harder. A huge plus is also the whole service — professional approach, expert installation and attention to every detail. You can see that everything is done with passion and to the highest standard. Both the pickup itself and the complete service are top quality. I definitely recommend APG!
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at's the sound that's been around for about 70 years so it has kind of established itself as such. take it or leave it. anyways, telebucker is way more versatile IMO. you can get the jazz sound like Bickert, Mike Stern or any other tele-jazzer, but even go to single coil territory, no problem. i have a telebucker bridge pickup in the same guitar (and a middle pickup that's hidden underneath the pickguard) and this is probably my most versatile guitar.
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me now, I have been building semi-hollow-body guitars because they have a more “open” sound. They are also perfectly suited to solid-body guitars. The ability to switch from series to parallel operation is absolutely fantastic. In series mode, the speaker delivers a whole spectrum of sounds that puts a big smile on your face. But switching to parallel mode brings you right back to the true character of a single-coil, with the invaluable advantage that there is no hum!!! Of course, you can use noise gates, but as we all know, even the best ones can cut off the initial attack of the note. In my opinion, that essentially disqualifies a noise gate as a solution for a true single-coil. With these pickups, even with a strong overdrive, rolling the volume down almost all the way transforms the tone into a saturated, “wire-like” clean. But hit the strings harder and the lions sleeping somewhere inside the guitar body suddenly wake up. Of course, this will only work if you use what is commonly known as a Tone Bleed — a resistor and capacitor connected in parallel across the volume pot, between the input and output of the guitar signal. Guitarists who play through tube amps at high power and fairly high volume, however, don’t always like this way of cutting the low end, because the tubes themselves seem to compensate for this effect. Another advantage of these pickups is that they can be used with both 250kΩ and 500kΩ pots. Naturally, each pot value gives you a different sound, so you have to try them in your own guitar and see which works better for you.
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ith the option at the time to switch the operating mode of the bridge pickup. Back then, I was installing pickups from companies such as BKP, Lollar, Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Kinman, Q-tuner and others — basically the absolute top of the standard and custom guitar market. I even had Kinmans and a set of BKP BlackDogs in one of my own guitars, which cost me a small fortune. So, once I had finished putting the client’s guitar together, I plugged it into an amp — and I simply couldn’t put the guitar down. Not because I had built some kind of masterpiece (it was a normal guitar, built with heart and to the best of my ability), but the sound coming from the speaker completely caught me off guard. The amount of harmonics coming from the speaker made me decide to get in touch with the person who designed these pickups. That’s how our collaboration began, and it continues to this day. I should add that APG has gone through further stages of development since then, resulting in other pickups that now power my guitars as well as those of other players. He’s a lifelong seeker of the Holy Grail, just like me. Obviously, the companies I mentioned above also make fantastic pickups. But with them, I don’t have the possibility of discussing the pickup parameters directly with Andrzej and having them tailored in such detail to a specific guitar and the client’s requirements. I think this is the most important thing — it saves us money when searching for the right pickup for our “axe”. The fact that Andrzej Poliakow used to build guitars himself (and has returned to that profession in recent years) means we can discuss all the parameters of the guitar in relation to the pickups. Sometimes you have to convince a client that their vision for the construction of the guitar will not work well for the sound they want to achieve, and that is also part of our job — to explain it properly. I’m very happy to have the possibilities I mentioned above, because the client ends up with a guitar configured specifically for them. And then they have years of playing ahead of them — playing a guitar like that can completely disrupt your daily routine 🙂 because it’s hard to put it down. And the wives get angry 🙂 But what can you do — the guitar is the greatest love, and no woman can replace it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the guitar that started our friendship... which is a shame. But I’ll post photos of other guitars I’ve built with APG pickups! Cheers! 🙂
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ej, thank you for your time, advice and valuable input. I highly recommend APG!!!
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rned out so great that it eventually became a permanent part of the APG lineup. Then I routed a larger cavity at the bridge to fit a Dark Side. And honestly, it sounds absolutely beautiful. I’m very happy with the result. These are yet another set of pickups from APG in my guitars.
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ucker Vintage Neck, and it sounds great in every switch position. I’m absolutely thrilled with it.
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