Pantera X275 Pickups

Has anyone done a pickup change on their Pantera X275 or 300?

I bought one recently (a 1987 model) and was contemplating swapping out the existing HSS set up for IronGear Jail House Rails and a Hot Slag at the bridge.

I think the existing bridge is a UBC. The resistance was about 6.6KOhms if I recall correctly.

Anyone else used these? I want the guitar for a metal / gritty rock tone.

Any thoughts?

Sounds like a good combination you have there....

No, mate - I haven't. My X300 has a 45 in the bridge...

Those Irongear pickups sound the goods!

Ordered them up this evening....

So here is the guitar



Here the less than fantastic plastic backed UBC bridge pickup





and with new Iron Gear pickups installed




I haven't done anything with coil splitting yet as I haven't really decided what I might do - SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!!

I have got a couple of spare switchmaster knobs, so might stick a tone on it with a push/pull too. At the moment it just has the original push pull on the volume, but not wired up to do anything.

Band practice tomorrow night, so I'll be taking this one along and see how it does... :-)

The frets need a bit of work too, but I'll leave that for now.

I have just left it with a slightly high action to compensate for the odd high frets at the dusty end that choke out the string bends here and there.

Guitar sounded AWESOME at rehearsal night. A good choice of pickups.

I would very much recommend them....

Excellent! Now that bad boy is rockin'!


The frets are easily levelled and then you can turn it up to "eleven"!

Looks great, always like upgrading pickups to something meaty, new lease of life an all that! 
The hot slag is an excellent pickup, never tried the rails as I don't like the aesthetics.

I'll probably sort out the frets by giving them a "going over" this weekend, if I have an hour or so to spare.

What is the group opinion on using the push/pull to do an "across the board" series / parallel option? I'm never really sure that the simple "split" thing is for me...

Can I do this with all the pickups turned from "series" into a "parallel option" through one switch???

The frets took a bit longer to sort out than I thought - took most of the morning in fact!

I decided I might as well do it properly, so took the neck off and levelled the lot up.

A bit of wear in the normal places and a couple of low frets around the 14th fret, so that was why it was chocking out. Still. Sorted now.

A slightly annoying thing with it is that the original behind the nut string lock has been replaced with the quick release Kahler version, but the string angle to the machine head post doesn't really seem to suit it.

Also, the stings are a bit high at the nut, but the height of the kahler looks like it will hold the strings up even if I cut the slot lower.

If only someone were able to make new string locks for these....

Adey wrote:. . .If only someone were able to make new string locks for these....

Gosh I dunno. That would be amazing wouldn't it?