i'll be playing shred & heavy prog as well as euro-style metal on this thing so it needs to be versatile and clear, remember the guitar is basswood.
I use a marshall JVM410H head (boosted with a TS808) & a TC g-major with offboard eq (and a kerry-king esque offboard FX loop mid boost), a V30 cab. cleans are more important in the neck, i generally coil split my pickups when playing cleans.
I really want saturated mids in the bridge especially, and the low end needs to be tight and clear. not too much highs in the bridge or any icepick, needs to be well-balanced but focused on the mids & low mids. It would be important for this pickup to have a deep low end as the guitar is basswood, but not too much as to become muddy on the low B. The neck pickup needs to sound smooth and organic. It cant have too much low end and must have superb articulation and the highs can't be too harsh. It should sound open but well defined.
i would imagine the neck would be using an alnico V and the bridge would most likely be ceramic.
have a listen to the absence's rhythm tone, this would be pretty much a summary of the sound I'm after from the bridge. Evergrey would be the closest to the neck pickup sound im after, i find it hard to generalise tones by other artists though because they would most certainly not be using my setup the way i do, nor the same guitar.
thanks for your help guys, its much appreciated!
