The Tru-Tone '59 bridge humbucker is the flagship product from MDL Pickups. With totally hand-wound bobbins and being individually hand-assembled, you can really tell a lot of love has gone into them, and the sound of this humbucker really reflects the time and effort required to make a product of this standard. With a clean amp sound and no pedals, the Tru-Tone '59 has a unique tonality in the upper mids which gives the pickup a great clarity without the "honk" which can often be heard from bridge humbuckers. This tone is expertly practical for live performance, balancing the ability to cut through a full band mix without the uncomfortable timbre often found in products designed with this intent.
With a crunch tone from the amp, the Tru-Tone '59 is highly articulate with hugely wide dynamic range on tap from just picking variation. Finger-picking or hybrid picking can be clean whilst retaining clarity, and using a pick to dig in deep overdrives the amp nicely. Similarly, rolling off the volume on the guitar reduces drive and compression but again keeps the top end. As you can hear from the video demonstration, this pickup reacts really nicely to gain from pedals and other effects too.
In the neck position of my newly tooled up Epiphone Les Paul is the MDL Power90. This humbucker sized P90 has an asymmetrical design, meaning during the installation process you can choose whether to have the pickup "smooth & singing", or rotated 180 degrees "dynamic & aggressive" - as the pickup is in the neck position, I went for smooth and singing, and MAN I am in love with the sounds that come out of this thing! In general, I love neck pickups. Often amongst electric guitarists, especially those who play primarily with distorted tones, the neck pickup can go about underused due to lack of clarity, but this is most certainly not the case with the Power90.
Set with a sparkling clean tone, the Power90 exhibits qualities reminiscent of a smaller single coil pickup but with a depth that is very welcome. Winding down the tone control and adding some gain enables you to channel the smooth, compressed woman tone without losing pick attack. This pickup is definitely one to hear.
The middle pickup combination of the Tru-Tone '59 and the Power90 is a very special and unique tone which retains the attack and warmth from the neck Power90 but blends in the bold upper mids from the Tru-Tone '59 and creates a very full sound. Add a little compression with a light crunch and the end result is a sound I could hear being an excellent tone for the only guitarist in a three-piece band, filling in the frequencies between the bass guitar and the vocals with a rich, dynamic, rhythmic and full sound.
Finally, I just wanted to quickly mention how awesome these pickups looks. They are finished with a subtle ageing which takes the sheen off the metal parts and makes them look appropriately lived-in, and the black behind the Power90 has a horizontally brushed finish. Both of these aesthetic elements further display the amount of care that has gone into producing these pickups. In my matte finished transparent red Les Paul, these pickups bring some class into what was once a fairly dull looking guitar. It is worth saying that you can get the Power90 with a similar covered look, however I am a massive fan of the mismatched one-on-one-off look - I've gone to the effort of upgrading my pickups, I want it to look different and I think it looks very cool.
As I'm sure you can tell, I am very pleased with the tones available from my once dull and underused Epiphone Les Paul. If you like the sound of these Magneto Design Lab pickups, definitely head over to their website - as well as the stock pickups I have demoed, they also offer custom options, wiring harnesses, tone caps and to top it all off some awesome looking cables - Lee is a great guy with an excellent ear for brilliant guitar tone, so I don't doubt each of these products are to a very high standard. And maybe in the future I will check out their 60's Strat pickups in my Squire Stratocaster!
If you enjoy reading The Pick and want to see more variety and more regular posts, please do consider donating or sponsoring. For more info check out the Sponsorship page, but benefits of contributing include the ability to suggest what kind of post or product review your contribution will go towards and your name or company advertisement in the blog, plus it enables me to continue to put time and effort into producing content!
No comments:
Post a Comment