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Just purchased this Eastman, very clean and more towards that sound I wanted (over the Eastman 603-15 I had earlier this year).
if you were going to modify it, what would you do? I love P90 pickups, but worry I wouldn’t get more of that bebop, 50-early 60s sound (I’m having a guitar built for more modern styles).
Curious if anyone has thoughts or ideas.
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11-14-2022 09:19 AM
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Well, up until 1957 or so, all your favorite jazz tones were crafted with single coil pickups.
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Yes, a humbucker-sized P-90 would be great (check out Bare Knuckle)! However ... what's "wrong" with it, that you need to modify it??
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Well, good question. I love that it looks like Jim Hall's guitar. But yes, thinking about a P90. WOnder what a new tailpiece/knobs might look like. I definitely want to put flats on it and adjust action. Just thinking out loud.
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It depends on what sound you're looking to get out of it and what you don't like about it now. If you can describe those, I think you'll get more in the way of relevant suggestions. If it were me (having played that model and several other Eastmans), I'd want a little less brightness and a little more midrange out of it and I'd look at pickups that do that, but that's my taste not yours. A friend of mine has an ar403 (pretty similar sounding to the ar371 IMO), and he put a Lollar humbucker-sized Charlie Christian pickup in it. IMO, it was a big improvement (again, for my preferences). The one big catch with either that style or a P90 style pickup is single-coil buzz/hum. If "more modern styles" includes playing louder with some effects and maybe some overdrive, I'd recommend sticking with a humbucker.
Originally Posted by garthmoore
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Well, OK, some thoughts: Originally Posted by John A.
Sound: I agree with the midrange sound. This guitar gets me there a bit more, but I do turn my tone knob almost off and cut a lot of high frequency on my amp. Wonder how flats will sound on this model.
Cosmetics: Yeah, not crazy about the tailpiece or knobs. But again, just looks and can live with the trapeze tailpiece if it affects tone/structure.
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I had a 371. One of the many guitars I should have kept. They do tend to be a little on the brighter side, but they are really great guitars! I am thinking a P-90 would sound great. You would have to change out the pots to a different value.
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I once put a The Creamery Humbucker in a P90 format on a Godin, and loved it, big improvement. But I don't like P90s...
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I put a humbucker-sized P-90, the BG Pups Pure90, into an AR371 I used to own and it was a major improvement over the stock pickup.
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Flats will tame a little bit of the brightness on the wound strings and ring out a bit less. I find the difference fairly subtle, but others probably disagree with that. I can't speak from experience to what difference changing the tailpiece would make (I suspect not much if you're just swapping one metal one for another). Knobs make a huge difference. I changed the knobs on one of my guitars, and it was like the heavens opened and gave me a new guitar ... or perhaps not ... Originally Posted by garthmoore
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Whenever I feel like modding a guitar without having a clear target I always go for a bigsby.
That keeps me busy because then I have to add locking tuners, new nut, roller bridge etc.
And it looks cool
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I've swapped out the pick-ups in both AR-371s that I've owned. In the first, I put a Lindy Fralin P92, a hum cancelling P90. I sold it to a friend, regretted it, and purchased my current 371. I dropped a Creamery Charlie Christian into that one - taking my cue from Rob MacKillop who'd done the same with an Eastman 503 archtop. Here's a link to that discussion.
Both pick-ups are really superb. I never questioned the expense. New pick-ups (and knobs) seem like low-cost, high satisfaction upgrades. As the world has turned, Eastman's values are increasing so if one were to sell, it's likely you'd recoup the dollars you spent.
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The bebop guitar sound (Charlie Christian, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Chuck Wayne, Barney Kessel, etc.) was mostly achieved on laminate guitars with the "Charlie Christian" pickup. Tal Farlow even replaced the P90 on his Gibson ES-350 with a CC pickup, leaving the bridge P90 in place. That was the 1940s-1950s; the humbucker was first available in 1957 from Gibson and I associate that more with hard bop/post-bop playing (Joe Pass, later Herb Ellis, Jim Hall, Joe Diorio, etc.).
If you want this guitar to hark back to that bebop kind of sound, then replacing the stock humbucker with a humbucker-sized CC pickup is probably your best route to go. There are many options for this; in addition to those noted above, I have good results with Pete Biltoft at Vintage Vibe Guitars. 250k pots and .047 cap works pretty well for jazz tones. It'll hum! With the full metal cover, the Creamery version might hum less perhaps.
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I would leave it alone. There is no point in modifying a guitar when there is nothing wrong with it. All you will do is reduce the resale value.
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