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Pickup an old Peavey, even a solid state one. They're cheap as dirt and the better ones with the Black Widow speakers are killer good. Reliable as all get out too. And if you turn your back on it, it will be the only bit of equipment not immediately stolen from the stage. They have that "sound" too, even in gain mode. Heck, there's probably someone somewhere who's been trying to get one out of the garage for years with no takers somewhere. Music Man is another great one, but they seem to have a bit of a following, rarer and command a bit more money. If you're going all out, a Fender ToneMaster Pro and accompanying speaker is great. If you're playing live in modern "no stage volume" venues, they'll love you for it and probably forget whatever guitar you walked in with.

I remember our friend Tulk taking my Millennium with my Princeton clone and ripping into some great Dwight Yoakam tunes. It sounded pretty country to me. I'm sure it's in the fingers! Please Please Baby - PSP 2019

I was in a couple of country bands. The amp I used was the same one I used in the "blues" bands and the same amp I used to play rock from Rolling Stones to Foo Fighters, Metallica or whatever bs Ive played over the years...even dance orientated pop and disco. A fender Concert II with what ever OD pedals worked best. Ive had it for 41yrs. It blew a fuse once, in 1999. Tube amps, so unreliable.

Roy is exactly why I brought my 535.

To be fair, Schaller made a lot of good pickups. They also made an enormous variety of them too. I think might still be in the pickup business, but they didn't get on board the retail market for end-user pickup swaps. That's driven a lot of growth in the market. I know back in the early 80's when I was a teen, not many of us even knew where the pickups in our guitars came from or who made them. It was sort of the EVH thing that got people talking about DiMarzio and their Distortion Plus. Prior to that, I don't think end-users really considered pickups other than what the manufacturer of the guitar made in house, or bought depending on whether they wanted to invest money in the machinery to make them, or just buy them. Schaller was in the parts business, bridges, hardware, brackets, tuning machines and pickups were just another item in the line catalog. They'd wind up whatever the customer wanted too. Even Gibson had some pickups made by Schaller and many components of pickups they bought from Schaller for their own production. It's pretty simple to make a pickup. The factory Heritage was housed in, certainly made Gibson pickups going to way back when, including the much coveted original PAF's. Heck, a couple of years ago I bought a pair of brand new humbuckers from China, for $14 a pair, including shipping to my house. Honestly, I can't even buy the raw materials and wire for that. They were OK too, nothing special, certainly worked just fine, as advertised. Even included the springs and mounting screws. Like I said, if I didn't like them so much, I'd open those HRW's right up for a look.

Brilliant synopsis, but you left out one last nugget... HRW's sound a lot like Schallers, only lowered a tiny bit into the pickup ring. 😗

I think we've got it narrowed down. They are: Dewound Schallers that are overwound, with overcharged, degaused cryogenically enhanced Alnico V magnets which have been replaced with Alnico 2, with unbalanced coils that are consistently wound. I'm glad we've finally cracked the DaVinci code of pickups!

Yeah the cryo thing was a fad. They did strings too, and fret wire, and probably anything else one could dunk in a dewar full of liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is pretty cheap actually. My wife's company gets it in the big, self-venting, metal cryo-tanks that are about 5 feet tall for their processes. It's much cheaper than gas cylinders if you're using a lot of nitrogen. You can still buy cryo treated guitar strings, fretwire, and vacuum tubes and who knows what else. Like I said, if you can dunk it, it's been sold as cryo treated. I wouldn't be surprised if someone sells cryo-treated picks. There are changes in metal crystalline and grain structure when they're dunked in liquid nitrogen. I'm not a metallurgist. I'm not sure what effect it would have on alnico. I do know that alnico magnets are used in sensing devices at both high and low temperatures, because they perform well at temperature extremes. That's in the data sheets from magnet manufacturers.

Get a t-shirt made with this picture on it, and wear it to the next practice. Tell 'em "See, you can do country with a 535!"

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/articles/features/is_it_cool_or_not_cryogenically_frozen_gear_explained-108422 I can't find any recent references to cryo treatment of pickups, but 20+ years ago they were a thing.

Unless I can get one for $10, probably not. Wish I'd kept all the KBP deluxes I did have....

Heritages are well stocked, just bring me a tele to go with it. Yee-haw ya'll!

Probably more money than you want to spend. but a drip edge (think 70’s) pull boost (but don’t ever use that) deluxe reverb for the win!

Ha ha!!! Technology is amazing Greg!!

There’s a local Indian tribe here that I’d like to bring up; Huron. I’ve played a couple at guitar denter. Pass.

yeah Rich's post already mentioned that along with the wider headstock, push/pull tone pots, and the weight relief. Personally I am not a fan of any weight relief. I like my standard H150s, especially because I modded them with all the electronic and hardware choices that I like, and the one that I bought used was cheap, I got it for right around a grand! Even with the pickups and hardware changes it came in under $1600. My new one I paid around $2300 for and still had to upgrade. Which is still cheaper than a Custom Core these days:) I also had to recuit the nut and dress frets on the H150s. And both of them are considerably heavier than the lighter Custom Cores. I also like the aesthetic touches of the Custom Cores better, especially the bigger headstock, the slightly different lower horn, and the body carve, which I love the look of. That said, I don't like the custom core tuner choices, or the hardware. And most likely I would replace the pickups as I'm not a fan of potted pickups. That's why I don't own one. If I didn't have to upgrade, I would buy a used one.

I can guarantee the HRW’s in my 535 are absolutely not degaussed. With an electronic gauss meter, they readout on the strong end of the range for alnico 5.

Absolutely I’ll send it to you along with the Heritage Guitar of your choice

Since you haven’t tried it out, don’t knock it I’ll put it up against anything tube you got in your basement!! and I’ll bet a cigar

I walked in with a 535 and a Marshall DSL40C on classic gain and they wanted a tele. As if the guitar itself was the sole tonality difference...

Few differences including moving away from Seymour Duncan to inhouse built pickups.

My 2023 Standard is a great guitar. I have zero problems with how well its made and sounds. Can't imagine a custom core would be so much better that I would ever justify playing 2x the price.

I believe if you purchased a Dumble you could arrange for it to be modded to suit your sound more, though generally Dumble himself did not like second hand sales of his amps, as they were all tuned to the player. His business model was indeed quite different, and as time went on he had more and more custom stuff like the HRM mod and other things. Just looking at the Ceriatone website shows 10 different "styles" of Dumble clones. Both Amplified Nation and Two Rock also have a good number of models, while Fuchs seems to have kept it a bit more streamlined. Still there are supposed to be some specific things that Dumble amps are known for, like the transparency, and the "bloom" of the overdrive.

Current “Country music” is this generation’s “Hair Metal”. Break out the cookie cutter!!!!

It depends on what you mean by country music. Classic Merle or Buck would almost require a fender. Or that 80s to 90s George Strait, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, etc.. is still tele/fender sounds. However, the stuff I hear now that is called country often has almost metal tones. I got hired to do a couple of gigs backing a country guy. He said he wanted that Waylon style sound. I had the tele/deluxe thing and he, being young, said that wasn’t the sound he had in mind. I pulled out my Kramer that I got from Brent a few years back and a slightly gainy Friedman and got the gig. Kids these days……