Pickup combinations

[JimmyMoorby]

I was wondering what people's thoughts were on pickup combinations.

I'm aware the nailbomb bridge and cold sweat neck is a very popular combo and from my own personal experience it's fantastic.

I also have the black hawk bridge and sinner neck which work well / are well matched. I have seen Nolly uses this combo too.

I also read that Chris Broderick used a cold sweat bridge with a mule in the neck position when he worked with BKP which sounds like a cool idea.

Any one else got any suggestions, heard any one else give good suggestions or has any one even had any 'disasters'?

[Mr. Air]

I have had an alnico nailbomb bridge paired with a black dog neck in a LP clone and I found them to work well together. It might not be the choice for everyone though. The abomb bridge is said to work well with the vhii neck and Matt Bellamy from Muse uses the abomb bridge with a MQ neck in some of his guitars. I think forum member BigB has a SG with abomb bridge and mule neck that he really likes.

[Slartibartfarst42]

My favourite combination thus far is a Holydiver bridge with an Emerald neck. Absolutely incredible.

[dingleberry]

I've got an emerald bridge with a mule neck, as well as a holydiver bridge with a vhii neck.  I find these sets to work quite well with each other.  Listening to the individual sounds I don't know if the mule neck would work well with the HD bridge, but the vhii neck with emerald bridge could be a cool combo too

[Andrew W]

I have a Bluenote neck P90 partnered with a Nantucket bridge which is a great combination. The lower output and rounder sound of the neck contrasts brilliantly with the spank and growl of the Nantucket. P90 heaven for me.

[darkbluemurder]

The BKP humbucker combinations I currently use (apart from complete sets) are

Holydiver bridge + Cold Sweat neck
Crawler bridge + VHII neck
Cold Sweat bridge + Abraxas neck
Cold Sweat neck as bridge + Holydiver neck

Combinations I have used (again apart from complete sets) are

Miracle Man bridge + Cold Sweat neck
A-Bomb bridge + VHII neck
Holydiver bridge + VHII neck
Crawler bridge + Abraxas neck

Cheers Stephan

[Kiichi]

My current combos are RY bridge with IT middle and mule neck, which I really like as the bridge can go from classic rock stuff to modern metal with a flavour I really dig, the middle is more for clean to midgain stuff, but gives a great single coil feel without being too radically different then the HBs. The neck is also great, bloody great clean tones and can go suprisingly high gain. Classic feel with insane versatility. I also use splits on this one, middle + outer coil and I love those too. The bridge split is amazing for clean strumming and the neck split shine when I want my neck lead sound to have a little more dirt and bite for a specific passage or something.
These combinations with this wiring offer a gigantic range of tones for as many styles.
Might try a MQ neck in place the the Mule sometime soon though as I will have one lying around.

Also have a Crawler set combined with a slowhand middle where it fits in the same way the IT does with the set above. It keeps with the general character of the HBs but delivers a distinct SC sound.

I also am about to order a Stockholm bridge supermassive neck combo to see how that goes.

[PhilKing]

I have quite a few mixes.  They are:

Emerald/Mule - my first BK set (Les Paul)
Crawler/P91/P91 (PRS EG)
Riff Raff/Stormy Monday (Les Paul)
A5 Mule/Stormy Monday (Zemaitis Perl Top clone)
Nailbomb (all screw coils)/Mule (Warmoth Mockingbird)
VHII/Mothers Milk/Mothers Milk (Strat)
Warpig/MQ (Explorer)
MQ/Slowhand/Mini-Mule (Custom all walnut Guitar)
Piledriver/Slowhand (Tele)
Stormy Monday/Sultan/Sultan (Strat)
Brown Sugar/Silvertone Mini HB (not BK!) (Tele)
Holy Diver/Trilogy/Trilogy (Warmoth Strat)
Slowhand/A5 Apache/A5 Apache (Strat)

There are probably a couple more, but I'm doing this off the top of my head at work.  Most of my guitars have been in storage since hurricane Sandy dumped a ton of water in the house, but I hope to get them out again soon.  Just got a lot of new strings and finally have a bit of room to work on them (15 were in the flooded area).

[JimmyMoorby]

I have quite a few mixes.  They are:

Emerald/Mule - my first BK set (Les Paul)
Crawler/P91/P91 (PRS EG)
Riff Raff/Stormy Monday (Les Paul)
A5 Mule/Stormy Monday (Zemaitis Perl Top clone)
Nailbomb (all screw coils)/Mule (Warmoth Mockingbird)
VHII/Mothers Milk/Mothers Milk (Strat)
Warpig/MQ (Explorer)
MQ/Slowhand/Mini-Mule (Custom all walnut Guitar)
Piledriver/Slowhand (Tele)
Stormy Monday/Sultan/Sultan (Strat)
Brown Sugar/Silvertone Mini HB (not BK!) (Tele)
Holy Diver/Trilogy/Trilogy (Warmoth Strat)
Slowhand/A5 Apache/A5 Apache (Strat)

There are probably a couple more, but I'm doing this off the top of my head at work.  Most of my guitars have been in storage since hurricane Sandy dumped a ton of water in the house, but I hope to get them out again soon.  Just got a lot of new strings and finally have a bit of room to work on them (15 were in the flooded area).

All interesting stuff peeps.

With this though how does the warpig match up with the mq?
Id love to put a ceramic warpig in a guitar but think the neck might be too dark so i was thinking a miracle man or painkiller neck would be best to go with it so im guessing if an mq fits with it a painkiller/miracle man would certainly fit if only in a conventional sense.

[PhilKing]

Mine's an alnico warpig.  It works really well with the MQ, though they were bought as a matched pair.

[Mr. Air]

I have quite a few mixes.  They are:

Emerald/Mule - my first BK set (Les Paul)
Crawler/P91/P91 (PRS EG)
Riff Raff/Stormy Monday (Les Paul)
A5 Mule/Stormy Monday (Zemaitis Perl Top clone)
Nailbomb (all screw coils)/Mule (Warmoth Mockingbird)
VHII/Mothers Milk/Mothers Milk (Strat)
Warpig/MQ (Explorer)
MQ/Slowhand/Mini-Mule (Custom all walnut Guitar)
Piledriver/Slowhand (Tele)
Stormy Monday/Sultan/Sultan (Strat)
Brown Sugar/Silvertone Mini HB (not BK!) (Tele)
Holy Diver/Trilogy/Trilogy (Warmoth Strat)
Slowhand/A5 Apache/A5 Apache (Strat)

There are probably a couple more, but I'm doing this off the top of my head at work.  Most of my guitars have been in storage since hurricane Sandy dumped a ton of water in the house, but I hope to get them out again soon.  Just got a lot of new strings and finally have a bit of room to work on them (15 were in the flooded area).

Man I would love try out your guitar collection, PhilKing. So many interesting choices that I wouldn't know where to begin and end :D