Best Pickups for SG-style Guitars (Incl. Gibson & Epiphone)

The Seymour Duncan JB pickups have had a very long and impressive history. With some of the best players in the industry using a set at one point or another. Guitarists like Kurt Cobain, Dave Mustain, and Beck who actually commissioned the original pickup that would eventually become the JB. In fact, it was Jeff Beck who lent his initials - JB - to give the pickup its name.

With such an impressive list of names, the JB is surely a powerful and versatile pickup. I almost don’t need to say much more about the pickup if you are familiar with any of these guitarists.

Their endorsement speaks for itself. Let’s get into why this pickup is as great as it seems.

The JB’s are actually a bit brighter than normal for humbuckers. There is quite a bit of emphasis on the highs, and the mids especially are pronounced.

The voicing here boasts enough low-end so that the pickup isn’t too biting or tinny. It is fairly balanced, but I would say it definitely leans more to the bright side.

I like the bite and articulation these give to a guitar. They’re particularly good at highlighting the distinctive clarity of my SG. With my SG plugged into my Marshall Plexi combo, the sound is pure hard-rock humbucking goodness. It’s hard not to break out into spontaneous bits of “Thunderstruck.”

With the tone knob rolled down a little, I was able to get endearingly close to the thick, wailing “woman tone” of Cream-era Eric Clapton. “Crossroads” and “Sunshine of Your Love” poured out of these pickups beautifully.

As you might expect from humbuckers, especially Seymour Duncans, the JB’s handle distortion very well. Power chords sound fantastic. They growl beautifully without becoming fuzzy.

Even with all this bite and attack, the JBs still manage to be crisp and clear. This means that solos will still sound clean even with a lot of distortion.

The pickup is also well-balanced in terms of volume and tone. Every string and note is picked up equally. I didn’t notice any dips or dead spots.

The Seymour Duncan JBs pair really well with Gibson and Epiphone guitars, especially SGs. If you want that cutting AC/DC sound with your SG, these pickups are perfect for that.

I do think the JBs might be a bit too bright for some. Luckily, pairing them with a guitar that is made with a warmer wood, like mahogany, helps a lot to pull the brightness back.

I’d make the case that the voicing of these pickups is specifically designed for use with a warmer, darker-voiced guitar like an SG or a Les Paul. Certainly, it’s what worked for Jeff Beck in the first place.

If a warm, vintage-sounding pickup is more your style, then look no further than the Seymour Duncan SH-1. The SH-1 is a fantastic recreation of old-school PAF pickups from the ‘50s.

Of course, keen-eyed readers will no doubt rush to the comments section to let me know that the SG was invented in 1961. Technically, the warm, low-powered tones of the '50s aren’t era-correct for a Gibson SG. Regardless, there’s plenty to love about a vintage-voiced SG pickup.

This pickup has a pleasantly warm and mellow tone. There isn’t really any emphasis on any of the frequency ranges, although I do get a slightly rounded mids feeling from the pickup. With such a balanced response, I found that I could get a broader range of tones by adjusting my technique.

This was particularly tangible with my Marshall set just around the edge of breakup. Harder playing yielded a sharper, more aggressive, biting sound. Softer playing offered bluesy, clearer tones.

It is a bit thinner than other humbuckers, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. For a more vintage tone-focused pickup, you don’t really want something too bright or too thick. Depending on how you play, you want to avoid unpleasant, harsh treble or muffled low end.

If you have a vintage SG, the SH-1 is a fantastic match. It just brings out the vintage tone so well, adding some nice color with both gain and clean.

It is also a very clear pickup. Vintage pickups tend to have a bit of fuzz and noise, but Seymour Duncan has done an excellent job to make the SH-1 as noiseless as possible.

The only real issue is that the pickup isn’t very loud. You will definitely need to turn up the volume on your amp to make your guitar loud enough.

Because the SH-1 is styled as more of a vintage pickup, it is a bit limited in terms of music styles and genres. Heavy metal doesn’t sound very great through the pickup.

At least not modern metal. I think they actually do work well enough if you are going for the fuzzier Black Sabbath sound. This pickup is far from hot enough to drive the amp into full Iommi territory, however. You’ll need a fuzz pedal or high-powered overdrive to really push this tone into a convincing facsimile of “Paranoid” or “Iron Man.”

But they really shine the most with lower amounts of gain. Blues, jazz, and softer rock are where you will get the most out of the SH-1. The welcoming clean and edge-of-dirt tones here are perfect for softer '70s rock. It responds best to a deft, subtle touch, so I’d recommend brushing up on your Lindsay Buckingham chops to get the most out of it.

While it is marketed as a neck pickup, I think the SH-1 works just as well as a bridge pickup. I didn’t notice a dip in tone quality or any issues really with it in the bridge position.

The EVH Frankenstein is based on the pickups in Eddie Van Halen’s famous Frankenstart. It is the perfect pickup for anyone after that old-school hard rock sound.

The Frankenstein guitar was, at least originally, built with a PAF pickup from Van Halen’s own Gibson 335. When Van Halen’s tremendous stage volume proved too much for his hollow-bodied guitar, he sought to place the pickup in a solid-bodied guitar, cobbling together his now-legendary “Frankenstein” Stratocaster.

Of course, we’re here to discuss SG pickups, so how does this sound when fitted to an SG?

While the EVH Frankenstein isn’t an exact replica of the original, it is designed to come close to the same sound. It comes quite close indeed.

The Frankenstein might be the best PAF-style pickup I have ever heard. Notes and chords aren’t just massive-sounding, but they are also crystal clear.

Even when the pickup is stacked with distortion, it doesn’t become noisy or muddy. Every note and chord still ring out clearly while still having a ton of bite.

I was especially amazed by how fantastic the harmonics sound. Natural and artificial harmonics pop while pinch harmonics squeal and scream. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a pickup bearing Eddie’s name.

Cleans with this pickup are a bit of a different story, however. With the guitar’s volume turned up, I started noticing some grit in the clean tone. There is almost a slight natural distortion in the Frankenstein. Given the enormous output on offer here, that checks out.

Dialing back on the volume does get rid of that grittiness. But let’s be honest, if you are playing with Frankenstein pickups, you probably aren’t playing clean a whole bunch.

The trick here is to play the guitar like Edward Van Halen did, or at least to appropriate his techniques. Rather than switching channels for a clean tone, I simply rolled back the volume knob on my SG. Although it didn’t yield a truly clean sound - I couldn’t take it to a country gig - it cleaned up enough to get into a tone appropriate for the “Women in Love” intro.

Speaking of, this pickup sounds best for Van Halen-style playing. It works great into my cranked Plexi. The sharper clarity and edgier bite works so well with the Plexi’s natural cranked-tube compression that I sat down and just enjoyed running through my arsenal of Van Halen licks.

It handles the tapped intro from “Women in Love” just as well as the frantic power chords of “Somebody Get Me A Doctor.” The jump in saturation as I rolled my volume knob back up to 10 for high-octane riffing was very satisfying.

I can, however, see why EVH himself used high-friction pots for his volume controls. Taming this beast with a standard volume pot isn’t easy: it’s very sensitive to minor changes.

This pickup is best suited for that ‘80s style of hard rock and metal. Punk and doom also sound really good with the Frankenstein. Anything that requires a more dirty, chewier tone will sound incredible through this pickup.

I found the voicing darker than the classic Van Halen tone, but still very usable for heavier stylings.

I was a little concerned about how it would sound with an SG. This pickup was designed specifically for a Super Strat with a Floyd Rose tremolo after all.

But honestly, it sounds just as amazing in an SG as it does in a Frankenstrat. Of course, a Frankenstrat still sounds better, but you certainly won’t be disappointed putting one in your Gibson or even Epiphone SG.

In fact, it’s probably more worthwhile throwing the Frankenstein pickup into an Epiphone SG just to turn it into hard rock firebreather.

Most players think of the SG as a classic Gibson humbucker axe. However, Gibson’s other great pickup, the P90, deserves an honorable spot in this list.

The P90 was Gibson’s original single-coil pickup. It’s hotter and thicker sounding than, say, a Fender single-coil pickup. Like a Strat pickup, however, it’s fairly noisy, especially at higher volume or gain levels.

That’s where the Seymour Duncan Phat Cat Silencer steps in.

It’s a noise-cancelling single-coil capable of both modern and vintage-voiced tones. Even better, the Phat Cat is sized and wired to slot easily into any standard humbucker-equipped guitar, like a Gibson SG.

Although you can find it in a set, my favorite use for a P90 is in the bridge position. Plugged into my Marshall Plexi, I was easily able to conjure high-powered bluesy rock and roll tones reminiscent of “Mississippi Queen.”

Likewise, power chords thundered out of the amp. Although the pickup runs nice and hot, it never gets mushy or overly saturated. The sweet spot is with crunchy poweramp saturation, which lets these pickups absolutely roar.

I even dusted off my teenage affection for punk rock downpicking, which these pickups handled with great aplomb. It’s hard to resist running through the big, chunky chord progressions of “American Idiot” when you have a P90 tone this good.

I liken it to the classic, slightly spiky sound of Southern rock or classic punk rock.

The clean tone, too, especially on the neck pickup, is much brighter than a standard SG humbucker tone. There’s plenty of spank and sparkle here. I was thrilled to find it bright enough to play 2000s indie-rock. It was almost spot-on for the sound of The Strokes’ “Reptilia.”

In fact, with a little technique adjustment, it’s bright enough for modern country playing, too. I have no idea when I’ll play a gig that includes Green Day and Luke Combs in the same set, but if I do, this is the pickup for it.

It’s a thinner, brighter tone than one might expect from a Gibson SG, but it’s much more versatile than I initially thought.

If you find a live photo of any hard rock or heavy metal player from the '70s or '80s, you might spot a distinctive cream-colored humbucker in their guitar. It could be in a Stratocaster, a Les Paul, or, as is relevant here, an SG.

This was the DiMarzio Super Distortion, the pickup that powered the halcyon days of '70s and '80s hard rock.

This pickup really only does one thing, which is the biting, slightly icepicky tone of that era’s hard rock bands. If you think of the sounds of KISS Alive or early Iron Maiden, that’s the tone. It’s aggressive, and sounds great through a cranked Marshall, but does very little else.

In an SG, the guitar’s naturally darker tone offers a little balance to the brightness of the Super Distortion. Through my Marshall Plexi, I had great fun with riffs from “The Trooper” and “Detroit Rock City.”

The clean sound here is brittle and a little harsh, so I’d avoid using this pickup for blues or jazz playing. Of course, I doubt that anyone buying a pickup labeled “Super Distortion” wants to sound like George Benson.

Likewise, it’s a little too bright for more modern metal stylings. Anything heavier than Randy Rhoads-era Ozzy Osbourne is going to demand a differently voiced pickup. The Super Distortion is simply too bright for chugs and machine-gun palm mutes.

However, for legato lead lines and proto-metal riffage on a Gibson SG, it delivers that sound in spades.

Who better to make a pickup for a Gibson or Epiphone SG than Gibson themselves? The ’57 Classic Plus was designed to replicate Gibson’s original PAF humbuckers. If that vintage Gibson sound is what you are looking for, then the ’57 Classic Plus is the pickup for you.

If you bought a Gibson SG new, this might be the pickup already included in your guitar!

The ’57 Classic Plus has a fairly bright tone with the mids scooped just a little bit. It isn’t too noticeable, but you can hear that scooped sound if you listen closely, particularly on lower notes. It’s balanced somewhat by the SG’s naturally mid-forward character, but it’s noticeable.

With gain, the pickup has a very nice punch to it and higher notes have a certain sharpness. They aren’t harsh, but just have this nice cut to them. It reminds me, perhaps too obviously, of the slight edge in Jimmy Page’s classic Led Zeppelin tone.

Notes and chords also stay crisp and clear when distorted. Every note is distinct during solos and chords have just enough attitude to stand out.

When playing clean, the ’57 Classic Plus has this great blend between warmth and shine. It will lean more to one way or the other depending on its position, with neck being warm and bridge being bright and chimey.

Likewise, it responds very easily to how I’m playing. Harder playing close to the bridge yields classic-rock crunch. Softer playing by the neck offers sweeter-bluesier tone.

For a low-output pickup, the ’57 Classic Plus is also quite loud. I didn’t have to push the volume on my amp a whole lot to get my guitar to a loud enough volume. As did the classic '50s PAFs, it drives an amplifier into a sweet breakup tone with relative ease.

This pickup is really better suited for a low-gain and clean sound. Blues and jazz are where it especially stands out.

I would avoid pushing the gain too far with the ’57 Classic Plus. More than about 7 or 8 and I started to notice some serious noise. As long as you keep the gain under control, the ’57 Classic Plus is a real joy to play.

The ’57 Classic Plus is a great pickup if you want to give your Gibson SG a more vintage sound and just an overall great upgrade for an Epiphone SG.