Review : Seymour Duncan Antiquity Pickups

I’ve still got my first Les Paul.  I worked the entire summer when I was fourteen to buy this guitar.  An Etobicoke store said that they had  Cherry Sunburst Les Paul Standard in good condition used, so with my earnings in an envelope, I convinced my dad to drive me up there so I could check out the guitar.  Being fourteen at the time, I was blinded by the cherry sunburst and that it looked kinda sorta like Jimmy Page’s Les Paul so I plopped down my money and bought it.Over the years that I owned it, many discoveries were made.  First, it was not a Standard at all, indeed Gibson was not making Standards in 1971 which the serial number told me that the guitar is.  It started life as a Deluxe but the previous owner had pulled the mini humbuckers and replaced them with something else.  My dear friend Darryl, who is also an accomplished guitar tech replaced the whatever with a pair of Duncans (a JB and a hot something) about fifteen years ago, and for a long time I was quite happy with the sound.Which brings us to 2019.  I have the pleasure of having collected guitars for a long time, and don’t play that Les Paul very much.  I plugged it in and determined in short order that I did not like the sound.  My tastes have changed over the years and I wanted something that sounded more like my R8 or actual PAFs.You see this Les Paul is of the Norlin era.  Despite what the web and some dealers will tell you, the 70s were not a great time for either Gibson or Fender guitars.  The LP in this case is a sandwich body, and the sunburst has that sprayed by the blind look to it.  It will never fade into beauty, and the red will always be like a fire engine and the yellow like a glowing caution light.  The wiring was ok, and at least it had decent caps in it.My buddy Cody Shaw from The Arts Music Store in Newmarket Ontario told me about a new lineup of pickups from Seymour Duncan called the Antiquity Series.  You can learn about them here.  After doing my research, I decided that it was likely worth trying them to see if I could make my first Les Paul pleasant to play.  I went with the Antiquity Humbucker set.   I had them installed by the guitar tech at The Arts whose name is Kevin.  I had been interested in being able to coil tap but I learned that the Antiquity line is what they say.  They are two wire units.  Kevin also discovered that to fit the Antiquities he would need to do some routing to clean up the openings made by the original owner, likely with a big screwdriver or something like it.  He also did what is called the 50s wiring for the pickups as you can learn about in this article from Seymour Duncan’s site.When the guitar was finally done, I brought it home and plugged it in.  For most of my ownership, the guitar had either been played through my first cheap amp, an assortment of solid staters that never lasted and finally a late 70s Marshall Custom Super Lead with a Digitech 2112 in front.  Now I was going direct and played the guitar through a variety of amps.  The big Marshall is a bit loud as is my half stack Silver Jubilee.  While I have amps from PRS, Vox and Koch, my schedule means that a lot of my playing time is after dinner and later on so I have added a Blackstar HT-5 to my kit because it sounds good at either 0.5 watts or 5 watts.The Les Paul with the Antiquities is a completely different guitar.  It is far more open than it was with a nice warmth that is never thick or muddy.  I’ve always liked the neck on this guitar and after I got it back, I could tell that Kevin had done a proper setup on it.  Equipped with new D’Addario NYXL strings, the old beast is singing beautifully again.  I’ve moved away from multi-effectors and am back to plain old pedal boards separating pedals to go in front of the amp and to go through Send/Return if the amp has such a thing.  The big Marshall does not and neither does the PRS so a bit of cable dancing remains a requirement.The Antiquities have an aged finish, vaguely like the NOS look.  I’m not a fan of relic processes or fake aging but I can live with the look of these guys because it doesn’t look obviously faked.  The sound is what matters, and these are great pickups.  The bridge and neck pickups are different, with the bridge wound a bit hotter, but not in a way that detracts from the vintage tone.  I’ve only played the guitar through amps with a tube based preamp so far and am very happy.I’ve since learned that Seymour Duncan has a version for the bridge of the Jazzmaster and I may think about doing that one for my reissue at some point.  They also have Antiquities in the JB/Jazz set as well as for Strats and Teles.  The Tele 55 options look like they might fit my ‘50s Fender Japan Tele.  I’ve also got a really nice Mex Strat that might benefit from the Antiquity II Surfer set.  Ahh guitar upgrades!