Hamer Eclipse Pickups

[PS4 FTW]

Call me crazy, but I've been thinking of trying an Eclipse. I've been playing my P90 special a lot lately, and I love the sound but the pickups are a little noisy with modest amounts of gain. My question is how are the stock Seymour Duncans on the Eclipse? I'm looking for something that is p90ish with less noise for bluesy rock type stuff. Would want to grab one somewhat cheap, so I probably wouldn't be interested in upgrading the pickups.

[Jakeboy]

I haven’t played those pickups, nor an Eclipse...but.....Ii swap out the P90s on my Peavey Firenza for a set of Rumpel Firebird pickups and I do believe bird pups are the perfect Humbucker. Bright and cutting like a single coils, yet they retain the birth of a bucker. Way different than a p90. No buzz saw or super-duper mids. Mine are in a. All-hog body too.

[G Man]

The stock SDs in the Eclipse are pretty hot and not very pretty sounding.  I have had two eclipses and a pup swap in both guitars was an improvement.  I really liked the SD Antiquity II Firebird pups that I had in one, and the other had a crazy one off set of pups that sounded phenomenal, but again, they were not something you could just buy.

[PS4 FTW]

Thanks for the replies! Sounds like I would probably need to change the pickups, which I was hoping to avoid. I would like to try out a guitar with minis, so if I can get an Eclipse for somewhat cheap I might still go for it.

[Jakeboy]

My Rumpel birds are low-wind vintage.

[mrjamiam]

There is nothing crazy about trying an Eclipse!  Mine is great.  If you like your Special, you might love the Eclipse's contoured body.  I have Gravelin pickups in mine, a Firebird type in the neck and a mini-hum in the bridge.

[PS4 FTW]

I'm kicking myself for passing on a local one early last year. What would be a good price for one these days?

[JohnnyB]

On 2/25/2018 at 10:08 AM, PS4 FTW said:

Thanks for the replies! Sounds like I would probably need to change the pickups, which I was hoping to avoid. I would like to try out a guitar with minis, so if I can get an Eclipse for somewhat cheap I might still go for it.

Sounds like I would probably need to change the pickups, which I was hoping to avoid.

It's not a foregone conclusion. It depends on what kind of music you play, the tones you seek, your picking attack, and how much your current amp "likes" these pickups.

You need to try one out, try a bunch of different amp settings, and see if the stock pickups work for you.

If you're more of a classic rock guy or play clean jazz or clean-to-dirty blues, you might want pickups with a wider expressive range.

There are times I wish I'd gotten a pair of Duncan Antiquities Firebird minis. I'd probably still have my Eclipse.

The Eclipse is one of the most ergonomically comfortable guitars I've played. You can practice or gig for hours with that thing.

If the purchase price is right, a pickup swap would be easily justified IMO.

 

[Caddie]

9 hours ago, JohnnyB said:

Sounds like I would probably need to change the pickups, which I was hoping to avoid.

It's not a foregone conclusion. It depends on what kind of music you play, the tones you seek, your picking attack, and how much your current amp "likes" these pickups.

You need to try one out, try a bunch of different amp settings, and see if the stock pickups work for you.

If you're more of a classic rock guy or play clean jazz or clean-to-dirty blues, you might want pickups with a wider expressive range.

There are times I wish I'd gotten a pair of Duncan Antiquities Firebird minis. I'd probably still have my Eclipse.

The Eclipse is one o the most ergonomically comfortable guitars I've played. You can practice or gig for hours with that thing.

If the purchase price is right, a pickup swap would be easily justified IMO.

 

Amen Brother JohnnyB, Amen.     Trying turning all the knobs on your Eclipse and your amp.  If you have the good fortune to have more than one amp, try them all.  Murkat has a very simple mod to the wiring of the pots that makes the curve behave a bit more linear than the SD SM-2 & SM-3 that are standard in the Eclipse. Very simple rewire to do. Move one end of one wire from one terminal to the empty terminal next to it on the same pot.   A dolphin can solder better than me.  Me, myself and I successfully completed the job without burns, cursing or tripped breakers. FWIW, the following are my suggestions in order, keeping in mind that I loath paying for upgrade components.  I do every thing possible to avoid buying and swapping parts.  Sooooo...

1. slowly spin all the available knobs at your disposal. Keep a journal of the effect each of your moves did to the overall sound.  It speeds up the process of getting to where you wanna go.  
2. try it thru other amps.  My Eclipse with only the Murkat Wiring Mod sounded great thru a Mesa DC-3 and a Fender Princeton Reverb Reissue, but everything sounds great thru that Fender PRRI amp. The Eclipse also sounded good thru a Fender Pro Jr, the simplest of amps, 1-VOL & 1-TONE.   Not so great thru the legendary Matchless Clubman 35.  Go figure.
3. try the Murkat Wiring Mod. 
4. remove the knurled steel dome knobs.  Put on chrome skulls with the beety red eyes.  The Skulls of Death make the Eclipse sound more organic. 
5. last resort go with new pups, I'd go with the SD Antiquity II Mini Humbucker.  Call SD first to confirm that they will drop into the SD mini hole that are in it.  My ability to remove wood is just a bit worse than my soldering.  If something requires wood removal I take it to a pro.  

Just my opinion, YMMV.  Cheers!

caddie

 

[tomteriffic]

OK, I (along with Caddie) will be the dissenting voice here.  I've never been much for OD/Distortion pedals.  A totally gonzo over the top splatty fuzz pedal is a different category completely, though.  Anyway, I've been through a lot of pedals and still have one or two I don't mind.  They're handy when the venue won't tolerate much volume.  But really, I prefer to just clobber the amp to get where I'm going tone/distortion-wise.  The stock Eclipse pickups are great for just that.  No, they're not pretty, they're rude as hell.  But I have other guitars for pretty.  Horses for courses, I suppose.

When i finally got an Eclipse 12, I was all set to swap out pickups before I'd even played it much, since with a 12'er pretty becomes a factor.  BCR Greg (who had experience with this particular guitar) told me to just try it out with the stock pickups first.  I did and it turned out that all the classic 12 sounds were in there and then some.

 

[Studio Custom]

Ask yourself how many classic albums were recorded with Firebirds.  Then ask yourself why not.  The answers lies within the weeds there. 

[gtone]

On 2018-02-28 at 9:50 AM, Studio Custom said:

Ask yourself how many classic albums were recorded with Firebirds.  Then ask yourself why not.  The answers lies within the weeds there. 

Personally, I was surprised how many tracks were recorded with Firebirds thru the years.  Petty's Running Down the Dream, solo from Skynyrd's Freebird, McCartney's Maybe I'm Amazed, right off the top.  Sizeable contributions from Johnny Winter (most of what he put out, of course), Stephen Stills, Phil Manzanera, Clapton, Jimmy McCulloch, Warren Haynes, list goes on...