I think it’s no secret that I love to play Les Pauls, in any form or shape. Two or three pickups, floyd rose or fixed bridge, I love all of them. But sometimes I get a guitar that I can’t get to sound the way I want it to sound. Too bright, too fierce, too clear. When I get a guitar like that I have to resort to pickups that may not seem appropriate at first. The guitar in question received a Screamin’ Demon for the neck position and a PATB-3 Blues Saraceno for the bridge position.
The Screamin’ Demon is described as a great bridge pickup: clear yet tight, articulate and aggressive with a nice medium EQ which emphasises on the higher mids and highs, and with a tight bottom end. The PATB-3 Blues Saraceno was designed to have a PAF-style clarity, openness and growl to it, but with a warmer EQ to tame longer scale, maple neck and tremolo guitars. You would expect these pickups to absolutely not work in a Les Paul, based on the ‘dry’ specs, but imagine my surprise when I first plugged in my guitar and hit the first chord.
The PATB-3 has a great amount of clarity to balance for the warmth. The mids have a nice amount of push, comparable with the Pearly Gates. The highs are brighter and more open, like the ’59. The lows are tighter than most PAF-alikes though. It’s tight but with a lot of clarity. Even in a Les Paul with a rosewood fretboard the lows don’t get boomy, unlike the ’59, which can get a bit boomy if it’s in the wrong guitar. In general, the PATB-3 can be described as a great medium output pickup with huge mids. The pickup is extremely sensitive to your touch: hitting hard will make it crunch and hitting it more gently will make it sing. There are no styles I personally can’t play with this pickup. Sometimes a pickup can hold you back to play a style, song or genre: playing jazz with the Blackouts can be a daunting task! But the PATB-3 handles blues, rock, metal and jazz perfectly.
The Screamin’ Demon was designed for George Lynch, the guitarist for Dokken and later his own band Lynch Mob. He needed clarity first and foremost. His pickup also had to have a tight low end, but with an open, growly character. In the bridge position of a Strat this pickup has a great, open tone with more growl and tightness than the ’59. In a Les Paul it’s also reminiscent of the ’50, but is a bit warmer and can be a bit ‘woofy’ in the lower mids, where the ’59 has a bit more bite to it.
This pickup does something completely different in the neck position of a Les Paul. The tone is still open and clear with great dynamics but the ‘feel’ is creamy. The Alnico II Pro comes close to the tone of this pickup but has a bit more ‘hair’ and crunch to it compared to the Screaming Demon.
A coil split under a push-pull pot will give you even more useable tones. The Screamin’ Demon will give you a great, transparent, slightly honky tone. It’s almost like you’re playing a Strat! If you split the PATB-3 in the bridge you get a more raunchy, dirty tone with a bit less output, as if you’re having an overwound, thick single coil in your guitar.
I only have one regret about this combination: that I didn’t buy these pickups earlier! The tones are amazing and extremely versatile. With the coil split you get even more tones, which opens up the door for cleaner styles like funk or soul. If you need to beef up your guitar a bit but you don’t want to move to the hotter pickups, this set will do wonders for your tone!