best BK pickup for death metal - guitar with alder body

[larphi]

Hi,
I want to upgrade my guitar.
It's a yamaha RGZ 612, with these caracteristics :
- alder body,
- maple neck,
- rosewood fretboard.
- Floyd Rose
- 2 single pickups and 1 humbucker.
I play with a POD XT for recording, and with a Peavey Bandit or Marshall Valvestate in live.
I use a drop A tuning.
I want to play death metal (and maybe nu- or thrash metal), with a powerfull sound, not muddy or fuzzy, not too bright or "nasal". For exemple, I like the sound of CARCASS on "Heartwork" or IN FLAMES on "Reroute to Remain", or GOJIRA on their last album.
Initially, I thought about a Nailbomb set, because of its versality and its structure (ALNICO) but Tim recommended me a Painkiller set, which is ceramic.
I think I'ill buy it, but what about your experiences, and your suggestions ?

Thanx

[Madsakre]

I Use warpigs. I have a A5 warpig in my 7 string ibby. And a Ceramic one in my Ibby baritone :) All i can say is that it kills everything else. Especially the Ceramic!!
I reccomend that you back down the gain and bass when you use it! I run bass on 4 and gain on 5 on my amp. With my emg 81 equipped washburn, ill run the gain at 8 and bass on 7 :S

[MDV]

C-pig bridge. Much as I dont want to contradict tim, when hes got all the information he needs his recommendation is almost certainly the best - in that guitar its gonna be bright having a painkiller there, and it wont get the 'dark and thick' of heartwork, and to lesser extent, reroute well in your guitar.

Also, your amps are basically incapable of getting more than a cartoon image of those tones.

[the picador]

i have a warpig in the bridge of my "telepaul" mutant mongrel dog of a guitar that i run in drop A tuning.
its a pretty gnarly tone.
i most definately agree with Madsakre about scaling back the gain and bass on your amp when using it though.

also, MDV, good call on the amps. harsh but true.
would seem a waste to go to the effort of getting BKPs and your amps not being able to appreciate them.

[larphi]

So, according to you, C-Pig is a better choice...and what's the main difference with the Painkiller ?
I'm agree with you concerning my amps, they aren't pretty good...but with my pod-XT running into them, I can have a very brutal sound too.

[Martial]

The painkiller is upper-mid oriented, tight and open sounding. It has this tight attack that suits metal very well. Tim recommended it because of your very low tuning but I wouldn't (like MDV said) because it won't sound well for thick death metal on a bright sounding guitar; it's very good for modern extreme Mesa-rectifier'd technical hardcore or newest Kreator thrash (on an ENGL Invader).

The warpig is a thick thing with huge power, low-mids and versatility. My fave pup for Death Metal (I play something between Morbid Angel's Altars of madness and three first Carcass' album with a modern growl a la Benighted and using less gain like old Hellhammer). It's not a mushy pickup (like the other contemporary BKPs) but as it's smoother than the painkiller, imho it's a good pickup for soloing too. With a growly amp, it's a must for dark sounding metal: I often use an AlnicoV warpig on an alder bodied guitar (Jackson) on a Fryette Deliverance 120 (lot of mids and depth and low presence) and get all history of evil metal from Black Sabbath's Doom to Immolation's Death Metal by my volume knob. It really crushes. All the good frequencies and attitude is there. The ceramic one is brighter sound (and it seems to have less mids but I cannot confirm I got some tests to do again) but it's also tighter so for Gojira tapping style + fat power chords, my conclusion is: 'get a C-pig'.

About a good amp, it's really important to get the thick tone too but a good pickup is a good start: Honestly I played Death Metal during 10 years on an old Sovtek Mig 100 using 2 80' Rat pedals a la Morbid Angel without any problem as the Dismember fans played on Peavey Bandit with Boss HM2 so if you don't need clarity and dynamic you probably don't need to spend a lot of money in an over-the-top tube amp (it's a trick but to achieve their tone, Carcass guys not only used a 5150 amp but also Marshall Guv'nor pedal to boost their JCM 900 SLX).

[larphi]

Thanx for your advices !
According to you, C-Pig is maybe the winner, but when I asked Tim about that, he did'nt recommend me this pickup, because there will be too much mids.
Did someone try the PK in an alder body guitar for the tone I want ?

[Madsakre]

Imo. There cant be enough mids dude :) the whole trick about the c pig is to have this monstrous hi gain pickup in your guitar, which is easy to tame. It makes your playing alot easier for fast playing since you dont have to hit it as hard as you need to with other pickups.. And your pinched harmonics will sound monstrous too.

Whats important for me is that i have this kind of agressive pickup. you can always add more or less mid, treb, bass, presence, gain etc on your amp.

[MDV]

The PK has more mids than the c-pig, in my experience.

If tim says that aint so, well, the man knows his pickups.

[Davey]

i'd go for the C-Pig .. oh wait.. i did :D

no, really.. it slays and is very versatile.. maybe not in A, but it can still do others stuff apart from chugga chugga.

i also have a normal pig in my charvel, and while it has similar characteristics, it's a completelly different beast. much more tame, but a bit more growly.. and you can play jazz with it, if you wire it in parallel :P

[dheim]

The PK has more mids than the c-pig, in my experience.

If tim says that aint so, well, the man knows his pickups.

yeah, tim's advice it's a bit strange, but he never gave me bad advices...
i don't have any alder guitar, but i find the PK to be much more middy than the C-Pig. that would have been my first choice.