I decided I wanted a three-bolt guitar since my 3-bolt F-100 was so nice and solid... why mess with success? I also wanted the G&L Alnico pickups. I found a guitar on eBay that was priced very well and seemed to be flying under the radar for some reason, so I bit. I received it yesterday, and realized that in my haste I bought a very early model with Seymour Duncan pickups. The guitar is in beautiful shape (even if it's a finish I wouldn't normally choose), the neck feels great, and it plays beautifully. I plugged it in and I was pretty shocked at how different it sounds from my vintage strat. The most immediate impression was how much pick attack comes through on this guitar. It's incredibly snappy, at first it seemed to be obnoxiously snappy. After playing a while I got used to it, maybe adjusted my picking style a bit, and learned to use the guitar's tone to my advantage. All the pickups are much brighter than my Strat's, but even the bridge pickup is just smooth enough to avoid the dreaded ice pick treble. The treble control works well to shape the tone without killing the tone the way it can on my strat. The bass control seems to be more useful than I'd have thought on a Strat style guitar as well. Rolling down the bass seems like it could give solos more clarity and ability to cut through a loud band, yet the tone doesn't get thin.
I'm wondering how much different the G&L pickups would sound. The description of the pickups elsewhere on the forum makes it sound like the G&Ls have more body and texture, can anybody give a more detailed comparison than what's listed in that pickup description post? I fear that I'm going to end up wanting to try a Legacy with G&L pickups, and then I'll want both types. And then I'm curious to try an S-500. Of course I already want a few varieties of ASATs.... Where will it end?
Here's a couple of pictures of the guitar from the auction listing. My camera is broken, I'll post more pictures when I get a new camera.
