Hashtag trying it ! !!<| sep |> When you remove the old ones , don ' t cut the leads short or you can ' t resell them . That said , are you sure you need new pickups ? The pickup market is a bit of a racket . A pickup is six poles wrapped in copper and dipped in wax . Wrap a PAF with less copper and you have a Filtertron . I have no idea what makes a pickup worth $ 250 . 00 , but if you take away the price tag , it ' s impossible to tell . Your potentiometres have a lot to do with tone . If your 500 k pot is actually a 470 K pot they vary due to manufacturing tolerances and chemistry then your new pickup might be as muddy as your new pickup . Pot impedance and pickup height , and strings , make a big difference . Switching from one PAFstyle pickup to another , is kind of a lateral move unless you know specifically what you ' re going for .