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Best pickups for Ibanez Artcore AF75 ???


Scott-Darla

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I have an Ibanez Artcore AF 75 hollow body electric. The stock "humbuckers" are at best average. I plan on going to a bone nut and upgrading the pickups and pots. Would like to end up with a Bluesy sound. Any suggestions?

Since you don't like those stock pups, feel free to send them my way. :lol: The same pups are in my Artcore and I'm pretty happy with them. I have a guitar that would make a good candidate for those pups.

 

# ACH1 humbucker at the neck

# ACH2 humbucker at the bridge

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Congratulations on the new guitar. The Artcores are well made and use good quality electrical components.

When you get inside, you'll see that the wiring is very cleanly done.

 

The stock pots don't get scratchy, so upgrading them is optional. (If the sound quality degraded when the volume pots were turned down, I couldn't notice it on either of my two Artcores). I tend to change the pots out on most of my guitars because I usually end up wiring in circuits with push-pull-pot controls.

 

The stock pups are useable, but I was very pleased when I upgraded my Artcore AK85 (hollow, laminated spruce top, wooded bridge) to Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers.

 

The Seth Lover humbucker basically duplicates the original PAF as closely as possible. They are very clean sounding, and quite bright for humbuckers. In my guitar, the tone is nice for clean jazz, rhythm comping, and lively things with moderate distortion in the style of Nugent's 'Stanglehold'.

I wired my AK85 with a pair of treble bleed (or treble bypass) circuits, controlled with push-pull pots.

With the treble bleen engaged and the volume turned turned down a little, these circuits pick up the treble so I can play SRV and Keith Richards licks more-or-less convincingly.

 

The Seth Lovers usually come with two-conductor wiring and are moderate output, so they probably wouldn't be my first choice for coil splitting. Then again, since the sound is pretty clean, I don't feel the need for a coil split. Seth Lovers are not wax potted, so high-volume rocking-out might not work. I don't have feedback problems with my AK85 at comfortable volume, and my Seth Lovers have never seemed microphonic.

 

Your description of a 'blusey sound' doesn't help very much with recommendations since it could mean Robert Johnson, SRV or BB King (etc).

Anyway, a moderate output PAF-style pup will sound pretty good in your guitar for jazz, rock and BB King. It will tend to be rather dark and thick for the Strat/Tele blues genres. My solution works well in this regard. Good luck.

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You have to snake the electronics through the F-Hole. I use a set of PAF-PRO's by DiMarzio in my AS-73. Artcore.

 

Honestly, If I did that all over again, I would use GFS Dream 180's. I have 57 classics in two of my Gibsons and while I love the bridge 57? I'm not a big fan of the neck. I prefer the Dream 180 a lot more in the neck of a Semi. For that mater I liked the DiMarzio PAF-PRO better in the neck.

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