yeatzee
Member
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2016
- Messages
- 66
Mostly just a lurker on here but I started down the rabbit hole and tried swapping the stock custombuckers in my M2M R7/8 which I thought already sounded great just to see if boutique PAF clones will make a noticeable difference. Went with the Righteous Sounds RAF set based on positive reviews I had seen stating they give a more clear tone similar to vintage examples and are more "tele on steroids." What do you think?
It's important to note that these comparisons are never totally fair for the second set of pickups because the tones were chosen and dialed in for the first set. If I wasn't shooting a video comparing the two and just had the RAF's I would have dialed back the bridge tone knob to like 7 and raised the mids on the amps a bit. That would obviously take down some of the extra top end you might hear in the video but also give me headroom to poke out more if needed by going back to 10, etc etc. The test really just shows an accurate unbiased view of how different they sound side by side.
And with that illustrated I offer the question, which pickup characteristics are something you'd rather have as your tonal starting point? Something more mid-forward and girthier (what I hear with the CB's), or more mid-neutral and clearer (what I hear in the RAFs). I'm curious what other people hear, and what their preferences are. It's way too early to make a judgement call myself I want to play them more in a mix and get more familiar with them. Pickup swaps are easy, take 10 minutes and I can reuse the same strings so no harm done either way. This is just me poking my curiosity and taking you guys along for the ride to see how differing the opinions can be (while hopefully offering some content that's informative for future people doing research like I was months ago). All fun!
It's important to note that these comparisons are never totally fair for the second set of pickups because the tones were chosen and dialed in for the first set. If I wasn't shooting a video comparing the two and just had the RAF's I would have dialed back the bridge tone knob to like 7 and raised the mids on the amps a bit. That would obviously take down some of the extra top end you might hear in the video but also give me headroom to poke out more if needed by going back to 10, etc etc. The test really just shows an accurate unbiased view of how different they sound side by side.
And with that illustrated I offer the question, which pickup characteristics are something you'd rather have as your tonal starting point? Something more mid-forward and girthier (what I hear with the CB's), or more mid-neutral and clearer (what I hear in the RAFs). I'm curious what other people hear, and what their preferences are. It's way too early to make a judgement call myself I want to play them more in a mix and get more familiar with them. Pickup swaps are easy, take 10 minutes and I can reuse the same strings so no harm done either way. This is just me poking my curiosity and taking you guys along for the ride to see how differing the opinions can be (while hopefully offering some content that's informative for future people doing research like I was months ago). All fun!