BKP For LTD H-1001

[Olivier]

Hello!

I'm new at this forum a little bit of a newbie on pickups.

I got my EMG 81 in the bridge on my LTD H-1001 and want to change it for a tighter sound.
The sound im looking for is like architects/whitechapel/periphery you get the point. I mostly want it to be more djenty.

What pickup can you recommend for me? How will the emg and the bareknuckle work together? Whats really the difference between emg active pickups and bareknuckle pickups? (warpig, aftermath, nailbomb, etc)

Greetings with metal from Sweden!

Olivier.

[Doadman]

Mixing active pickups and passives can be problematic as I believe you'll need seperate pots for each one. EMG are generally seen as very tight pickups indeed, just a bit sterile sounding. If you like things as tight as that I'd suggest you look at an Aftermath for the bridge as that's the tightest pickup that Bare Knuckle make. I've heard it described as everything that's great about active EMGs with none of the negatives. I think that would be perfect for you but I'd use another Bare Knuckle in the neck to go with it.

[Nolly]

As Doadman says, mixing active and passive pickups in one guitar can result in a whole load of complicated workarounds. It's best to commit to one or the other.
The biggest difference you will notice is the increased dynamic response you get from a high quality passive pickup. EMGs can sound great on recording, but from a player's point of view I dislike how unresponsive they are to changes in your picking attack.
An Aftermath would certainly work well - you could expect a punchier midrange and smoother top end than the EMG you currently have, while the bass is very tight. The defined attack will definitely get you into the "djent" ballpark more easily, but the voicing is still versatile enough to work in a broad range of tonal contexts.

[aceflibble]

I'm new to BKPs myself and wouldn't dare dream of advising you on a specifical model to get, but going by your description of what you want - and knowing the H-1001 well, as I own three of them - I have to say that honestly, you can't get much "tighter" than an EMG 81 already is, especially in the 1001s which have a more clinical tone than the ESP Standards anyway.
Problems with mixing passive and active pickups aside, precision is what actives were made for and the 81 is the king of them. Of course lots of people don't like that dead, flat response from them, but that's the price you pay. They're as clinical as can be, it costs you tone but if tightness is what you want while chugging away on a down-tuned metal riff, that's what the EMG 81 specialises in.

Again, I wouldn't want to give the wrong impression about BK or anything, but it is pretty much a fact: passive pickups have more tone and sound lively, active pickups (especially the 81) have more precision and sound dead.

One thing I've found with the H-1001 is that, I think due to the shallow break angle over both the nut and bridge as well as the obscenely thick finish on the neck, excessively low action results in a very flubby, damp sound, regardless of the pickups (I've noticed this with the EMG 81, 85, 60A, SD Custom, DiMarzio Evo 2, PAF Pro and Swineshead Warthog, so I believe it has more to do with the guitar than the pickup used). Raise the action just a fraction and suddenly it becomes much clearer. Don't underestimate what the right set up can do, especially with guitars like LTDs which frankly never arrive in proper playing condition. String gauge is also very important with active pickups and seems to make more of a difference to your tone than it does with passives.
For what it's worth, the action on my H-1001 sits at 2.2mm at the 12th fret (with .11-.56 strings tuned to Drop C), still low enough to play quickly on and sounds very crisp - currently it's got an EMG 85/60A combo in it, with an 81/85 combo it would sound even more sterile (perhaps even too much). When I did have the EMG 81 in it, I found using an EQ pedal set to a 'W' pattern (boost the extreme lowest, extreme highest and dead-centre frequencies) helped bring the pickup to life a lot more. If you do use active pickups then you need a good EQ pedal. It won't give you the depth of tone that passive pickups will, but it does go a long way in making actives sound a little nicer to the ears whilst keeping that signature active precision.

 
To add something that perhaps won't get me quite so brutally murdered by the BK illuminati, I know that Whitechapel use EMG 81-7s and 707s (essentually the same as the H-1001's stock 81/85 set), although a Google search tells me that Periphery use BK Painkillers and Warpigs in the bridge positions of their guitars, plus one of them uses a Cold Sweat in the neck. I myself am intending to switch the Evo 2/PAF Pro combo in one of my H-1001s to a BK Aftermath/Cold Sweat combination (based on what everyone on here says about them), hoping for a slightly more open and dynamic tone.

[MDV]

Actually the 81 was developed as a lead guitar pickup and its output and high mid spike were intended to cut through long chains of effects and still drive the modest (by modern standards) gain amps available to rock and metal players of the time and still remain clear and cutting in a mix while noodling and pulling silly faces.

The idea of extreme precision ultra-heavy rhythm playing didnt come to prevelance until long after the pickup was developed, and that active designs facilitate it well is merely a happy accident (or maybe theres some feedback between the two, but the intention of the pickup was not what you describe, as the music you describe post-dates the release of the 81 significantly).

Tightness wise, the 81 is renowned for its consistency (read - its more or less the same in all guitars) whereas even BKs (which are generally tigther than average passives) will vary much more, including in tightness, from guitar to guitar. Depending on how they're set up and what guitar they're in, however,, they can easily rival or even exceed an 81 in precision. This is also in great part because they respond more variably to how you play. If youre that tight, they're that tight.

For example, in one of my customs, a guitar designed to have a very tight low end from the woods and construction up, an Aftermath was tighter than an 81-7 in a baritone scale guitar (an LTD carpenter model), both as played by me, through several amps. The aftermath, however, can also be beefier and thicker than the 81 depending how you dig, both in inflection and force, and where on the string you pick, whereas the 81 is much less sensitive to such changes in style and retains its ultra-clinical sound more or less however you play. (or at least does so to a greater degree).

In the same testing session the aftermathed guitar utterly slaughtered the 81ed gutiar for note separation in chords under high gain.

Now I like 81s (really, I do, I used EMGs for >5 years, with the 81 as my main pickup, and recently got nostalgic about it and reaquired one, in exchange for a spare painkiller no less), but your post is off the mark, in my experience.

Welcome to the forum, though :)