Ibanez S561 upgrade

[avengers63]

As I documented in another thread, I bought a satin metallic pink Ibanez S561. Sometimes you see a thing that is normally outside your normal wheelhouse that absolutely speaks to you. This is one of those things.

 

The original owner  swapped out the pickups. This was my plan also, so I certainly can't blame him for the swap. What I CAN blame him for is swapping the cheap stock pickups with cheap Chinese pickups. On a personal note, I've never understood the fascination with Seymour Duncan's Invader. I'm sure it's a fine pickup, but it's just not my thing mostly because of the looks. But then there's the S/Cs that have the big head pole pieces just to ride the coat-tails of the appearance of an Invader.. I just hate these out of principle. 

 

That being said, the singles don't sound bad, they just don't sound good. They sound like a s/c should sound, but the tone is generic and a little brittle. There was something else off about them, but I couldn't put my finger on it. More on this later. The HB is harsh, super bright, overpowered for the singles, and overall horrible. At this point Id have laid money on them all being ceramic. Now, there's nothing wrong with ceramic magnets provided you have the right knowledge of how to wind them and the appropriate high gain application for them. As the cheap Chinese pups do not have the first, so the second is irrelevant.

So what's the replacement plan? Railhammer Hyper Vintage in the bridge and 2/3 of a MIM Fender Tex Mex Strat set.

 

So I was right - they're ceramic. To make it even worse, the magnet on the middle had fallen off before they were installed. IDK how much the pole pieces were magnetized from proximity with the magnet, but it was enough to make the pup functional. But this explains the weird vibe I was getting.

 

On a side note, I'm curious what the hand written codes on the bottom of the Fenders means. I'm not curious enough to dig into it and find out, but it's still curious.

 

To make the rest of the story short, the original switch was fighting me. Since I had to use a different switch, I decided to replace the dime sized pots as well with full sized pots, an orange drop cap, and a trebel bleed mod.

[avengers63]

SOUND SAMPLES

The rig is an Orange Micro Terror head into a Randall 8" cab. It's all recorded as cell phone videos with the audio extracted. Relatively poor quality, but good enugh to get the idea.

 

neck old

 

neck new

 

neck/middle old

 

neck/middle new

 

middle old

 

middle new

 

middle/bridge old      I THOUGHT the old bridge had a coil split in this position. It did not. The upgrade does.

 

mid/bridge new

 

bridge old

 

bridge new

 

 

The new pickups made an incredible difference. The side by side really points out how mediocre the cheap replacements were.

 

 

 

 

[ScottR]

Nice upgrade. much more clarity in the new pups.

SR

[Bizman62]

Same here. The old ones sound nasal, like they'd suffer from a serious cold. Similar to your voice when your sinuses are clogged...