[shadowgenesis]

I've got an ibanez artcore fully hollow body electric. It was my first decent guitar and was the only electric I played for a long time. I had put PRS pickups in it a while ago (I've made a lot of silly, uneducated purchases in my youth) and took them out this past winter, thinking I'd probably put the pickups to much better use in a different guitar, and put the stock pickups back in.
Clean the pickups sound muddy as hell and can't produce any pallatable sounds IMO. But if i set my DeVille to the drive channel with teh drive between 2 and 3, it stays almost totally clean, with a little bit more sparkle to it. If I add some more gain, all of a sudden this guitar has the richest tone that's so full of character and can dish out some leads that really sing. It's so dynamically responsive and alive in a way no other guitars I've played have ever been.

So i was hoping to replace the stock pickups with something clear and more hi-end, but I didn't want to risk losing that great chemistry between the guitar and the amp the way things were set up. I was wondering if there was any way I could measure the output (in volts or w/e it is you measure them in) of the stock pickups so I could shop for something comparable based on that. Is there some kind of tool that can measure that, or maybe some other kind of method that I can use to figure that kind of a thing out???

[bostjan]

Easiest way to get a good idea of the output is to meansure the DC resistance with an Ohmmeter. The higher the resistance, the higher the output level, as a rule of thumb.

Measuring the actual millivolt output is going to be a pain in the arse.

You can kind of rig up a way to measure pickup output with a variable speed electric motor and a meter, but if you don't know what AC impedence is, or how to do Fourier analysis, then forget it, and just measure the DC Resistance directly. Close enough.