Guitarists of Singletrack…

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Hello guitarists,

I wonder whether anyone has views to share on pickups?

My primary guitar is an “Inspired by Gibson” Epiphone Les Paul. It’s a nice guitar with reasonable components but of course nothing special.

Am I likely to notice much difference if I upgrade pickups to something fancier?

Usecase is fuzz-heavy doom type stuff.

I prefered the pickups in a recent Epiphone to 2010ish Gibson, Tom. The Epiphones were brighter/cleaner and IMO better as a source for pedals. You’ll notice a difference but whether you’ll like it is another matter. I had a frustrating time with “fancy” Telecaster pickups and learned that price was absolutely no guarantee of a sound that pleased me.

Ha, yes, I suppose “different” isn’t necessarily better. It’s hard to know without trying it out though!

Thinking of picking up my guitar again – haven’t “played” (very loosely used term….) in about 20 years.

Still have my 90’s Aria Pro Pro II Excel, Marshall Amp and other bits.

Obviously guitar will need re-stringing – are Ernie Ball Slinky still the go to strings?

Anything else I should get done to it before I plug it all in?

I’m actually thinking about having lessons too!!

Usecase is fuzz-heavy doom type stuff.

Caroline guitars make a pedal for that called crom. They had a video on Instagram of 10 different guitars through it and they all sounded the same ( to me). It was called something like crom doesn’t care.

So I’d get that pedal instead and keep your guitar as it is :, )

So, what is the general opinion on the Line 6 HX Stomp XL?

I have only a few pedals (that i rarely use): a Fender Shields Blender, RC-3 Loop station and, er, a Boss tremolo (which got retired when I bought a ‘68 Princeton Reverb…).

Due to volume of the Princeton I normal use a Vibro Champ Reverb (which I can crank to 7!). The sheep haven’t complained, well not so far.

I did get one of those Yam THR things but hated it as I couldn’t find a sound that I wanted (spent more time trying to find rather than actually playing).

The Champ is an excellent amp, but its a bit, how much trem and how much reverb (4/5 & 7 respectively) and how loud…

The HX Stomp is currently ~£560 ‘street’ price, and it doesn’t really ever get much lower.

It is just gonna be a massive learning curve, get bored and end up stacked in the cupboard next the Blender and Looper or it is going to ‘rock my world’?

neural dsp nano cortex has been released this week, which looks the biggest challenger for the hx stomp and isn’t 10 years old technology, that is probably the one I would go for (when my playing actually gets to the point that I can take advantage of pedals).

Managed to get my Jubilee sold, now I’m thinking of moving on my Gibson SG for something else. Fancy a fresh start I think, it doesn’t really inspire me to play. Still don’t love the ACDC/School of Rock association SGs have, silly I know but it always bugs me. If anyone’s interested give me a message! I’d be up for trades too, still looking to replace it with something 22 fret/hardtail/HH pickup config.

It is just gonna be a massive learning curve, get bored and end up stacked in the cupboard next the Blender and Looper or it is going to ‘rock my world’?

I’ve had 2 HX Stomps and ended up selling them both. They’re great at what they do but I found myself tweaking all the time and never being 100% happy with things. Captures (ToneX, NAM, Neural etc) seem to sound and feel a lot better than models to me, although it can take a lot of hunting to weed out all the crap captures. I’m primarily a high gain player so YMMV but I don’t find digital cleans particularly inspiring either. Again NAM seems to be the best I’ve found for this, found some awesome Matchless captures which do the edge of breakup thing better than anything else I’ve tried.

_tom, what flavour of SG is it, standard etc? What sort of price?

@lambchop it’s a 2008 Standard in cherry which seems to have oranged/browned over time. Chunky rounded neck profile, batwing guard, 490R/498T pickups. Not really sure on price, a quick look on marketplace shows anywhere from £800-1000 but I gather it’s not really a sellers market at the minute. No point selling if I can’t afford to replace with something decent I guess!

Re the HX Stomp, it was more from a pedal perspective. Whilst its expensive so are a half a to a dozen pedals (which I might not like/use…).

Fortunately I like my Fender clean/starting to break up sound. Just could do with a little variety (now and again) :D

If it’s mostly as a multi-fx unit I think it’s pretty good. I did some gigs with mine as the only thing on my board apart from a tuner, set up 4CM and it worked really well even with just the 3 switches. It was great to be able to switch in a front end boost, delay and EQ/volume boost in the FX loop for leads all in one press.

Thanks Tom (even if I lost you after ‘it’s pretty good’… :D).
But yeah, the ability to ‘try out’ multiple effects (and together) is the main impetus.
I basically know nothing about individual pedals (or, barring the obvious chorus, flanger, phaser and fuzz, what they even sound like…)