BABMusic
Well-known member
I've only learned this in the last year that a guitar's wood and personality is something that can't really be dialed out (unless you use actives). I only use passives these days. I put in a higher output pickup in my Fernandes and the wood in that guitar just overpowers every pickup. I love it's tone, but it almost doesn't matter which pickup I put in it. On the contrary, my Strat has a wood I don't love as much, but it doesn't overpower the pickup quite as much.
But to your point, both the BE50 and Jose will sound vastly different depending on the guitar you plug in. Every time I plug in my Fernendes, I'm always so impressed by how good it sounds. My single coil guitar also sounds very different, but great at the same time. Generally speaking, I prefer lower output pickups for tone, but I found it didn't work as well with achieving the saturation I wanted (with the Jose). I'm also not a super demanding player in terms of high gain -- I set the JVM on 3 for example.
Also, forgot to mention that Michael Nielson did mention in one of his videos that he also thought the Jose needed higher output pickups. Of course, YMMV.
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