EBMM Cutlass HSS pickup alternatives?

I bought an EBMM Cutlass HSS in 2019, since removing the bridge cover and putting all five springs on the tremolo to lock it down I love the play-ability of the guitar for myself. I had to abandon my guitar of 26 years as working with my hands have caused them to show more signs of aging than the rest of my body, at least to this point in my life, and the smaller neck on the cutlass allows for more playing time, but I question the pickups. The following statement is in Ernie Balls description:

"The Cutlass is loaded with two custom Ernie Ball Music Man mid-'60s-style single-coil pickups. But thanks to the installed active wide-spectrum Silent Circuit, you'll enjoy hum- and buzz-free performance."

I don't find this statement to be accurate at all, they sound pretty good but I've wondered for sometime if there is a set of pickups that might actually be more on the silent side. I'd also like to be able to split the humbucker, if I can find one that has a good single coil sound when split or maybe change over to a sss configuration with a slightly hotter bridge. I've been looking at the Fishman Fluence pickups which wouldn't be a hard swap since I have a battery compartment already in the cutlass, and the MojoTone quiet coil pickups. I recently watched a video that had silent pickups that looked and sounded like single coils but were actually a stacked humbucker, but for the life of me I can't remember what pickups they were. I know this is a very subjective topic as it is a personal sound choice that varies by individual taste, but I still value opinions of those who have had experience with alternatives to the stock pickups I have now.

Quote from deadman42

I do have a set of those rail hum canceling pickups in my trusty Fender Billy Corgan strat with ToneZone at the bridge, Chopper in the middle and Cruiser at the neck. This is certainly far away from 60s single coils but works super well for my rock and high gain stuff. But the Cruiser has a lot of real single coil character in the neck position. All dead silent by the way and for sure not on the expensive side compared to boutique makers!

It was the AREA 58 that I saw the video on, thanks! I watch so many guitar related product videos since we moved from satellite TV to streaming for entertainment it's information overload at times, I only save links when on my pc. I forgot about the rail series, I'll do some research on those.

I thought the HSS configuration I got would be versatile, and it is to a degree, but having three single coils for so many years I still haven't transitioned all that well. I'm not a high gain player but like to cover ground from the 60s through the 80s. Love to hear chicken picken but it definitely isn't in my wheelhouse. I do use positions 2-5 on a five way switch often but find I don't use the humbucker as much in this guitar because it is such a different change from the two single coils.

Quote from Ruefus

There is nothing more silent than Fishman's Fluence.

I've got a set in my Tele and they're like a morgue at 2am.

Those I've been looking at for awhile now. Greg Koch caught my eye first when demonstrating them before his signature set came out, but guy's like him can make a 2 x 4 with strings sound good.

I had a set of EMG SA single coils in my last guitar, they are quite but a little sterile so they're not on my radar. Do the Fluence pickups retain the character of a standard pickup as advertised, I only ask since you've had the opportunity to use them and have a reference point with standard pickups, I've never spoken to anyone, online or in person who has used them.

Quote from paults

If you re going to experiment with pickups - I suggest buying used pickups, not new ones.

You can likely re-sell anything you decide not to keep for pretty much what you paid for it, and not lose much money on each pickup you don't like.

Im not opposed to that, admittedly I've bought and sold more accessories than I should have over the past year and a half on Reverb and Facebook, with no problems or duds thus far.

I need to open my cutlass up and check the wiring before I do anything. Something I haven't considered is it may be a grounding issue or insufficient shielding. When my pinky finger rests on the pick guard while playing, and when on the neck or middle pickup it causes an intermittent crackling noise.

Should have been my first thought but it never occurred to me until today. I would like to attribute that to buyers block, you pay a little more for something and don't consider that a quality control issue might be the culprit. But in all fairness the blame lies with me, another year under the belt and a little less active in the grey matter area.

Quote from deadman42

I was in that tone-hunt for some of my guitars for a long time and I feel so good now that it's done and I am back to playing rather than soldering

I have two other guitars to work on right now, small fixes really but since I'm a one guitar person I've just let them sit. But I can't put them off any longer, I rearranged my room this past week and don't have storage space for them anymore. Gotta get them finished, I need to sell them off along with a combo amp and a few accessories, all of which have been collecting dust for several years. I may be a bit of a horder.

I built a set of kitchen cabinets a few months back and I haven't used my shop in quite a few years. As I cleaned up the shop and rearranged things so I could work in it again I found tools, new saw blades and a plethora of items boxed up I don't remember ever buying, but they all stacked up nicely in another spot😎

Quote from BayouTexan

I'm using Jackson proprietary noise cancelling single coils in one guitar and sounds totally noiseless to me. I believe they are knock-offs of Fender noiseless series. In that same guitar, I use a SD Duncan Custom that splits. The tone from HB to split is pretty much the same. I find you can play it split and go back to full HB for a boost.

I have another guitar with SD Hot Rails which is just a HB in single coil format. I find those not as flexible on tonality but still like the sound.

Then I have MiM fender singles that are, yes, noisy.

I do believe that ceramic magnets are less noisy than alnico, although I never looked this up to see if true.

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I had a guitar from 1990-1993 made from Chandler parts, ash body and Jackson style neck with an ebony fret board, great playing guitar. The neck was real similar to an Ibanez Prestige model I have now, but not quite as wide. The only thing I saw as a drawback were the pickups, a pair of EMG Selects, so in my infinite wisdom (mid 20's) I bought a SD Custom Custom for the bridge and another SD (unknown) for the neck. They are great pickups, but for some reason they didn't sound nearly as good as the Selects, so after a few months I swapped them back and sold the SD's. Now I've heard the SD's in other guitars and played a couple and they were awesome, so it may have been the combination of the rest of my gear at the time, and the Selects just played better with the other items. Once I sold that set up the guitar didn't sound all that great with the new gear I bought. The Selects were a much cheaper pickup but had their place in at least one scenario.

That's the aggravating part of chasing the tone in your head , I have a preconceived notion of what I believe will take me to that point of tone nirvana but in reality it's to cluttered with YouTube gear demonstrations that may or may not translate well to my particular combination of equipment, environment or the sound my fingers produce when playing, just way to many variables. But receiving others opinions of their experiences are still very helpful and I value them. For example, my guitar I played for 26 years before getting the Cutlass sounded really good, I made the comment earlier in a post above that the EMG SA pickups were a little sterile. What I had not thought about until later was it did sound much better for the first 16 years I played it until I took it to have a fret job done, I had the guy change out the pick guard at the time and told him "just leave the tone pot out, I only need a volume knob", it never sounded quite the same and that could very well be the cause of it sounding a little sterile. I think suggesting to others that removing the tone pot from the circuit might not be the best option could be good information to share that may help them make a more informed choice.

I'll add this for free, I don't regret the purchases I've made over the past six years that have brought me to the point I am at now, a very nice guitar that suits me well at this point in my life. The Kemper, it gives me unlimited choices in amps and more effects than I'll ever use, I still haven't tried them all as of yet. I added the Kemper remote last August (demo unit, looked brand new but I saved some scratch), I use it like a pedal board in browser mode, still haven't tried performance mode but I'm sure that will only enhance its use. SD Powerstage 700, improvement over my last power amp plus stereo, just for my own enjoyment, though I'm still struggling some with settling on a speaker. It sounds pretty good as is but I still feel like I haven't hit that sweet spot that would allow me to use the Kemper at it's full potential, but the investment has grown to a tidy sum.

Just for comparisons sake and a little perspective, or maybe better called it a reality check for myself. I ran sound last summer at a smaller venue for a band that played a variety of genres, country, older rock, soft rock and a little 70s pop. They sounded good overall and played well but the guitarist/singer stood out. He had a really good sound, he didn't lack in tone nor talent, his gear was a squire strat, peavey bandit, compressor and delay stomp, and he utilized the bandits two channels and reverb. When I got home I was a little disappointed and begin to wonder if less could be more? Maybe I've spent way to much time and money on this venture when I should be in the woodshed practicing until my fingers are worn to the bone? So on this I pondered for several days...............................................

Then I saw the demo remote unit pop up online and grabbed it as quickly as possible, completely delighted with myself in the money I had saved and how proud my wife would be because of this extraordinary purchase, and this made the world make sense once again and brought balance back into my life

Quote from BayouTexan

I also have a ESP Viper with the SD Sentient and Pegasus combo. These pickups sound really good with high gain gnarly amps. Both split but I have only used that option on the neck pup when rolling down the gain quite a bit. I have a Schecter SV Shredder with the EMG Retroactive 70s set. These are very versatile pups. They basically give you a tone similar to the SD Custom, JB, and Distortion depending on how you use your volume and tone knob. They are a bit brighter than an EMG 81.

Besides the amp, I have found pick attack to be very critical on a pickups tone. I used to pick at a slight angle to strings and found that if I roll in my pick hand wrist a little bit that I could get a direct perpendicular attack which made a big difference for me using the SD Custom (now my favorite pup). I would practice hitting each string at different angles until I got the tone out of the strings I wanted.

I also found my favorite amp profile for high gain. After spending much time on the Marshalls, Mesa, and EVHs, I messed around with a Fender Concert amp and it shocked the hell out of me that I could get that tone out of it. It's the only profile I've been playing the last several weeks.

I'll keep chasing tone though because I think it's fun.

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My profiler has 2 rigs in it right now, both acoustic simulator lol! I cleared it out and started over, I'm going through both factory and purchased rig folders loaded in RM. I agree with your findings, it's better to listen than look, I wish I could get my wife to cycle through the rigs so I coud do a blind test, seeing the names cloudes my judgment. But please don't mention picks, I changed string guages and decided to try other picks. I know I bought at least 30 if not more, different brands, materials and thicknesses in each type. After several months I had to keep one and pitch the rest before I ended up in a little padded room.

Quote from Steve5478

I believe pickups is the most important factor in your guitar sound, but it's very hard to advise for others cause it's really a question of taste.

I've changed pickups on three different guitars for handwounded ones made by a guy near my location and known to produce really good products.

I've put Humbucker alnico 2 in my gibson SG and in my Michael Kelly (my avatar) alnico 4 (splitted possibility), for this last one, it was night and day, since this day, i'm sure that there's no question of shape, wood, thickness...... But i've bought it cause i loved the color .

Recently i wanted to switch the ones i have in my charvel cause i don't like the sound but didn't know if the wiring is not faulty too.

So i was looking for another superstrat and bought an Ibanez RG550 genesis.

I don't trust in Multi-FX vids to know what is the best one.....But in every cases (yes, a few) i've seen vids about guitar/pickups, my opinion was the same between what i've heard on Utube and the impression i had after playing the guitar. If you really want to switch them, you can eventually listen to Utube vids before....

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Last night I spent some time watching videos demonstrating the EBMM Cutlass HSS like mine and thought they sounded pretty good. I think doing a thorough cavity and wire connection inspection is needed. I can understand some noise with the single coils, but with the crackling sound occurring when just touching the pick guard I expect to find a grounding or sheilding issue. EBMM has a good reputation for QC but that doesn't exclude them from letting something slip through on occasion, or shipping could be the culprit by jarring something loose.

I believe another part of my dissatisfaction with the tone I'm getting lies with my choice of speaker. Even though it sounds pretty good overall I think it smooths out the sound to the point I'm loosing some dynamics and attack that are present on my combo amp when using it by itself (Fender Mustang II). My low E string stays a little flubby with little to no snap, regardless of which profile I choose.

I started out with my Kemper plugged into the effects return of the Fender after buying it in 2017. Never thought to much about it, just played and explored the Kemper until 2021 when I bought a power amp and Kone and realized for four years I had grown accustomed to a muffled sound. I found that the new combination with a Kone was to harse and somewhat brittle for me, so after a few months I changed to different speakers and at first felt they were the perfect solution, they fell somewhere between muffled and my perception of brittle.

I've used these since August of last year and grown accustomed to them but their shortcomings have become apparent. I've decided to get a Kone again and see if the transition from my current speaker isn't as drastic as my previous experience from muffled to what I perceived as harsh. I think my previous Kone experience may have been information overload across the tonal spectrum, but now I'm at a point that I see this tonal information could be part of what I'm missing and why most profiles are pretty similar in tone with an upper mid honk on my current setup.

I placed an order on the 11th for a Kone on the Kemper-USA website but hit a snag, my credit card shows a transaction was initiated with PayPal Kemper-USA and is in limbo as a pending transaction. I sent an email yesterday morning to Kemper sales/support and got the automated response that it was received and will be reviewed, but never received an email from the store that an order was placed initially. My online account doesn't show any orders placed either. I've never had an issue before, they are very prompt shipping and has been the next day on previous orders so I'm speculating that the order was never completed in the shopping cart. That may be an error on my part or a clitch online, either way I hope to hear something today. Anyway, the chase continues.........

Edit: Just checked my online account again after looking at it maybe an hour ago before writing the post above, the new order now shows and is being processed. Kudos to Kemper support and customer service, this is the second time something out of the ordinary has popped up in a transaction and in both instances they have addressed it quickly.

Thank you Kemper, your customer service has been great, or by today's standards exemplary may be a better term to use.

Quote from Steve5478

I can understand the switch cause you want to see something else but, imo, if you like your current PU, you should keep them, furthermore, your crackling problems will still be there....You'll have to solve it too....

Oh, I don't disagree. Part of my original purchase decision for that guitar was based on demo videos. I had no way of trying one out in person, no dealer had one within 250 miles of my home at that time. I thought it sounded really good online at least, and the demonstrations covered a broad range of amps from clean to mean, the pickups held their own.

But when going back and revisiting a bunch of those and newer demo's last night I paid particular attention for the crackling noise and never heard it. The possibility for it to occur couldn't be avoided if it was a common occurrence because a lot of time was spent on the neck pickup throughout all the videos back to back, and many fingers were making contact with the pick guard.

I'll have time to check in the next couple of weeks, it's possible that something as simple as sheilding on the back of the pick guard isn't making contact with shielding on the body, or a poor ground connection.

But if I can't find a solution to stop the crackling, more likely than not I'll go for different pickups and change out the switch and pots too. Hopefully I'll get lucky and solve the issue at hand, that's the easiest and most cost-effective solution.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to throw something into the conversation. I can get a very narrow focus at times and having other opinions to consider helps broaden my scope of thought and view something from a different perspective, I appreciate it.