Since I got such good advice on here last month and since I'm building two guitars at once, figured I might as well bump the order up to four pickups, throw some BKs in both of 'em and see what people think would be good in guitar #2...
What I'm after in both positions is a bright and quite harsh tone. I'm definitely after something which is more treble-heavy than anything else. I want quite a bit of power - more than a vintage wind - but not blow-your-brains-out typical "metal pickup" power (i.e. no Warpigs). Humbucker-sized P-90s sound like they would probably do - for the neck at least - but I can't stand hum and covered pickups won't look right at all with this build, so I'm basically trying to work out what the brightest humbuckers are.
If I were to put numbers to it, I'd say the sort of tone I'm after has bass around 6, low-mids at 7, mids and upper-mids at 5 and treble at 10, with output/DC resistance in the 11-16k range. In the past to get this sort of tone I've tried SD JBs (too much upper-mids), Jazz models (too much bass), Customs (too much bass and compression), Distortions (too much bass), Invaders (too much of everything), a couple of DiMarzios the names of which I can't remember (all sounded far too compressed) and a Gibson P-94 (almost right but a little too cool). The closest I've found have been EMG pickups (the 60 especially), but this guitar body has no room for a battery and beside, I already have too many active guitars, I want to stick to a passive set this time. Seems a hard task to find something that is both powerful yet bright and open-sounding.
Looking on the new site (good job on that, by the way), it seems like a Cold Sweat set may be what I'm after, although the ceramic Nailbomb also seems like a contender for the bridge and the Riff Raff and Mule seem like good options for the neck. Having no experience with any of them though - and not really trusting sound clips given how rubbish this computer's speakers are - obviously I can't really tell.
The guitar they're going in is a Warmoth build, alder Les Paul body with the usual LP controls and tune-o bridge. The neck is going to be wenge (allegedly quite a balanced tone) with an ebony fretboard and stainless steel frets (so moderately bright), though I don't have the neck in my hands quite yet so I can't tell for sure exactly what the natural tonal balance of the guitar will be. I figure I'll use BK's 550k pots to ensure the guitar definitely ends up on the brighter side, it certainly shouldn't be warm-sounding at all. I never touch tone controls so I'm quite tempted to disconnect them entirely this time around, at least on the neck pickup, to kepe as much brightness as possible. Depends on how the pickups fare.
Amp is a Line 6 HD147 into a Marshall 1936 cab (two G12T-75s). Yup, it's solid state. Yup, they have a bad rep. It's perfect for what I play though so it's staying. I like to leave the amp's EQ with the mids, treble and presence all maxed out, with the bass at about 80% or so just to stop it from getting too boomy. So it's really down to the guitar (and its pickups) to dictate the tone balance since the amp is left flat.
