Considering getting an Ibanez S Series. Which Pickups?

[Nephilim]

I'm considering getting myself an Ibanez S Series (I think they look rather sexy ;P)  and wondered what pickup choice you would recommend? I'm about to order a set of Aftermaths for my other guitar, so I'm not looking for something too far towards the 'metal' spectrum. I'm looking more for a complete guitar to play all the other styles of music. To narrow down to a single artist, I'd say Joe Satriani. Now while I'm not after his tone, I'm looking for something that's capable of playing his type of music. Something that provides very nice cleans, as well as a very musical solo tone in the neck; and for the the bridge to give me a good solo tone as well, but also respond well under gain when playing chords - I want to be able to hear each note of the chord. I would probably play a fair bit of Prog Metal with this guitar too. So tbh, I'm looking for a Joe Satriani meets John Petrucci type of tone. Also if you could recommend a single coil as well, as I'm not sure whether to go for the HH or HSH Ibanez yet.

I might as well ask this whilst I'm here. I'm currently looking for a metal amp (which people have been kind enough to recommend in another thread), but I'm also going to eventually start looking for a small valve bedroom amp to play this guitar through. Something which gives me a very nice solo tone and sparkling cleans. Now I definitely don't want to break the bank with this amp; nor do I want to get a bad quality one. I just want a good quality, cheap valve amp that sings beautifully.

[Telerocker]

Holy Diver-set and Trilogy. Just my 2 cents.

[Nephilim]

Holy Diver-set and Trilogy. Just my 2 cents.

Yh, I've been reading a few posts and read a lot of good things about the Holy Diver. I've been reading that it is really organic sounding. But I also read the Nailbomb is really organic sounding. Do you think the Holy Diver sounds more pure though?

[Brow]

I have an S470 that I keep in Eb tuning and it has Nailbombs in bridge and neck and a Trilogy Suite in the middle.

It covers a fair bit of ground tonally and can be as aggressive as you need it to be with the right amp.

[Telerocker]

The Nailbombs sound more agressive and has a 90's metal-sizzle to my ears.  The HD is quite beefy with a more rounded topend. It reckoned to have one of the best solotones. If you play a lot of singlenotes, I would pick this one, but that's maybe just my taste.

[Nephilim]

Holy Diver it is then :) How is the Holy Diver for cleans and playing chords with gain?

[Telerocker]

They clean up nice, split well and if you work will the vol.knob you can play complex chords with (a lot of) gain. I can do this with the Crawler in my HSS-strat, which a more PAF-ish sounding HB then the Diver. Anyway BKP's don't mud up. Their clarity is one of the pedigrees.

[Transcend]

As for a cheap amp look at the jet city stuff like the jca20 or the vox little night train.

Neither have dedicated cleans that i know of but should be able to handle what you ask with ease

[Telerocker]

The Jet City is hard to beat at this price point. You could also look for a used Hughes & Kettner Switchblade which is quite versatile and has good metalsounds.