Decided to try my hand at a pickup swap. I ordered Seymour Duncan Mark Holcomb Alpha and Omega pickups, an adjustable soldering iron, and watched about half a dozen YouTube videos.
I’m fairly handy, but I’ve never soldered anything before. This was an entirely new experience for me, but I figured worst case I could take it to a shop and have them fix it. So let’s get started!
Strings off!
Going to change the strings anyway, so they come off first. It’ll make things way easier to deal with, too.
Pull the back cover and check it out.
I pulled out the tone pot, which is a push/pull unit on the PRS CU24SE, and compared the wiring diagram I downloaded from PRS and the one that came in the package with the new pickups. I had a pretty good idea what I was looking at, so it was time to start taking things apart.
This is the stock wiring.
Going to start desoldering things now.
Bridge pickup is out!
Stock pickup came out very easily. Just heated up the solder blob and out she came.
New bridge in.
Took me a few tries to get the new solder blob nice and neat, but it went in very easily as well.
Tested it out, and the coil splitting works! Got it on the first try. The instructions are perfect!
Now for the neck.
First one was easy, so I was more confident with the neck pickup.
All mounted up and tested out. Everything is awesome!
Tidy up the wiring a little and close up the back. Put the new strings on, level and set the pickup height, then let it rip!
That’s it! All done. I was really surprised at how easy it actually was. If your thinking about trying it out, go for it.
The new pickups are phenomenal, and I feel like they’ve elevated the rest of the guitar. The PRS SE lines are really good as is, but I felt like the pickups were a weak link in an otherwise awesome guitar. The Alpha/Omega set are really good. A lot of clarity in the cleans while keeping articulation with distortion. Great addition overall.
Thanks! Yeah the bridge pickup is really impressive. It definitely has chugs, but still rings each note through in chords under distortion.
The Alpha is also really nice as well, strong pick attack and keeping the thick glassy tones of most neck pickups.
Tbh I have never really managed to get excited about a neck PU. The only reason to replace them has been if I either wanted to change the looks or if the PU was broken. I have tried Neck PUs rangeing from a Dunacn Jazz to the cheap stock PUs in an entry level B.C. Rich and I just find them to sound too similar for me to spend much money on a new one.
I feel like a good neck pickup can give you warm, rich tones that are more difficult to get with a bridge pickup.
Swapping from lead/melody to rhythm/chorus on neck to bridge gives a lot of feeling to the tone, imo.
don't get me wrong, I love a good neck PU. It's just that I think almost any neck PU is a good neck PU and the differences are so small I can generally just adjust my EQ and get very close to the same result.