about the loomis. it's a Ash body and maple neck and fretboard. quite spanky i'd say. if you like to have some compression in your tone, i'd steer away from the black dog and ask for something a bit hotter (i'm sure tim can help you with the 'hotter and more compressed' black dog question. shoot him an email!)
the black dog itself is a great PAF pickup, and i always liked PAF's. though i used a booster in front of my amp, i also pick quite hard so that's why i like my dynamics and the lack of compression of the black dog (on my 7 string) and the riff raff (on my 8 string)
you need a rather warm pickup that won't make the ash sound shrill or anything.`i'd steer away from the cold sweat for that guitar. i had a cold sweat in my mahogany body mahogany neck and ebony board 8 string and thought it was a bit on the fizzy and scooped side (i like mids!). and my 8 is darker than my 7. so imagine a cold sweat7 in the ash body. maybe try something like the holy diver?
i listened to the clips and if you perk your ear up, the main difference i hear in the modern metal clip between the black dog and the holy diver, is the ''raunch'' of the strings. the dog is a bit clearer when nolly bangs hard on that loud chord in the beginning, and the 4 severly palm muted chugs. on the diver it has that same vibe, but feels like the high frequencies are a bit squashed when he does the same chords. of course, that's what i like about the black dog. kick its ass, it will scream, back off, it's an incredibly smooth and singing pickups (i dabble in both heavy thrash prog metal and jazz fusion blues so both are important to me! if they aren't to you, well holy diver?)
this is taken from warmoth.
We have two very different types of Ash: Northern Hard Ash and Swamp Ash (Southern Soft Ash).
Northern Hard Ash is very hard, heavy and dense. A Strat® body will normally weigh 5 lbs. and up. Its density contributes to a bright tone and a long sustain which makes it very popular. Its color is creamy, but it also tends to have heartwood featuring pink to brown tints. The grain pores are open and it takes a lot of finish to fill them up.
Swamp Ash is a prized wood for many reasons. It is a fairly light weight wood which makes it easily distinguishable from Hard Ash. A Strat® body will normally weigh under 5 lbs. Many of the 50's Fenders were made of Swamp Ash. The grain is open and the color is creamy. This wood is a very nice choice for clear finishes. Swamp Ash is our second most popular wood. It is a very musical wood offering a very nice balance of brightness and warmth with a lot of "pop".
as far as installation goes, it's a bit of a pain and there are 2 ways to go about it.
I did it the DIY way, i trimmed off the legs of the pickups so it fits in the cavity. then i had to drill a hole from the tune-o-matic post to the electronics cavity to run a ground wire as EMG's aren't earthed on the bridge. change the pot to a 500k and that's about it. for rings you can either ring up/email dave from fretsonthenet. he did the rings on my 8 string and they're great rings, even if they cost 50$ for the pair, it's worth it as they're solid. i think allparts sell pickup rings for 7 strings quite cheap though.
the cleaner way would be to go see a tech like Jonathan from Feline Guitars (if you're from UK, i'm not!) to properly route the cavities a bit so the pickup legs fit. and then have him drill a hole for the bridge ground wire
hope that helped!
