jray745 said: So I've had my Jaguar HH for about six months now, and am ready to swap out the Humbuckers for single-coils to get back some of the warmer tone. Problem is, I don't know which to get: I'm stuck between Seymour Duncan Antiquity II's, which I hear have a good, vintage (if somewhat dark) tone, but I have Orange amps, and I've always heard the vintage Jag pick-ups were treble-y so I'm worried they're not going to play as well through the Orange with its richer mids, so I'm wondering if the SJAG-2 Hot pickups from SD wouldn't be better. Any advice from experience?
I don't really know what it is you're referring to when you use the word "warmth." I've generally associated "warmth" with more bass frequency, which humbuckers alway have more of in my experience, and "warmth" is certainly not something I think of when I hear single coil gutiars. Nor do I think of "dark" tones when I think of single coils, I think of clear bright bell like tones, with tighter bass response.
I have the Seymour Duncan Antiquity II's in my Jag and they are certainly not dark sounding pickups in anyway. You might investigate whoever made that claim to you more closely. The Antiquity II's use alnico 5 magnets (very bright sounding, not dark at all) which is what all 60s era fenders used. They have more output then Alnico 2 magnets, which is what a lot of 50s era and modern fender guitars use, and they have a very very bright and jangly sound, think of the tone of most surf music and this is the Alnico 5 sound, which both Hendrix and SRV had in their pickups.
Alnico 5 magnets, the magnets used in the Antiquity ii pickups, have been aged and slightly de-polarized to provide the same effect as having an original 60s era pickup in which the magnets have weakened with age. This does mellow out some of the high-end, it's not as brittle sounding, but it is certainly still an extremely bright sound.
The Antiquity i pickups use alnico 2 magnets and have a looser bass response, more midrange, and dimmer highs then the Antiquity ii's. These are "darker" in comparison to the alnico 5s, but they are still much brighter then most humbuckers you'll find. But would be the better single coil to term as having a "dark" sound.
I think you may be confusing "brightness" and "darkness" with output. Sometimes when your amp is set a certain volume and you play with it through humbuckers you hear a really loud bright sound, and then when you leave the amp on the same settings and play a single-coil guitar you hear a more mellow sub-dued tone with the less volume. This has nothing to do with tone of the pickup and everything to do with output; turn your amp up so that you hear the single coils at the same volume as you did the humbuckers and you will definitely not hear a "warm" sound any longer.
For what you're probably wanting to hear and do you should invest into a high end humbucker and split the coils, you can wire the treble boost switch on your jag to do this. That way you can get a great single coil and humbucker sound from the same guitar.
Personally I would recommend Rio Grande pickups for this purpose: http://www.riograndepickups.com/scart/S ... me=SINGLES
I recommend the Tallboy Humbucker for your neck, since it's basically just two of their vintage strat single coils wired together and is actually designed with coil splitting in mind, and then I would put their Muy Grande humbucker in the bridge for more output, but still a great sounding single coil when split.
Or if you really needed more output for distortion I would put their Muy Grande humbucker in the neck and their Crunch Box humbucker in the bridge, but you certainly will not have a very vintage tone at this point.
