Hardly Ramone
GearIQ 113
Joined Jan 2021
Hi, I'm Hardly. I've been a drummer & guitarist for nearly 10 years, playing Ramones songs all the while. For more Ramones content & guitar covers, check out my YouTube channel (Hardly Ramone).
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This is the pickup found in the famous Hallmark Guitars Swept Wing model, but I purchased one many years ago to custom install it in a strat. This is is a nice hot pickup with a very fat, round bass sound in the lows, and a fair amount of twang/treble clarity on the other end. I put it in the bridge position and paired it with a 500k volume pot for maximum brightness, which almost worked a little too well! It resulted in a lot of versatility though, because I use either an EQ pedal or plugin *before* the amp to bring down any high frequencies that aren't needed for a specific tone goal. I really like this, because only ever needing to *cut* frequencies is ultimately much better than trying to boost them artificially — I'm basically starting with as much sparkle and chime from my guitar as I could ever need, and dialing things back from there IF that is desired. I can also see some players wanting all of that brightness unhindered. Not sure how much of a difference a 250k volume pot would have made, but one might say that'd be the more sensible choice, ha.
In general, the '67 is also much much fuller sounding than the stock strat bridge pickup I had, and it can add some overdrive and crunch to older amps that need to be pushed a little for a really gritty sound. I can see this pickup supporting a lot of different genres, depending on how it's used. I don't know if it's directly swappable with a typical P-90 pickup, but be aware it's around that size. I custom cut a hole out of a blank pickguard and routed out a little extra room in the strat body to install it myself, because it's a good bit larger than a standard size strat pickup. Anyway, five stars from me, I have zero reason to be disappointed.