Well, the Nailbomb is kind of an enigma for me : it sure did sound aggressive, tight and incredibly good with this grinding upper mid thing going on in the NT1 BUT it sounded terrible in a Schecter PT telecaster type guitar...
No lows, not so much output... almost 'anemic' if you get what i mean.. yet this guitar sounded quite good with a JB in it... :roll:
It seems to be very touchy about the guitar it's in.
I don't think of a sound in particular when i hear the NB, i just know it can cover a lot of grounds (trash/metal), is a bit tighter than the HD, and almost always keep this aggressiveness (is that even a word ? sry i'm french..) to it.
When i was soloing on the bridge unit with the NT1, it had a tad of this almost half c--ked wah sound that i really enjoyed
(great fun playing Marty Friedman solo's with that) but made the riff a little too raw sounding...
However, i did install a calibrated set of Alnico NBs in a friend's Ibanez S and, with the thin mahogany body, it was perfect, far more 'coherent' sounding than in the NT1.
Overall, i think it's the most ceramic-player-friendly alnico pup i've came across (because of the amazing paradoxical balance of cut/tightness and organic feel) although i've never played a Rebell Yell and it seems to also share this feat.