Best pickups for "post-metal"?

[Richie]

Hi everyone. I'm new to the forum but been a Bare Knuckle user for ages. Having gradually developed my style of playing into what I would tentatively describe as "post-metal" (I'll go into more detail shortly), I've recently decided it's time for a change of pickups. Although I definitely want to stick with Bare Knuckles, I'm not sure exactly what I'm after, so any advice from you guys would be appreciated.

First off, I'm definitely not a shredder. When I say "post-metal", I refer to generally more slow and deliberate heavy riff-oriented playing like Isis, Tool, Porcupine Tree, or perhaps more recent Mastodon or the odd bit by Opeth. Generally drop-tuned, very punchy high-gain tones. At the same time I'm a big lover of really open, vintage single-coil cleans like those you find on records by John Frusciante, Jeff Buckley, Mogwai or Explosions In The Sky, particularly neck pickup tones.

At the moment my setup is, and has been for quite some time now, a 2002 Gibson SG special (one of the rarer ones with the ebony fretboard and "crescent moon" inlays), which has a BK RiffRaff in the bridge (wired straight humbucker, 1 vol/ 1 tone), and a Lace Dually gold/gold in the neck (which I've wired with a stacked spin-a-split volume pot to get truer strat tones from it). The first pedal the guitar hits is a Made By Mike Saltbooster+ (modded LPB1 clone) which is always on just giving a slight boost. All my gain I get from various pedals, the most "metal" one being a T-Rex Bloody Mary. My amp is a '72 Selmer Treble 'N' Bass 50R SV, which obviously isn't a high gain amp but it gives incredible deep cleans and handles dirt pedals tremendously. Think a kind of Marshall/ Vox/ Hiwatt hybrid.

While I really like the overall tone of the RiffRaff, I don't feel like it has enough "shove" for the kinds of heavier tones I'm after now, and with more complex chords some of the nuance tends to get a bit lost with the gain up. The Lace Dually just kind of alternates between being a mediocre PAF or mediocre strat single coil clone, not much life to it, so ideally I'd like a humbucker there that splits really well and gives a lovely woody strat neck tone while being able to keep up with whatever I have in the bridge.

That's the sitch anyway, sorry for the essay, just figured it'd help to give as much info as I can so as to get the best advice!

[Mr. Air]

Maybe you should have a look at the new Black Hawk pickup. It's supposed to work well for metal as well as other styles. I don't know if it can pull off some single-like tones though. The VHII neck is often described as having a single coil like quality to its tone and somewhere in the players section there's a clip of a Nailbomb neck (or set) in parallel that gives a quite convincing strat-like tone.

[Richie]

Yeah I looked at the demo vid for the Black Hawks, I don't think they're a million miles from what I'm after but it's whether they can be split effectively for the single coil tones that I'm worried about. Plus, part of me isn't really keen on the look of them. Then again the Lace Dually isn't exactly pretty either and I've been putting up with that for years...

[ericsabbath]

the riff raff is the clearest sounding humbucker I've ever played, specially on complex chords under high gain
I'm not sure what to recommend  :?

a higher output bucker will hardly sound clearer on chords, and the lower output models have softer sounding magnets

maybe you could mod your amp or try other pedals
speakers and tubes matter as well

[Telerocker]

SG: RiffRaff + booster.

[itamar101]

Well... I think I recommend the Cold Sweat bridge and VHII neck for that.
The VHII splits amazingly and sounds very clear and the Cold sweat should be very close to what your looking for for the metal sounds. It won't sound like a proper single coil when split because of the ceramic magnet but you could think of it the othe way round and say "hey... I've got the most unique sounding single coil anyone has heard".
I've never tried to could split a ceramic pickup but the the more I think about it now the more it interests me.

[Richie]

Cheers to Telerocker there for summing up the setup I already have and want to change.  :P

Eric, it's not so much a clarity issue I have with the RiffRaff, maybe I've worded it wrong. See most of the time the guitar is tuned to drop B so, really I'm mainly looking for something with heftier bass response and more power overall. If I can retain the kind of clarity I have though it'd be a real bonus.

As for valves, speakers etc, the amp's got all original Mullards and Brimars in the preamp and Groove Tubes EL34Ms in the power section. It gets run through a Zilla Modern 2x12 fitted with Celestion Rock Driver Pros (bit of a weird model I managed to get cheap, made in England in the 90s for Hughes & Kettner, 80w but similar tonally to a V30). I had actually considered modding the amp though; there's footswitchable reverb on one of the channels that I never use (I have a digital reverb pedal already), which is driven by its own ecc83, so I could probably remove the spring tank and turn it into an extra gain stage somehow.

[Richie]

Well... I think I recommend the Cold Sweat bridge and VHII neck for that.
The VHII splits amazingly and sounds very clear and the Cold sweat should be very close to what your looking for for the metal sounds. It won't sound like a proper single coil when split because of the ceramic magnet but you could think of it the othe way round and say "hey... I've got the most unique sounding single coil anyone has heard".
I've never tried to could split a ceramic pickup but the the more I think about it now the more it interests me.

I had actually just been looking at Cold Sweats! I don't see why you couldn't split them, I've seen Telecaster bridge pickups that had a ceramic bar magnet and the bridge pickup in my other guitar (Fender Jaguar, Vintage Vibe JG90) has a ceramic magnet in it too. I never actually heard the tele in question but I'm happy with the sound of the Jaguar.

It's food for thought anyway, cheers.  :)

[Telerocker]

Sorry I just overlooked that one. A bit toooo fast. I would not look in the vintagehotrange cause SG and alnico mediumoutput pickups are usually not a happy couple. I think you might want to consider the ceramic Nailbomb.

[darrenw5094]

That seems to be a common problem with the Gibson SG. They don't gel with the medium pickups. I wonder could anybody from BKP chime in on this. Interesting to hear their views.  :o

[Richie]

Oh really? In my mind the reference material for a vintage hot pickup would be a Gibson T-Top or similar so I would've expected them to be decent bedfellows with SGs. Why don't they get along exactly?

I actually emailed Tim ages ago proposing a similar brief but while I was playing stuff more akin to Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. He recommended a calibrated Holydiver set for that but I never got round to getting them, and my rig and playing style have both changed since so I don't know if they would still suit...

[Telerocker]

I'm a bit confused by Tim's HD recommendation. It's midranged focussed and has a warm topend. Maybe. compared to the Nailbomb. leaner bass had something to do with it.

Here's a quote from Tim himself

''I always recommend trying to keep the output low on SG's as medium output pickups mud out with all that mahogany, hence my Riff Raff suggestion.A high gainer like a Warpig sounds good and so does a Miracle Man as both have more than enough power to really drive through timber.Funnily enough I fitted a Stormy Monday to a friends SG and that sounded really nice too......quite a surprise but it chunked up really well into an overdriven Marshall.
The ones to avoid are the medium output humbuckers as they simply seem to add to the bottom end of the mahogany.So I wouldn't bother with VHII,Emerald, Crawler or even a Nailbomb as that's got a big bass response too even though it's quite high gain.''
I wouldn't totally dismiss it but my experience of SG's is the bottom end blooms up quite a bit with certain pickups and the Nailbomb has a lot of bottom and mid range both inherent in an SG.Some SGs will take a Nailbomb perfectly well if they're very bright but on the whole I've found that sub DC8.5K humbuckers sound fantastic,Alnico V powered humbuckers in particular the closer you get to DC8.5K so in this instance if a customer wanted a Mule I'd go with AV over AIV.A Stormy Monday, because the wind is lower and the tone more open, sounds great with AIV.
At the other end of the scale, the high gainers like Miracle Man which is ceramic powered work well as the magnet controls the bass response or Warpig are excellent.Both of these are wound with a very fine gauge wire which keeps the coil size small.........the smaller coil footprint under the strings keeps the tone more focused.

[Richie]

I think the Holydiver recommendation was based mainly on me wanting the neck pickup to ape John Frusciante's tone when split. I can't rightly remember now, this was literally years ago and it'd take forever to find it, if I haven't already deleted it. Though it may also have had something to do with, and one thing you have to keep in mind is that like I said, this particular SG has an ebony fretboard so it's got a fair bit more snap and bite to it than a regular SG.

[Nolly]

Have you considered trying a humbucker-sized P90 in the neck? If you're after a classic single-coil tone you're always going to struggle with a split humbucker because the coils are so small. I think you'd find the Mississippi Queen to be an excellent choice for all of the sounds you've described.

As for the bridge spot I would actually recommend the Nailbomb, despite the fact it's normally advised against for an SG. The Riff Raff you already have would be closest to the T-top you described, but if you are after more low end and power without moving away from that more classic midrange voicing, the Nailbomb fits the bill perfectly. You could also consider the Rebel Yell - it has a brighter, leaner sound than the Nailbomb (they are very closely related in spec), though still noticeably meatier than the Riff Raff.

[TheyCallMeVolume]

Would the Rebel Yell not be a tad too bright in the SG?