'60s Standard

[JVJunky]

I've just received my '60s Standard and on the whole I'm extremely pleased it. Very good build quality and nicely faded Iced Tea finish. But tonally a bit bright.
My only question is, if I wanted a more mellow, bluesy tone, what would be a reasonably inexpensive pickup upgrade?

 

[Noodling Guitars]

I've just received my '60s Standard and on the whole I'm extremely pleased it. Very good build quality and nicely faded Iced Tea finish. But tonally a bit bright.
My only question is, if I wanted a more mellow, bluesy tone, what would be a reasonably inexpensive pickup upgrade?

Before you even dive into that rabbit hole, have you tried adjusting the height of your pickups, rolling back the tone knob or reducing the treble on your amp?

 

[syco]

HNGD !! Posting pics of it will also make it sound better !

 

[syco]

I've just received my '60s Standard and on the whole I'm extremely pleased it. Very good build quality and nicely faded Iced Tea finish. But tonally a bit bright.
My only question is, if I wanted a more mellow, bluesy tone, what would be a reasonably inexpensive pickup upgrade?

Also dependent on the amp you are using , but the pro bucker 2 & 3 with a few tweaks will cover most music styles .

 

[Darkness]

HNGD !! Posting pics of it will also make it sound better !

This is the little known secret to achieving the best tone

 

[BlueSquirrel]

I've just received my '60s Standard and on the whole I'm extremely pleased it. Very good build quality and nicely faded Iced Tea finish. But tonally a bit bright.
My only question is, if I wanted a more mellow, bluesy tone, what would be a reasonably inexpensive pickup upgrade?

It really depends on the type of music that you want to play.
I believe Probuckers could do blues /jazz. They are very good pickups to start with.

You can try adjusting the tone knob and the tone setting on your amp as already suggested, but, if that's not enough, you might want to look into different caps values.

I've changed the pickups in one of my guitars (I went for Gibson's burstbucker 1 & 2 because the description read "vintage", and "PAF"). In fact, they sounded even more trebly and shrill (!) with a lot of output and excellent definition. In one word : perfect for hard rock, so totally different from what I wanted which was a mellower, darker sound for mild rock, blues or pop!

Instead of changing the pickups, I think I should have changed the capacitor from 0.22 to 0.33 or 0.47 instead.
Live and learn!

 

[BlueSquirrel]

On top of that, capacitors are way cheaper than new pickups : on average they cost about five to twenty dollars each.