First guitar mod - good result

Moominpapa

Was going to put my old Yamaha AES 620 up for sale here. Nice looking guitar and well-made but the Yamaha neck humbucker always struck me as competent but utterly characterless; and as I play neck pickup 95% of the time, that's an issue.  Took it to the Yamaha store in London to get some things fixed up prior to putting it on the market and after listening to Steve the tech guy there talk about why he rated the AES guitars so highly I began to change my mind. Decided to kill two birds with one stone - dip my toe into the world of guitar modding by swapping out the stock neck pickup,  and dip my toe into the world of P90s by trying one in there. So now ...

it has an Oil City "Mighty-Ninety" which not only looks boss but sounds wonderful: rich, articulate, beautiful clean tone. Count me as a new member of the Oil City fan club now. (Andy Gibson, who put the pickup in for me, was also very impressed with the way it sounded.)

JerkMoans

Looks great, and from the description should sound great too! 

Welcome to a remorseless world of discontent, now you've dipped your toe into the ceaseless quest for Perfect Tone

djspecialist

Nice! I have a Mighty 90 in the neck of my Baja Tele. Great sounding pickup, and that looks like a lovely guitar.

Tomorrow I'll be collecting my Yamaha SG2000 which has just been fitted with a pair of Oil Cities ...

thegummy

Very nice!

Since I got P90s I've thought that, if sticking to one guitar, a P90 neck and humbucker bridge would be a really good combo.

thegummy

Just realised it's the exact same P90 that I have too - again, very nice!

drwiddly

Very few of my guitars still have all the original pickups. Quite a few have Oil City pickups installed - I love 'em!

Dcotorstewie

My word that looks lovely! And a type of Yamaha that is new to me. 

HAL9000

Got Oil City pickups in a couple of my guitars. They’re great aren’t they?

The thing now is that you’ll get the bug and be swapping pickups out on any guitar you ever buy. Then it moves on to bridges, tuners, sustain blocks, etc. You have been warned.

Moominpapa

"Welcome to a remorseless world of discontent, now you've dipped your toe into the ceaseless quest for Perfect Tone"

"The thing now is that you’ll get the bug and be swapping pickups out on any guitar you ever buy. Then it moves on to bridges, tuners, sustain blocks, etc. You have been warned."

Uh-oh. What have I done ...?!

Erjimipey

Moominpapa said:

Took it to the Yamaha store in London to get some things fixed up prior to putting it on the market and after listening to Steve the tech guy there talk about why he rated the AES guitars so highly I began to change my mind.

Hey mate, I'm not right now in search of a new guitar but have always been curious about these Yamaha's and maybe I'll pull the trigger on one of them one day. Out of curiosity, why did the guy regarded them so highly? And you? , why would you say they are special? 

Moominpapa

@Erjimipey His opinion was that for the price point (I'm thinking about $500-600 when they launched in the US?) you got

• really nice, thick flame maple cap
• Seymour Duncan humbucker in the bridge
• good bridge
• great quality construction

He said he doubted Yamaha could make the same guitar at the same quality level today without having to raise the price.

I like it for the same reasons, and I would also add that I really like the body contouring.

Might be worth noting that this was the second guitar I ever bought - the first being a Pacifica 112 - and I had never played a Les Paul and had no emotional allegiance to Gibson whatsoever. So when I bought it I just saw it for what it offered and didn't think of it as a 'Les Paul style' guitar or - more importantly - as a poor man's substitute for owning a real Les Paul. I think the problem Yamaha had when it came out was that a lot of people couldn't help but look at it through Les-Paul-filter lenses.

Erjimipey

Sounds pretty logical, indeed. Thanks for your answer!