New pickups for metal/rock

[dave_mc]

[I wouldn't say your amp is more important, afterall if you've got a top of the range amp and bad Pickups you are still just amplifing a poor signal.

i didn't mean pickups weren't important ;) what you ideally want is a kickass amp coupled with a kickass guitar coupled with kickass pickups (and kickass fx too!) ;)

i just mean all these kids see their idols playing emg's through rectos, and wonder why emg's through their fender frontmen (frontmans?) practice amps still sound like cr@p

[MDV]

hell yeah, dave!

But steves right in this case. Me and dave see alot of n00bs in other forums that are trying to perfect their sound through MGs and such with new pickups. We keep having to tell them the amp makes more difference, by far.

But I think if Mr threadstarter feels that the tone he needs is in his amp somewhere already, then the pickups become the bottlneck, and its time for some different ones!

I can vouch for the Pig all the way. For basically anything. Its super-high gain sound isnt the most saturated around by some way (for example I just got a Kramer Imperial, purely for the looks, love that tread plate, and the quad rail HBs are psychotic, more saturated than the pig by quite a bit). Its very clear and articulate. You back the volume off and it almost sounds like a different pickup, its got great sounds right back to just-barely-on. Great cleans. The best I have, and have heard in person from any humbucker.

You could always, of course, just play at a lower gain   .

I have a sudden craving to try my miracle man....not here yet....hint hint  

[dave_mc]

^ i wasn't arguing wth steve, mark! I agreed with what he said! ;)

of course, if you already have a decent amp, new pickups is the next thing to get ! (and they won't hurt through a cr@ppy amp either, just don't expect emg's to make your mg sound like a recto!)

[marmoset]

Thanks!

I've narrowed it down to a nailbomb, warpig or miracle man (leaning towards the warpig), and I'll decide after I've considered a bit more.

And about my amp, I have a cheap Line 6 spider, but I go to a practice room with my band with lots of good amps so I get to try out lots. So, I plan to change my pickups and so get a nice tone at the practice room, then buy a new amp when I have a few more pennies.

Thanks again, you people are really super helpful  :D .

mole

[MDV]

Yeah dave, I saw that    I couldve worded my post better. Quite a bit better. I was just reinforcing a point!

Marmoset: I havent tried the nailbomb but from what I've heard its quite plenty heavy. However if you need that "holy sh how heavy does that wanna be?!?!?!' sound every now and then, I know the pig delivers that, plus a whole range of other great sounds.

The MM is reputedly tighter, TIm says its even bassier and the mids are less, treble more, and its smoother sounding. I'd question the versatilty of a ceramic, though. Theres a clip of its clean in players, and its dammed impressive for a ceramic, but its not quite 'it', y'know? Still a litte sterile. I reserve full judgment on it till mine gets here, though.

[dave_mc]

mark: meh, my original post that caused th "argument" was pretty feebly worded to be honest, and gave th impression that i thought pickups weren't important (nothing could be further from the truth! ;) ), so it was my fault. sorry!

anyway, i can't WAIT to hear what you think of the MM versus WP, mark! keep us posted!

[tewboss]

The Warpig has more output so has more saturation to start with, The Nailbomb handles it very well too. The nailbomb has a very organic open tone where as the Warpig is more compressed.

Would you suggest the Nailbomb as opposed to the Miracle Man pickup then? I know the Nailbombs are very open sounding, and it was just a soundclip that steered me away from the Warpig.

[Steve-Mr Pig 2U]

The Miracle Man has a very tight bottom end, more highs and smoother mids.
The Nailbomb is very different, way more versitle.

[carlaz]

Why not just the Abraxas set! :)

Well, I've thought of that ;).  What I really want is to load my LP with Pigs and to have another PRS-type guitar to load with Abraxases (and a Tele for some Country Boys or something :)).  But at present I only have the LP, and I'm not in a situation to get a load more guitars anytime soon, so I want the LP tricked out to cover as well as possible my favorite bases: power chords of doom, Santana-esqe neck leads, and nice organic cleans.  I'm pretty sure the Abraxas will work well in the neck, and it's very unlikely to be worse than what I got in the bridge ;).  The only question is whether a Nailbomb or Warpig would work better for me in the bridge. Haven't heard any clips of the Abraxas playing detuned sabbathoid chug yet :)

And of course someday, when I've got a pile of guitars, I can just get more BKPs and redistribute them appropriately :)

[carlaz]

But steves right in this case. Me and dave see alot of n00bs in other forums that are trying to perfect their sound through MGs and such with new pickups. We keep having to tell them the amp makes more difference, by far.

That makes perfect sense, though in my particular case a big kickass valve amp just isn't practical. Nevertheless, good pickups will, I think, sound better than OKish pickups even through a digital model.

I can vouch for the Pig all the way. For basically anything. [...] Its very clear and articulate. You back the volume off and it almost sounds like a different pickup, its got great sounds right back to just-barely-on. Great cleans. The best I have, and have heard in person from any humbucker. You could always, of course, just play at a lower gain   .

Yeah, if people only talked about the 'Pig as a "modern metal" beast, I'd probably steer away -- but actually everyone talks about the fab playability on tap and the versatility. I don't really have a target or reference "artist's tone" that I'm aiming for. I just think my stock Gibsons don't have the vibe, definition, or guts that I would like to hear.

I keep thinking of the Warpig as maybe the "11" setting: you can be playing some blues-rock stuff and classic metal there and it's all good -- and when you reach for the chug to push you over the cliff, it's there! ;)

[indysmith]

Why not go for a small valve amp then? It'll sound delicious the lower the wattage is probably because yu'll be able to crank it further. plus it'd be cheaper

[carlaz]

Why not go for a small valve amp then? It'll sound delicious the lower the wattage is probably because yu'll be able to crank it further. plus it'd be cheaper

Well, space is very tight and there's not room in the "house" (which I think is literally smaller than my parents' garage!) for my combo as it is.  Plus, I'd need to run it through a hotplate or something, silently into a cab model in any case, cause I can't really make any noise to speak of ;)  And the last nail is we keep talking about moving to either North or South America in a year or two, and I dunno about schlepping a valve amp across a darned ocean. I'd need a very compact valve head that could handle UK and US current and a hotplate thingy to go with it.  And a cab model anyway.  So perhaps I'll wait on a proper amp until we're a bit more settled!

Pickups (and even guitars) are easier to move :)

[PhilKing]

And the last nail is we keep talking about moving to either North or South America in a year or two, and I dunno about schlepping a valve amp across a darned ocean. I'd need a very compact valve head that could handle UK and US current and a hotplate thingy to go with it.  And a cab model anyway.  So perhaps I'll wait on a proper amp until we're a bit more settled!

Pickups (and even guitars) are easier to move :)

I just shipped a Marshall Silver Jubilee Combo and a Fender Princeton II from London to Hoboken, so I wouldn't worry about shipping.  Take out the valves though and wrap them in bubble wrap.  Since my amps were bought in England, they already had voltage selectors.  So it was just put the valves back and crank them up!

[Tol]

Why not just the Abraxas set! :)

Well, I've thought of that ;).  What I really want is to load my LP with Pigs and to have another PRS-type guitar to load with Abraxases (and a Tele for some Country Boys or something :)).  But at present I only have the LP, and I'm not in a situation to get a load more guitars anytime soon, so I want the LP tricked out to cover as well as possible my favorite bases: power chords of doom, Santana-esqe neck leads, and nice organic cleans.  I'm pretty sure the Abraxas will work well in the neck, and it's very unlikely to be worse than what I got in the bridge ;).  The only question is whether a Nailbomb or Warpig would work better for me in the bridge. Haven't heard any clips of the Abraxas playing detuned sabbathoid chug yet :)

And of course someday, when I've got a pile of guitars, I can just get more BKPs and redistribute them appropriately :)

What type of music/bands do you want to play in the bridge position?

[carlaz]

What type of music/bands do you want to play in the bridge position?

A question I've always had difficulty answering!  I guess my vibe tends to run from reasonably traditional blues-rock, up through "stoner rock", to doom metal kinda stuff. (Not nu-metal ;) and not really death metal).  I like classic guitar tones, though I always feel like "that sounded good, but the guitar should have been more crushingly heavy :twisted: ).

I always have difficulty separating style from guitar tone; like, I love old Sabbath, but don't really want Tony Iommi's tone from 1970. :)  That said, I like the guitar sound on Iommi's two recent solo albums.  I really like the guitar sounds on Bruce Dickinson's last two solo albums, too (though have slow and sloopy fingers, and am no shredder!).

I'm trying to think of bands where I really like the guitar sounds .... Kyuss and Cathedral and Down and whatever band Wino (Scott Weinrich) is playing in(OK, haven't heard anything new, but Spirit Caravan certainly held it up for me!). I like the two 90s albums I have from the Gathering .... On the somewhat less heavy side, I like Warren Haynes and Trey Anastasio .... I like Slash's tone better than most of his bands ;).  And Santana is always great; I even love his recent sound, and could listen to "(Da Le) Yaleo" from Supernatural all day .... so go figure! :)

In the end, I've always found the stock 498T in my LP "good enough for the moment", but lacking definition and low-end ooomph. It gets even flabbier and muddier when you tune down, and I'm almost always tuned down to D, sometimes C. I like the vibe of the Abraxas neck for getting towards those gainy but smooth "woman" tones on solos, and want to peel off riffs of doom and silly harmonics from the bridge :).  If I had two humbucker guitars, I'd probably put an Abraxas set in one and a Warpig set in the other and think no more about it, but I've never been quite sure how to balance things in my single LP Std.