Wilko
All Access/Backstage Pass
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2002
- Messages
- 20,853
+1
Pickups themselves have a much smaller impact on overall tone and voice compared to amp/speaker/strings/picks or fingers. You have to put it all together in a complementary way to achieve a specific result.
Big Al knows, for sure.
The reason I point to pickups is that the vintage style pickups are what was used to get those tones, and those tones really need that style of pickup that has a sort of "hi-fi" element to them. They can be very clean and glassy so they really get the woody tone of the guitar. That crispiness can be passively EQ'd down. Passive circuits can't add what isn't there (Les Pauls have a passive eq).
More modern pickups (and to some degree, the classic 57) tend to be a lot more mid heavy and push too hard to get the dynamic range that is needed for a Duane, Greene, Betts, Page, etc. tone--unless you have great technique and know how to milk it.