in my new ibanez and have been noticing some differences. Heres what i came up with:
Duncan JB w/ Nickel cover in les paul: very warm medium hot PAF sounding. Very classic fat tones here
Duncan JB uncovered in alder bodied charvel: powerful rock sound with pronounced upper midrange and sustain. Sounds completely different from the JB in my les paul. knobs to 11 style kind of high output.
Dimarzio evolution in basswood ibanez: VERY focused sound with lots of presence. Seems to have the most mids out of my other guitars. High output, but it's hard to tell if its more powerful than the Jb in my charvel. Strange, since steve vai usually has a very fat tone, while the evo is very focused and bitey.

I've only played pickguard mounted single coils in strats. mustangs, etc but a few of you guys must have mounted single coils out there. Any thoughts on which is better/worse/different? The common lore on the internet is that theres no discernible difference, but i beg to well... differ.

There's no difference. There'll be bigger differences between two identically spec'd guitars by the same company than there is in this. It's not worth worrying about.

three differenst pickups (covered verses uncovered does make a little difference) in 3 different guitars and you are discussing the mounting? THe only way to test what you are trying to test is to swap the pups and do sound recordings with the same guitar, same amp, and all the same settings. So if a covered JB sounds lie X and the Dimarzio sounds like Y when in the one guitar (say hard mounted) but then you move them to another guitar (pg mounted) do they still sound like X and Y, do they sound different entirely, or do they both gain some characteristic (i.e maybe more body and sustain to the tone when hard mounted?)

You can't really compare entirely different guitars with different pups and try to determine what you are looking for.

IN my opinion, any difference at that point is so minimal to be non-existent. If a Strat sounded better with body mounte pups, there would be some douchebag selling mojo point custom body mountable strat pups for $400 for a set.

true. hardware and pickup position will be different and they make huge differences in sound, so do what mickie says. switch the pickups in one guitar and compare. they will sound different. make recordings and let us hear the results too. to find out if it's fixing to body or guard that makes a difference you'd need to have the same pickup in the same guitar, but different mounting to find out how much difference that makes.

i'm such a shitty player, that i can play the same guitar with the same pickups, through the same pedals, with the same amp, and it sounds different. thinking about what gives what different toanz makes my fucking head hurt.

hotrodperlmutter wrote:i i can play the same guitar with the same pickups, through the same pedals, with the same amp, and it sounds different.