Well, I bought a pair of Waterbranes, which are the Earthbrane line without the vintage covers and the PAF sticker etc. I’m not much interested in stickers, and I don’t give a flying f*ck about vintage correct covers because I run them with covers off. So the lesser cousin of the Earthbranes was the way to go for me.
I stuck them in my old Norlin 1978 Les Paul Standard. This has:
* one piece mahogany body;
* three-piece maple neck and top;
* 500 k pots, 1950s wiring, PIO caps (0.022 uF bridge, 0.015 uf neck);
* Goto ABR-1 and alloy tailpiece.
My first impressions are that they sound very good. The bridge is a more interesting sound than either the SD’59 or Tonerider AlNiCo IV Classic, both of which were adequate but rather ‘white bread’ sounding. It’s got a good aggressive snarl and bite to it, like a good P-90. It is definitely brighter than the aforementioned pups, but it’s not shrill. It fattens very nicely with the tone control keeps its detail with the volume down. When overdriven it’s got a nice edge to it, regardless of whether the tone is up or down.
The neck is likewise a very bright and aggressive pickup that mellows with the tone control. It produces a good ‘woman tone’. Again, it keeps its detail well with volume down.
But the most ear-catching sounds are from the middle pickup position. There is a slight quack to them that I’ve not had from this guitar since I took out the stock T-Top in the bridge when it went microphonic. They interact with each other slightly differently than other pairs I’ve had in this guitar (or any other).
I’ve been playing mostly dirty with these, including a lot of slide. They really like the bottle neck, brining out lots of harmonic complexity, particularly if I don’t damp with my left hand. All sorts of zinging and inter-modulation going on.
I’ve not yet had a chance to really play these at volume for a proper length of time (a few hours), but what I’ve heard so far is that they’re aggressive, they behave a like a good single coil in many ways, and they offer a lot of harmonic complexity. All of which makes them ‘interesting’ to listen to, in my book.
Thumbs up.
Very nice pickups indeed.
No recordings as yet.