SA versus VA

[GaryMcT]

In my new Drop Top, I find the SA pickups to sound unbelievable for sparkling clean sounds. This is what made me want to get this guitar after I first played a Drop Top. I'm finding that I would prefer a weaker pickup for dirty single-coil sounds. Are any of the VA pickups close to the SA in strength and voicing? In particular, I'm curious if any of the tappable ones (VA12, VA23, etc.) would go from SA-like sound to a weaker, more vintage sound? I prefer the true single-coil sounds of the SA, so I don't ever use the second coil in the stack.

I could just use this guitar for clean sounds, but I'm really trying to make this the super-versatile single guitar that I take with me if I can only take one.

[bruce]

the VA's aren't very close in voicing to the SA's... I know what you mean about not using the second coil in those SA's.. They sound amazing in single coil mode... the TD's are amazing in single-coil mode too.

You may try to adjust the pick up away from the strings. You can also try to put the pickup into series mode (hum-cancelling).. it gets mellower.

[GaryMcT]

Some mixture of lowering the pickups and changing the amp settings seems like it'll work just fine.

On a different note, do you know if anyone has ever used test tones (like the Clone-Q plugin) to calculate the eq that you'd have to do to a series stacked pickup (or any other pickup for that matter) to give the response of a single-coil?