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In the quest to make my Bratocaster a Swiss army knife I'm wanting to add some gain, controlled feedback and teh brootalz.

Anyone have experience with a JB Jr, Pearly gates or lil 59?

I'm really wanting a JB Jr but worried it will be unbalanced with regular single coils. Has anyone tried them split? How do they sound clean? SO MANY QUESTIONS

I can only answer one of your questions JBs are not a great clean pickup - if you're putting one in the Bridge you'll find yourself using the neck pickup for that.

They're high output with a lot of focus in the bass and midrange, I guess chewy is the adjective.

Then again this might be your idea of a nice clean tone.

I've tried a few now..... & I'm really not a fan of the JBjr. It's horrible in fact. Dark and wooly... no articulation, and thats with gain. Clean is a mess.

I have the Cool Rails in the bridge position of my jag and mustang. Lovely pickup. Bright open sounding bucker.

Does cleans well and dirt. It's a great all rounder and pairs nicely with singles.

Can do a short youtube clip if you want showing each position on both guitars ?

othomas2 wrote:I've tried a few now..... & I'm really not a fan of the JBjr. It's horrible in fact. Dark and wooly... no articulation, and thats with gain. Clean is a mess.

This is exactly what I think about the Jb Jr - used to have them in my old Mustang.
I have got a BKP Sinner in the bridge of my Jaguar, and whilst not a humbucker, it's a massively overwound single that handles gain superbly and can really bring teh brutalz, but still sounds good clean.

Hmm, kind of what I feared then: mud mud mud. I would be using 500k pots and a no load tone pot if that may make any difference? I'm also thinking a parallel or split switch could be good to get more single coil twang. That's why I'm aiming for a high output of 16k so split or parallel would a respectable 8k a coil. Lower output humbuckers can't really offer that.

I had 500k pots and still have the same opinion. Some people do like the jb jr but I really didn't.
Bear in mind that the DC rating of a pickup is not necessarily a direct measure of output, some lower output buckets split really well so still worth investigating.

Hmm, apparently it sounds like a half decent single coil in parallel mode. Fuggit, I might just take the plunge. It can't sound any worse than the bridge pickup in there at the moment.

I shitted my pants at the prospect of paying £70 for a pickup that is poorly reviewed by other scalers, and also going against my mantra of single coil love. Went for a £10 GFS single overwound single off ebay instead

9.6k should be brutal enough for now.

i have a little 59'r in the bridge of one of my custom strat-style guitars (the one with the 24" scale length)

it works great.

it can get grungy when you want it, but clean up nicely as well.
the positioning on this 'custom' guitar is weird, so it is not in it's most optimum position, and even still it's a nice fit.

George wrote:I shitted my pants at the prospect of paying £70 for a pickup that is poorly reviewed by other scalers, and also going against my mantra of single coil love. Went for a £10 GFS single overwound single off ebay instead

9.6k should be brutal enough for now.

You can pick up second hand SD stuff reasonably cheap (£35-ish) but I dont think the JB Jr would have suited you for the reasons others said. They are okay if you only use the Slipkn0t setting on a Line 6, but dont expect versatile tone straight into the Amp.
I think you made the right choice, the overwound GFS pup i had in that Tele was the business.

I am going to second the lil 59. It's a great vintage "style" pickup in that it cleans up real nice and has a warm bite to it, but can get very brutal with the right settings.

Possibly my favorite humbucker?

And I'll third the lil '59. I have one in the bridge of my mustang and it's great, clean or with dirt. I had a JB Jnr in my old Hurb Jag and thought it was OK, but then again I only used it dirty (mabes indicating that it was sheeeit clean).

If I could get any bridge sound I wanted it would be this:

[youtube][/youtube]

I'm guessing that requires a hollow body and some low output humbucker? How can we work backwards and get this into a single coil?

Just went a bit crazy and bought a GFS Retrotron. Gonna mount it on white pickup ring. This will look and sound amazeballs.

George wrote: I'm guessing that requires a hollow body and some low output humbucker? How can we work backwards and get this into a single coil?

It's mostly amp. My Jaguar with JB Jr through 1megs sounds just like that, my LP (burstbucker V/pro) through a blackface setting does too. I feel like I could do it with my tele and marshalls... that always struck me as the type of sound you could find with a lot of guitar/amp combos. It's also been recorded/mixed on very oldschool equipment though, so it may not have been quite as nice in the room (though back in those days there's probably a better chance it was than with the awesome guitar sounds on records of today).

I did a quick vid showing the VM mustang with the cool rails for someone on Offset.

Seeing as I offered the same earlier in this thread... without much response. I thought it may useful for someone on here.

Just peavey classic and fulltone OCD.

[youtube][/youtube]

Thanks for that, sounds really balanced. I'm still undecided at the moment. I whacked in the overwound GFS SC which is 9.6K and that seems to be handling itself really well so far but I need to make my mind up long term!