LUKE II with EMG 89 IN THE BRIDGE
Hello everyone.
I recently purchased a lefty LUKE II from the UK. Nice guitar indeed but with a few weak points, at least from my point of view.
So far I had experienced a very tough time trying to deal with the EMG 85 that comes in the bridge: it’s a very strong pickup, with a lot of signal, but nothing more than that in my opinion.
It’s good if you’re looking for a huge distortion but (IMHO) not a very good option if want to use the LUKE as your maing gigging axe and you need a few more tones (mostly in clean field).
What got me upset the most is the tone of the 2nd position, where the middle and bridge pickups work in parallel togheter. This position, along with the 1st one (EMG 85 alone) has way more volume than the other 3 positions.Even using a compressor there’s no way you can use it for clean arpeggios, strumming and clean work in general.And if played with distortion, it doesn’t say nothing interesting..
After a lttle research I decided to change it with an EMG 89 + push pull volume knob for “splitting” and it was like night and day. Now I can finally use ALL the tones of the guitar + 2 more tones that are very usable for different stuff.
For those who don’t know, the 89 is basically 2 pickups in 1: a stacked humbucker and an SA Sincle Coil, with separate internal preamps.
When the SA is engaged, it works alone.Since it’s placed is on the bridge side, in the 1st and 2nd position it takes away a lot of low tones and is very usefull for funk tones or even to emulate a Telecaster/old strat bridge tone.
When the humbucker is engaged, instead, it works perfectly by itself as traditional bridge humbucker because has more highs than the 85 and is more “clear” and less “muddy” than the 85 and doesn’t have THAT MUCH volume, even in the 2nd position (combined with the middle pickup), making the guitar sound with the same volume, basically, in 4 positions. I don’t often play the bridge humbucker in clean mode but I bet it will surely be used in the future.
I had got very used to play with single coils in the last 3/4 years so I was missing the versatility of this kind of configuration. I used to think my Luke was good but not good enough as my strat now they are very much on the same line.
I truly recommend this modification to all LUKE II users.
(of course, this post reflects personal opinions that can vary from player to player)
I recently purchased a lefty LUKE II from the UK. Nice guitar indeed but with a few weak points, at least from my point of view.
So far I had experienced a very tough time trying to deal with the EMG 85 that comes in the bridge: it’s a very strong pickup, with a lot of signal, but nothing more than that in my opinion.
It’s good if you’re looking for a huge distortion but (IMHO) not a very good option if want to use the LUKE as your maing gigging axe and you need a few more tones (mostly in clean field).
What got me upset the most is the tone of the 2nd position, where the middle and bridge pickups work in parallel togheter. This position, along with the 1st one (EMG 85 alone) has way more volume than the other 3 positions.Even using a compressor there’s no way you can use it for clean arpeggios, strumming and clean work in general.And if played with distortion, it doesn’t say nothing interesting..
After a lttle research I decided to change it with an EMG 89 + push pull volume knob for “splitting” and it was like night and day. Now I can finally use ALL the tones of the guitar + 2 more tones that are very usable for different stuff.
For those who don’t know, the 89 is basically 2 pickups in 1: a stacked humbucker and an SA Sincle Coil, with separate internal preamps.
When the SA is engaged, it works alone.Since it’s placed is on the bridge side, in the 1st and 2nd position it takes away a lot of low tones and is very usefull for funk tones or even to emulate a Telecaster/old strat bridge tone.
When the humbucker is engaged, instead, it works perfectly by itself as traditional bridge humbucker because has more highs than the 85 and is more “clear” and less “muddy” than the 85 and doesn’t have THAT MUCH volume, even in the 2nd position (combined with the middle pickup), making the guitar sound with the same volume, basically, in 4 positions. I don’t often play the bridge humbucker in clean mode but I bet it will surely be used in the future.
I had got very used to play with single coils in the last 3/4 years so I was missing the versatility of this kind of configuration. I used to think my Luke was good but not good enough as my strat now they are very much on the same line.
I truly recommend this modification to all LUKE II users.
(of course, this post reflects personal opinions that can vary from player to player)
Source: http://forums.ernieball.com
