Anyone changed illuminator pickups in JP15?

[Clouseau]

After two years with JP15 I am eager to change the pickups as they are too compresed for my taste. I am playing the guitar with Mark 5:25 head and mesa 1x12 box. High gain leads are awesome though. On clean channel, volume nob on guitar on max and I can hear that they overdrive. Turn the nob down, becomes thin and muddy. If I turn the gain down on amp, sound becomes a little weak. Good thing is that guitar gets through in the mix along with the band playing on rehearsals. Bad thing is that is just stands out to much and seems like it doesn't fit sonically with freqs with sound of the band. In the band there are drummer, bass, woman vocal and me doing rythm and solo work. For solo is great, it really stands out. For rythm parts is a mix of good and not soo good results along with the soundstage of the band. We do not play metal and our songs are mostly some mix of (hard)rock/blues/grunge/alt. I boroughed LP Studio with custom made PAF pickups and that sounded nice. Guitar felt like a chunk of wood after JP15 though Wouldn't say LP had better sound but totally different kind of sound and got a lot better with the sound of the band. Pickups were loud, clean, crunchy under gain, I like it. Ideal for some heavy rock/alternative rock, clean were also good. They didn't have that singing compressed lead sound though. So to come to a question has anyone changed the pickups in their JP15 and how are you pleased with results? Do you play metal or no? I was thinking on maybe going with AT-1 in bridge and Air Norton in the neck. Or maybe set of PAF36th or even PAF 59's. Any thoughts?

 

[Clouseau]

Nobody?

 

[fabtron]

I swapped in paf 36s. Way better but still not my favorite. I’m going to keep trying

 

[Rbg]

Bare knuckle or motor city pickups are my vote

 

[PBGas]

I'm looking at putting in a Dreamcatcher/Rainmaker combo in one of mine.

 

[Sigvard90]

I would say the rainmaker/dreamcatcher is more compressed than illuminators (ive had both in my JP), but they’re both less compressed than the previous crunchlab/liquified combo. However, they’re all not drastically different in my opinion. So in your situation I would like at paf style ones, maybe 36th or at-1 or fortitude with Air Norton? let us know about your choice and findings!

 

[Mace13]

I find the Rainmaker/dreamcatchers to have less of a harsh edge in the high gain tones compared to the Illuminators. I replaced the Illuminators in the Majesty 2018 with the Rain/Dream combo. I had to call Dimarzio directly to buy because the Majesty (and maybe all JP guitars? after 2018) have the special built in wiring connector. They were very easy to install because of this (no soldering).