Best Thrash pickups...

[Toe-Knee]

Whilst i love the 80s tones my all time favourite thrash tones are from exodus especially on the re-recording of bonded by blood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfYieHgGpMU

I found if you want to go in this direction nothing does it better than EMGS the next best thing being the entwistle HDN followed closely by the Aftermath

[JimmyMoorby]

I found if you want to go in this direction nothing does it better than EMGS the next best thing being the entwistle HDN followed closely by the Aftermath

The aftermath was the first pickup to capture my attention when first looking at bkp's but to my mind the bridge sounds like a passive poor mans emg :x so went against it and looked for some thing different.

[Toe-Knee]

I found if you want to go in this direction nothing does it better than EMGS the next best thing being the entwistle HDN followed closely by the Aftermath

The aftermath was the first pickup to capture my attention when first looking at bkp's but to my mind the bridge sounds like a passive poor mans emg :x so went against it and looked for some thing different.

Haha thats quite an apt description. It does come into its own though and is a lot more versatile than people think. I kinda miss mine.

[Kiichi]

I found if you want to go in this direction nothing does it better than EMGS the next best thing being the entwistle HDN followed closely by the Aftermath

The aftermath was the first pickup to capture my attention when first looking at bkp's but to my mind the bridge sounds like a passive poor mans emg :x so went against it and looked for some thing different.

If I may ask, what kind of guitar did you put it in?

I have a set I tried in a LP type and the increased midrange of the scale and wood was way too much with the midrange on the AM. Stockholm / Supermassive set fixed that nicely though.

As soon as I do get an axe that is at least fender scale or even better baritone and with wood which is not overly mid heavy these will go back in as there they can really do incredible work.
Would love to load a baritone with these and play In Flames.

[Dave Sloven]

As I think about it one of the strangest recommendations I've seen on these forums attributed to Tim was an Aftermath set for a Gibson SG.  To my mind that would just turn out incredibly middy, even if it had all the usual AM characteristics (dry, tight, etc).  I wonder if anyone has actually done it.  I would think that in a Les Paul any pickup would come out sounding less middy than when in an SG

[JimmyMoorby]

I found if you want to go in this direction nothing does it better than EMGS the next best thing being the entwistle HDN followed closely by the Aftermath

The aftermath was the first pickup to capture my attention when first looking at bkp's but to my mind the bridge sounds like a passive poor mans emg :x so went against it and looked for some thing different.

If I may ask, what kind of guitar did you put it in?

I have a set I tried in a LP type and the increased midrange of the scale and wood was way too much with the midrange on the AM. Stockholm / Supermassive set fixed that nicely though.

As soon as I do get an axe that is at least fender scale or even better baritone and with wood which is not overly mid heavy these will go back in as there they can really do incredible work.
Would love to load a baritone with these and play In Flames.

An alder super strat.  The tightness is supposed to be the strong point of the aftermath but nothings tighter than and emg. The neck pickup however sounds cool when misha monsoor describes it as being a cross between an les paul and petrucci's tone but I aint tried it I am happy with the cold sweat though

[Sarkasis]

The aftermath was the first pickup to capture my attention when first looking at bkp's but to my mind the bridge sounds like a passive poor mans emg :x so went against it and looked for some thing different.

Did you try an Aftermath, or are you just talking about an impression from clips? Besides the fact that the Aftermath is more expensive, I don't see how the Aftermath would seem like a cheaper version of an EMG, they seem pretty different to me. The Blackhawk is supposed to be the passive alternative to an EMG 81 I thought.

[Alex]

Holy Diver, Nailbomb and Miracle Man sound like the obvious choices for me. Old school thrash needs a bit of looseness to sound proper and have some groove.
I was listening to The Haunted (the first album) today and thought that they're really thrashy (great album), but their sound is very dry, almost too dry, and maybe a bit too much death metal.

[JimmyMoorby]

The aftermath was the first pickup to capture my attention when first looking at bkp's but to my mind the bridge sounds like a passive poor mans emg :x so went against it and looked for some thing different.

Did you try an Aftermath, or are you just talking about an impression from clips? Besides the fact that the Aftermath is more expensive, I don't see how the Aftermath would seem like a cheaper version of an EMG, they seem pretty different to me. The Blackhawk is supposed to be the passive alternative to an EMG 81 I thought.

Well youre right in that BKP have said that the black hawk is meant to be like a passive 'active emg but better' but in fairness you could say the same of the miracle man as there must be some similar characteristics to an active emg in there to get a zakk wylde type tone.

Im not saying the aftermath is trying to be an emg but it seems the big selling point of the aftermath is the 'fast bass response'.  Now if people prefer the aftermath to emg's then fine its all down to taste but its simply a fact that emg's will have a faster bass response than any passive pickup.  I prefer emg's to the aftermath but there are bkp's that I prefer to emg's and any other pickups based on my experience thus far from other manufacturers.

[Sarkasis]

The Aftermath isn't just a low end that responds quickly, its character is pretty unique. I guess I just don't get lumping in every pickup that's tight in a "fake EMG" category.

[Toe-Knee]

The Aftermath isn't just a low end that responds quickly, its character is pretty unique. I guess I just don't get lumping in every pickup that's tight in a "fake EMG" category.

It's inevitable as the EMG81 is the benchmark for tightness and if anything is marketed as being tight or the tightest pickup on the market as the AM was hyped to be it will be compared and people will realise it's not as tight and dismiss it as a poor imitator of that specific quality

[Kiichi]

The Aftermath isn't just a low end that responds quickly, its character is pretty unique. I guess I just don't get lumping in every pickup that's tight in a "fake EMG" category.

It's inevitable as the EMG81 is the benchmark for tightness and if anything is marketed as being tight or the tightest pickup on the market as the AM was hyped to be it will be compared and people will realise it's not as tight and dismiss it as a poor imitator of that specific quality

The way I always saw it it was not advertised as the tightest PU, but rather the tightest passive PU. To dismiss it as a poor imitator to me is also not a good way of saying it. That would make every PU a poor imitator of the EMG tighness, which is just not something fair to say. It puts the PU down despite all the other qualitys and additionally it is not that it does a poor job on the tightness, for a passive it is pretty darn great, too much for a lot of people.

Trying to find an analogy here I might say you are putting down a regular car for for being advertised as  environment friendly cause it uses little fuel and has good filtering, putting out far less harmfull stuff than every other mass produced car. Now you are calling it a poor imitator cause there are electric cars.

[Toe-Knee]

The Aftermath isn't just a low end that responds quickly, its character is pretty unique. I guess I just don't get lumping in every pickup that's tight in a "fake EMG" category.

It's inevitable as the EMG81 is the benchmark for tightness and if anything is marketed as being tight or the tightest pickup on the market as the AM was hyped to be it will be compared and people will realise it's not as tight and dismiss it as a poor imitator of that specific quality

The way I always saw it it was not advertised as the tightest PU, but rather the tightest passive PU. To dismiss it as a poor imitator to me is also not a good way of saying it. That would make every PU a poor imitator of the EMG tighness, which is just not something fair to say. It puts the PU down despite all the other qualitys and additionally it is not that it does a poor job on the tightness, for a passive it is pretty darn great, too much for a lot of people.

Trying to find an analogy here I might say you are putting down a regular car for for being advertised as  environment friendly cause it uses little fuel and has good filtering, putting out far less harmfull stuff than every other mass produced car. Now you are calling it a poor imitator cause there are electric cars.

I never said it was a poor imitator of an emg81. I said that specific quality is a poor imitation if you are looking for tightness.

I also never said it was advertised as the tightest pickup on the market but it was hyped as the tightest. Bad wording on my part there.

And to many the car analogy would actually be seen as poor imitation.

[Kiichi]

The Aftermath isn't just a low end that responds quickly, its character is pretty unique. I guess I just don't get lumping in every pickup that's tight in a "fake EMG" category.

It's inevitable as the EMG81 is the benchmark for tightness and if anything is marketed as being tight or the tightest pickup on the market as the AM was hyped to be it will be compared and people will realise it's not as tight and dismiss it as a poor imitator of that specific quality

The way I always saw it it was not advertised as the tightest PU, but rather the tightest passive PU. To dismiss it as a poor imitator to me is also not a good way of saying it. That would make every PU a poor imitator of the EMG tighness, which is just not something fair to say. It puts the PU down despite all the other qualitys and additionally it is not that it does a poor job on the tightness, for a passive it is pretty darn great, too much for a lot of people.

Trying to find an analogy here I might say you are putting down a regular car for for being advertised as  environment friendly cause it uses little fuel and has good filtering, putting out far less harmfull stuff than every other mass produced car. Now you are calling it a poor imitator cause there are electric cars.

I never said it was a poor imitator of an emg81. I said that specific quality is a poor imitation if you are looking for tightness.

I also never said it was advertised as the tightest pickup on the market but it was hyped as the tightest. Bad wording on my part there.

And to many the car analogy would actually be seen as poor imitation.

Also bad wording on my side, I was not meaning to say it is a poor imitation of the EMG all in all, I also was just talking about the tightness.

On the car things I would not call it an imitation as it is getting out more than anything else from a technique. That it is surpassed in that quality by a newer technique does not make it an imitation, as it was there before and is just optimizing.

Same with the PUs, the passive was there before the active. Just because someone is optimizing the older form does not mean he is imitating the newer form. To me that makes little sense.

By the same logic I think you could say (trying to push it to the extreme) realistic paintings are a poor imitation of photographs.

[Toe-Knee]

By the same logic I think you could say (trying to push it to the extreme) realistic paintings are a poor imitation of photographs.

I view that the other way around. A photograph is a poor mans imitation of a fine painting. Anyone can take a photograph but only an extremly accomplished artist can create a work of art that is considered a fine painting. I know that many peoples opinion on this differ but that is all it is an opinion.