Opinions on Novak's non-traditional JM pup offerings

[Gavanti]

Well, now everything's up in the air. Got a new Swart amp, and I'll be damned the Regals and the Relevator are an entirely different beast. Not sure if these pickups are going to go after all. I still may swap, but now I don't want to mess with a good thing.

What did you get? I've been really interested in the Mod 84, but I don't see myself getting one anytime soon.

[Vanderfuzz]

I got an STR-Tremolo, which sounds superb, but I'm exchanging it for an AST-Master combo. I ultimately want more power and headroom. The master volume is supposed to be excellent, so I can get gnarly break up at bedroom levels. The breakup on the STR is insane, but ultimately there will always be some hair on your tone. Sometimes, it's gotta be crystal clean for me. Either way, I think WRHBs and Swart are a pretty magical combo. I will add that the Night Light Jr in conjunction with the STR-Tremolo worked wonderfully.

[øøøøøøø]

It would be interesting to see how JM-WR stack up against the Regals.

I've got a set of JM-WRs on the way, so I should be able to do some imperfect comparison since they'll be in different instruments. I've started leaning toward having a WRHB in the neck position as I've been getting some tones I like that are useful and different from either the JM-V or Firebird but I'm not sold on the bridge pickup yet. If the Novaks sound right, and I need to mix things up, the JM form factor should help.

I have a Novak JM-WR in the bridge position of my '62 JM, and Lollar Regals in my '73 Tele Thinline.

Different guitars, so hard to say. Both are good. The JM-WR in the jazzmaster is like "cool, this is more useful than the stock bridge pickup" (even the vintage original).

But the Lollar Regals in the Tele Thinline... I've become obsessed with that guitar. Part of it is that it just turned out to be a really cool instrument once I got it all back together, but damn those Lollar Regals sound goooooood.

[Vanderfuzz]

So it's settled. The Regals are staying in the Bilt, and I'm sending the stock pups in my Tele Deluxe RI to Curtis for reworking. There's no problem having two WRHB equipped guitars. In fact, it seems like a damn wise decision.

[Bothand Nether]

Man, thanx for all of this invaluable info & impressions, this is why I love O.S.G.

[Gavanti]

My pickup test bed guitar came in yesterday with JM-WRs installed. Like the Regals they're pretty percussive. The Lollars sound bigger and more hi-fi, especially clean or with a little overdrive. The neck Regal does this amazing bugle-like Lee Ranaldo thing. The Novaks are most of the way there though. They're definitely less strident than the Regals, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. So far, I like the Novak bridge pickup more than the Regal—there's some harshness in the latter that I haven't been able to sort out—and the JM-WR neck pickup is a little glassier, which is great too. Mid-position with the JM-WRs sounds really good. I get what folks mean when they say these sound like a bigger JM pickup or a mix of Jag attack and JM timbre, which is something I never really heard with the Regals. I'm planning going to do some mixing and matching over the next month or so—I've got a Firebird and a mini with JM covers cut to fit, a JM-Broadcaster and Tim Esau's version of the JM-FAT bridge, as well as a CP JM pickup. I'll try to post some clips.

I'm still playing around with the pickup and pole height on the Regals too. Unfortunately, I appear to have developed a dead fret on the Zaftig, so that complicates things a bit, and I just noticed that the pickguard I have in leaves the pickups pretty far out of line with the strings too .

Edit: Active sample clips here.

[Tritone]

'm also toying with ordering some 57 or 59 PAFs for JM from the Creamery and toying with the magnet options (alnico 4, alnico 2). In fact, I'm leaning that way...Ugh.

Did you end up following through on that? That's exactly what I just ordered for my Jazzmaster: Creamery "Custom '59" humbuckers in Jazzmaster size, A2 in the bridge and A4 in the neck!