I'm looking to do a seymour duncan HSS pickguard and pickup swap on my single hum s type. Can you do a video on doing something like that? I'm looking at something crunchy in the bridge and the five-two for the neck and middle
They all have a good vibe .but the ones that stand out is the Vintage Hot . I wouldnt mind an hopped up Epi black beauty with them in the middle and neck with a 490 in the tale ..
I've always been curious about GF pickups. This was a MUCH BETTER shootout than on their website! Love the zebra look, but the last pickup set was my favorite sounding set.
I picked an Ibanez ‘Franken- RG’ a guy made on Reverb. He put two GFS LOUDMOUTHS (14k output!)…and I was surprised. They sound similar to the Gretsch Broad’trons, with that plush sound… and work great with my brass slide.
@@bradrichardson3539 Oh cool! Maybe think about experimenting with parallel vs. series switching in the middle position? Or you could get a 4-way switch and do both. The neck+bridge series combo is pretty cool on a Strat.
@@BryanSim as a broke 17 year old, I’m kinda pissed that I blew all my money and cheaped out on PAF pups that barely look like filtertrons, then I find out not only are there proper replicas on guitar fetish of filtrtrons, they even have dynasonics. Guess I’ll wait till Christmas for some cash.
its convenient but its under the pickup and sometimes if you want to lower the pickup like on the slick55 i just got from guitarfetish, you dont have much adjustment
I gig with Surf 90's. Great tone for live band usage because they don't get muddy with the bassist. It's a blues, oldies, rockabilly band, and these pups fit the style great. Very flexible with pedals in play. I do dial back my treble to compensate for the jangle. I have a Crunchy Pat in the bridge of my travel guitar and it sounds fantastic. I have a guitar with a pair of Hot Liverpools and it's my main 'rockabilly' axe. My favorite rock pups from GFS are the Dream 180's. Just a fantastic humbucker tone. These can really nail the Greenday tone through the right amp. I have a guitar with their Fat Pats, and they are nice and middy and full bodied. These can get a bit muddy in some of my amps.
@@gregputman I’m going off info from the the guitar fetish website. They can’t call the pickups EVH obviously. Reach out to guitar fetish and tell them .
@@alexandercook9614 Yeah, I believe it.. You really always need to take whatever guitarfetish says in their product descriptions with a grain of salt. They are legendary for exaggerating and hyping. But seriously if they are saying that that pickup is like what Eddie Van Halen used then they are lying. The VEH is a lot hotter of a pickup then what Eddie Van Halen used, at least in his early days
I got to say overtime the quality of Darryll's videos has not slipped one iota. This is great example. Guitar fetish is a great blend of quality and value. I have a Slick s- style sl57, super guitar. Let's face it all of those pickups in their own way sound great and easily half of the price of Seymour Duncan etc who of course are also great
Came here to say this! Seriously though, it's a pretty solid pickup. I dropped a set in 1980 Arian Pro II ThorSound Series guitar and they were an excellent match
@@leebrown6702 I wish I could have got to those builds. My wife and I lost everything in the Caldor Fire (Sierra Nevada Mountains in California) last year. We relocated to Texas and I am now going back to building some cool new guitars. All the best to you. I love GFS pickups. They do a great job. Your Gretch should sound great.
@@jeffreydooley3745 Oh my, that's terrible! Know a few things about bush fires here in Australia, so glad you and family are safe. All the best and thanks for the vote if confidence in GFS. Good luck with your next build!
When ever I have a guitar related question or need help with something guitar related, I always come to your channel first knowing you’d have a video about it. The way you explain things translates so well with how I learn. Thanks for such amazing and informative content!
Not all that keen on the bridge PAT but the neck is great. Think I might get a PAT neck and a classic II for the bridge. (added bonus is that my les paul will look like Jimmy Page's les Paul)
Darrell your the best man! Always been such high quality, consistent non-biased honest videos that are always pleasure to watch and very educational! Thanks Darrell cheers mate👍🏻☺️
I love how the neck pickups really push more than the bridge pickups. The touch of crunch with the GFTrons in the neck was so sweet. Plus, they look sweet in that guitar. I might just pick some of those up for my Epiphone.
Every pickup needs its own amp setting, so comparisons like this aren't exactly fair and can only tell you so much. And most pickup deficiencies can be fixed on the amp. But still, keeping that in mind, videos like this are still helpful, and huge thanks to DBG. • VEH FTW. Much more balanced than I was expecting. Bell tone cleans. Minimal mud strumming that distorted chord in the neck. • Crunchy PAT neck was a pretty muddy when distorted- typical of neck position- but once again, could possibly be adjusted out. • Classic II: Fine. Maybe a little sterile. Just my impression from this video. Goes without saying. • GF 'Tron: For the Gretschey jangle, I liked it. Might have to try these in my Corvette. • The Surf 90 sounded too ice picky but could probably just dial the tone back or fix that on the amp. Another great video from DBG. Loving this channel.
I've had a set of Surf 90s in my Tokai Les Paul for about 3 years now. Yeh they're great pickups. They're not a low output pickup, I'm pretty sure they're around 7.8 - 8.0k Ohms so kind of similar to the PAFs.....but of course there's much more to the sound of pickups than the DC resistance. Oh and by the way, I'm sure that the screws are just dummy screws, you can't adjust the polepieces with them the same way as you can with the Dynasonics. Nevertheless, you don't need to and they're still a great sounding humbucker sized P90 👍 I like the sound of the GF Trons but I haven't long bought a set of Roswell Filtertrons and sound similar to the GF Trons and were cheaper to buy than the GF version at around £25 each 😮😃 Both of those Filtertrons put my TV Jones Classics to shame, which I've said loads of times, and in my opinion, only a fool would spend about £250 on a set of TV Joneses.....but I'm selling my set of TV Jones Classics if anyone wants to buy them 😆👍
I have to say I really like the Surf 90 pickup. A lot of times, the high E string gets muddied up and drowned out with distortion, but these pickups sound really bright on that string. When I'm strumming a chord I really want to hear that last note.
I had an Epiphone SG with the “Mean 90” humbucker sized P90s and good gosh, that guitar sounded amazing. Sold it to fund a recent Marshall purchase but I’m still kinda wishing I hadn’t.
I love Mean 90s, have them in a couple guitars. One has a Mean 90 in the neck with a Classic II in the bridge and the other has Mean 90s in neck and bridge with a Dream 90 (bridge) in the middle. Lots of fun!!!
Thanks so much for this, Darrell! I've always had a hard time with Les Paul's and their typically darker humbucker tones and have generally preferred single coil guitars for this reason. This shootout gives me some excellent inexpensive pickup options that really transform the stock tone of an LP. Thanks to you, I see an LP coming into my collection in the near future. Keep up the good work, my friend!
Wow. I'm shocked at the Surf 90s. I've been looking at them for a year or two, but never pulled the trigger because I figured the price was too good to be true. Thanks for the feature, Darrell!
I put a GF'tron Alnico II in my DeArmond M-55, and I love it. I bought a Kwikplug mini pot kit with it so I could split the coils, which introduces 60 cycle hum but definitely brightens the tone even more. If anyone decides to buy a similar pre-wired harness, be aware that the coil split volume pot has a thicker split shaft on than the tone pot. I had to apply some force to get the stock knob to fit it.
Happy to see GFS stuff getting some action! I would love to see your thoughts on some of their weird pickups-- the foils, the tubes, especially the weird form factor ones like the foil p90s or tube humbos.
Thank you for this video, Darrell. Just decided to add Classic IIs to my GFS Pro 500 LP order. Keep up the great content! You should have 1M subscribers by now.
I have the trem version of this guitar and was thinking about trying one of GF's other pickups. Thanks for the sound demo! Happy Holidays and thanks for the great content.
To my ear, Classic II's sounded best followed by the Vintage Hot's and PAT's. I think they all have their place depending on what sound the player is looking for, but I'm partial to the overdriven humbuckers. Thanks for the video.
I have a set of the 62'? Overwound pickups in my squier II strat and they are a bazillion times better than the cheap ceramic pups that came with it. I actually have a video one my channel of myself playing that guitar
The Surf 90's get my first vote. Vintage Extra Hot as second. Darrell, thank you very much for the comparison. I have been looking to buy some GF pickups, This will help me a lot to choose one.
Darrell, always enjoy watching you and love your guitar playing. I just can't get away from fender, Gibson, Seymour Duncan pickups. The last 3 were okay. Can't wait 2 see what you do next.
Thank you for educating me on the GF pickups! I’m new to electric guitars and I appreciate you always going into hardware details. This is the sort of stuff a green-horn should know: how to put in pick ups without soldering and what a hum-bucker pickup is. Thanks for never talking down to us!!!!
Darrell, just an excellent comparison of these GFS pickups. They get a lot of my business, and I do have 4 sets of their pickups; but only one set in this comparison. As i go through the process of deciding the next couple sets for a semi-hollow and an SG-style, this is extremely helpful. Thanks, man!
Have used GF in 2 upgrade mods, both PUPs and wiring harnesses: 1. Put Texas Hot wound single coils in Squier Strat. 2. Put Gf-Tron in neck, vintage tele bridge in a glarry thin line tele (same model as the red one you reviewed). Very happy with the tone upgrades in both these guitars and pleased with GF PUPs, especially like the kwik plug system. Thanks for the review.
@@TimO-wt9sz Yankee money. The VEH is $35 US, and about $45 CAD (not including shipping/import fees, though you're usually not dinged for import fees under $100, at least I haven't been)
I almost bought a set of GF pickups for one of my Harley Bentons, but I ended up trying out a pair of Dragonfires, and they're so nice. There are a lot of really good, reasonably priced pups these days.
This is the ‘high water mark’ of how to do a comparison video, any other you tubers should use this as as their reference point of how it should be done.
DAMN GOOD video, Darrell! As a regular Guitar Fetish customer, I thought they were all great but I LOVED the GF Trons the most. Unrelatedly if there was any four-part team-up series I'd like to see involving RU-vid guitar specialists, it'd be you, Guitar Max, Robert Baker and Randy Schartiger. You guys are the most fun and positive cats promoting guitar awareness today!
awesome video Darrell, Surf 90's for the win, they have always been a great upgrade ... GFS Episode II = Dream 90 / Mean 90 / Pro-Tube Lipstick / Little Crunchy Mini Humbucker but you need to that clip in a Jazzmaster style body
Great video Darrell. It definitely shows that the pickups make a huge tone difference. I did not think I’d ever hear a Les Paul do Strat sounds but here we are.
From Leo: Nice demonstration of pickups that are easy to get and easy to afford. I put the GFtrons in a hollow body that came with p-90's. I love how they transformed the tone. It was important not to modify the guitar and regular humbuckers would not fit in the P-90 holes. It turned out great.
A good pickup is hard to beat for $30, just on its own merits. But, some of these Chinese units are like $16 for a 10k and 14k ceramic humbucker set, that sounds pretty close to a 'real' pickup. One really cool feature of these cheap pickups and especially buying from Amazon, is they have lots of different models that are cheap enough to try them all. I wrecked my hand years ago, so I have to play an Ibanez Mikro and needed to bump up the low and low mid end. I was able to just try different pickups till I found exactly what filled the bill.
Really glad to see you made this video. I’m a big fan of All the GFS stuff, guitars and pickups. I have a 4 different sets of their pickups with the Kwick plug. It’s awesome to swap out them out. Feels like a new guitar. And at a good price.
All five of them sound awesome Darrell. But I'm kind of leaning between the Vintage extra-hot and the classic two as being my personal favorites. Thank you for this video very well done.
For anyone who wants a Dimarzio D'Activator X pickup set, just go with GFS Crunchy Rails, They are almost the same. The Dimarzio are a little better but not worth the price difference.
I love tour demos.... but in this one the guitar went from mildly out of tune, to very out of tune. That’s uncommon in you. Thanks for the demo anyway.
Hi JSpic, don’t forget that DB was slackening off the strings for each pickup change and although I’m sure he re-tuned each time, the strings hadn’t settled in and went out of tune as he was playing. 👍🥸
Thanks for the video! The VEH, supposedly short for Vintage Extra Hot) is a copy of that 80s "brown sound" from Eddie Van Halen (EVH)... Thank you Eddie and RIP!!! I bought it and it even came it a red box with white stripes. The sounds good!
Very cool video Daryl! I've been hooked on GFS pickups for many years now and I think they are fantastic! I love how drastically you can change that Les Paul's tone by swapping pickups around.
Im using vintage extra hot in a mick ronson copy , must admit im loving them , they'v been nicknamed red hot chilly pickups by my friends , vintage hots and trons had a fullness and warmth
Thank you, Darrell. I just bought a Classic 2 to replace the stock pickups on my AIO Wolf guitar (sound horrible I might say). Now my Les Paul copy sound like a real Les Paul. Thanks again for your review, I got a cheap guitar that sound like the expensive one. My guitar hunting is now over.
I just bought a Dream 180 bridge/Dream 90 neck set right before I found this video. I also bought a Seymour Duncan BMP-1 active preamp/easy swap kit to go with it, to make them active and make the swap an even easier process to boot, and I'll be making a Paul'O'Parts by slapping them into one of those starter Epi LP's you can get for $150-200 stones in either USD or CAD. I plan to buy a Mean 90 bridge later on to have swapping options.
My Bullet Telecaster and Epiphone G400 both have full sets of GFS pickups and hardware. I am a huge fan of their H sized P90s. Over all I think I have six or seven pickups and a bunch of spare parts from GFS. I can completely replace the pickups and electronics completely from GFS for less than the cost of a single Seymour Duncan pickup.
Thanks for doing this Darrell! I thought they all sounded pretty good, really goes to show that you don't need to spend a lot of money for good tones. For my taste, the Surf 90's are a bit too thin. I was really pleasantly surprised by the GTron's, they sounded great. I also really liked the Alnico II pickups because I like the low output but clear sound.
