Pickup madness!

[Deadlock]

Madness?! This is..  Wait - I'm not going there. Anyways, hey all!

The post:
I might get myself a Les Paul type guitar, and I'm already trying to plan out which pickups I want installed in them in case I get it. The 'madness' part is that the guitar is installed with active pickups, and I want Bare Knuckles in it! After looking for a little while, I can't find any guides as to how convert all the electronics to passive. So I was hoping for a little help here :)

And about the pickups, I need to ask like most of the people coming here for advice on that aswell.

I really like metal and hardrock. Big fan of the Opeth lead sound. Also the other sounds of Opeth, both distortion and clean, but the lead sound blows me away every time. What I'm really looking is easily summarized, but might not be easy to achieve - I don't know! :D

- Bridge pickup will be used almost exclusively for my distortion sounds. I love chugging sounds, and also a well rounded distortion. Nothing too extreme, although I like (very) high gain sounds  8)

- Neck pickup: Here I'm looking for something capable of decent clean tones, but mostly something with that full singing lead sound, a la Opeth leads.

The guitar is a Les Paul style mahogany body with a maple top, and a rosewood fretboard, and will be played with mostly heavy metal styles in mind, and in standard tuning.

So in conclusion, I was thinking a Miracle Man bridge / Cold Sweat neck to match the woods, but I'm really not sure what to look for if I want a neck pickup that can do the sounds I'm describing here. Maybe even MM/MM, MM/HD, or something I didn't mention here.

Advice appreciated :D Thanks in advance!

[darkbluemurder]

After looking for a little while, I can't find any guides as to how convert all the electronics to passive. So I was hoping for a little help here :)

The only thing you need to do is change out the pots. Active pickups usually come with low value pots (25k-50k linear) which will load down any passive pickup. For humbuckers 500k logarithmic pots are the standard, and what I recommend.

The jack can stay even if it is a stereo jack which in an active setup is used to turn off the battery when the cable is unplugged.

- Bridge pickup will be used almost exclusively for my distortion sounds. I love chugging sounds, and also a well rounded distortion. Nothing too extreme, although I like (very) high gain sounds  8)

- Neck pickup: Here I'm looking for something capable of decent clean tones, but mostly something with that full singing lead sound, a la Opeth leads.

The guitar is a Les Paul style mahogany body with a maple top, and a rosewood fretboard, and will be played with mostly heavy metal styles in mind, and in standard tuning.

So in conclusion, I was thinking a Miracle Man bridge / Cold Sweat neck to match the woods, but I'm really not sure what to look for if I want a neck pickup that can do the sounds I'm describing here. Maybe even MM/MM, MM/HD, or something I didn't mention here.

You already selected an appropriate combination for your tones. You may want to consider a slightly stronger neck pickup since the MM bridge has considerably more output than the CS neck. Unfortunately I cannot give a specific recommendation there as all the BKP neck pickups I tried (CS, Crawler and VHII) have similar outputs.

Cheers Stephan 

[Deadlock]

It makes sense that it only requires the pots to be changed. My bad! In my head things can quickly become more complicated than they really are  :D

Any suggestions for a neck pickup, anyone? :) Or perhaps a combination that I didn't think of. Maybe I should bother Tim again  8)

And once again thanks for taking your time to answer!

[Deadlock]

Alright, I consulted Tim and his response was:

Miracle Man bridge and Cold Sweat neck sounds right to me - the CS neck balances really well with the MM bridge so no worries there.

So I guess that is settled  8)