Okay. I have the valve amp. I have the fancy wah-wah pedal and the Helix FX. I have double-humbuckers (McCarty 594 SE). I have the Paranormal Telecaster, which ticks so many boxes (Tele bridge pickup, Jazzmaster neck pickup, Tele controls, offset body, out-of-phase and in-phase series and parallel). What next? According to the Guitar Nerd Scorecard, at some point I have to change the pickups on one or more of my guitars. Not going to be the PRS, so it had to be the Paranormal. The stock pickups were a tad fragile and rough round the edges unless the treble was turned down, and if the treble was turned up, the sound was spikey and thin. There was a general lack of finesse about the sound.
The standard upgrade for pickups is Seymour Duncan. There are others, which are mostly about getting a more "high-performance" sound, and are American. As is Seymour Duncan. Dylan Talks Tone - who is an American pickup maker - said we should a) buy his, or b) support our local pickup maker. So off to Google I went, looking for UK pickup makers. There are more than I thought there would be. They have well put-together websites and descriptions of their products. Also very similar prices, none of which are too far from Seymour Duncan's. Guitar reddit had no firm views, so I went someone from the top of the search list who offered some "vintage" voiced pickups.
This was Jamie at Creamery Pickups. I sent him a mail with a photo of the Paranormal and an explanation of what I wanted, and my guess that what I needed was his Classic 58 Jazzmaster neck and the Vintage Nocaster bridge pickups. A couple of mails later, I put in an order on his website, sent the money and sat back for the four-five weeks it takes. (All of them gave that kind of lead time.) Right on time Jamie sent them by mail, and I hustled them and the Paranormal into the guys at Richmond Guitar Workshop (no website, only Facebook page). They fitted the pickups and gave the Paranormal, a clean-up, re-string and fitted a better selector switch and cable socket.
Did it make a difference? Oh hell yeah. Jamie's pickups are rich and full, as in... oh so that's what a Jazzmaster neck pickup is supposed to sound like and ah, a Tele bridge that sounds clear but not twangy. Turn up the treble on the Jazzmaster neck and it reveals a complicated sound, put the treble near the middle and it's clear and full. I can crank the volume up and run it into the Princeton at about 3.5 and get a satisfying bedroom-volume sound. It's now a "proper-sounding" instrument, rather than a cheap (it is a Squier) curiosity.
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