Best punk pickups

[Dave Sloven]

We've had a best thrash pickup discussion which inexplicably broke down into some kind of argument about the BKP Aftermath vs EMGs, but I am wondering if people have an opinion on pickups for punk?

Punk is a very broad category, and I'm assuming that a lot of the vintage pickups might do the '77 style punk well, especially the Riff Raff among the humbuckers.  Teles, Strats, and SG Juniors were also popular punk guitars so I'm wondering what pickups people like for that style (and later punk styles) in those guitars?

Personally I don't listen to pop punk or NYC hardcore so I will spare you any thoughts of mine on those, but if you have some go ahead.

My personal experience with BKPs with the punk genres that interest me has been excellent.

I won't comment on the Cold Sweat neck I have as I really got that to allow me to do other things like metal and I pretty much exclusively use the bridge pickup when playing punk stuff.

The alnico version of the Nailbomb would have to be one of the best pickups for UK82, '80s US hardcore, and related styles (e.g., Brazilian hardcore). It is also great for the punkish Sepultura type metal, as you'd expect from the name of the pickup, and 'crossover' like RDP, SOD, and DRI.  It can play other styles too when set up right (and the volume backed off to 9 or so) but on full tilt it is perfect for these styles, even though most of those bands had shiteeeeety gear back in the day.  It is the pickup those bands *wished* they had!  In an SG these characteristics are especially evident.

The alnico version of the Warpig is a great pickup for crust punk (e.g., Doom, Amebix, Anti-Cimex), classic grindcore (e.g., old Napalm Death, old Terrorizer, Righteous Pigs, Unseen Terror), and the various bands that straddle the two genres and are sometimes called 'crust grind' - for example Extreme Noise Terror.

Again, I'm not saying that they sound like the gear that these bands actually used, which was often very cheap, but rather that when playing these songs with these pickups they are sonically taken to the next level and these pickups fit those genres perfectly.

I'm wondering what opinions people have on these.

I don't play metalcore, deathcore, etc ... again I think these are related to punk via NYC hardcore, which really has never been my thing ... and also a lot of Pantera, again not my thing ... but maybe people will say something about those, I imagine the Blackhawk, Aftermath, or Painkiller might  be the pickup for those applications.

On other guitars, I'm thinking the Piledriver and Pig 90 seem ideal for crust punk and probably '80s hardcore

[EffigyForgotten]

I don't listen to punk rock or any non hardcore version of punk so no opinion on that, for an everything pickup the Nailbomb probably, and for grindcore/crust I would probably use the Warpig. What about mathcore? Painkiller or Aftermath?

[Dave Sloven]

I would think mathcore would need something like that.  Tight with aggressive mids.  To be honest though although I think I have watched half of a Dillinger Escape Plan video I haven't bothered with much mathcore, so maybe others have opinions on it, but I would have thought the same two options you've pointed out.

I don't play any early punk either.  With the Nailbomb if I play a Ramones riff it sounds like a hardcore band doing a Ramones cover, and I'm happy enough with that.  I'm not really interested in getting that early punk sound; I just mentioned it in case people had something to contribute on that.

[Alex]

For me punk is much more a dirty Telecaster sound, such as The Clash. I wouldn't associate real punk music with high output humbuckers. That might work for American modern "punk" bands, but IMO they completely miss the spirit, with the exception of bands like Bad Religion maybe.

[witeter]

The punk i listen to is Bad Religion and The Misfits, so id say Alnico Nailbomb

[Dave Sloven]

For me punk is much more a dirty Telecaster sound, such as The Clash. I wouldn't associate real punk music with high output humbuckers.

Well that's why I included Teles ... single coil guitars were popular with early punk and also some of the more black metal influenced (i.e., recent) crust bands (those Teles do tend to have high output pickups though) .... P90s are often heard in some of the surf and skate punk bands ...

Any Tele pickups you think would be especially suited to that early punk style?

There's definitely a difference between the early punk stuff and the hardcore stuff in terms of sound ... right from the NWOBHM and UK82 onwards metal and punk have been feeding off one another in terms of sound and to a lesser extent song structure and chord choices.  If anyone is interested in '80s UK hardcore I would recommend the three '80s books by Ian Glasper, which go through most of the bands.  To be honest though I haven't bought the '90s book he did, it doesn't really interest me. He was close to people in the late '80s scene; he was the bassist for Decadence Within.
http://www.caughtinthecrossfire.com/music/interviews-2/ian-glasper-trapped-in-a-scene-interview1/

[IzirAtig]

Original factory pickups. More cr@ppy better :)

[Dave Sloven]

Original factory pickups. More cr@ppy better :)

LOL.  I have some cr@ppy Mighty Mite Motherbuckers, really rare, can be yours for $300 plus postage

[Dmoney]

Ian Glasper was also in Stampin' Ground. Officer Down is a BIG tune. He sent me a bunch of questions to answer for a magazine years ago about UK Hardcore. He's doing a new band now but I can't remember what it's called. He's close to people in the ongoing scene.

Talk of what is real and legit within punk and hardcore always makes me laugh.

Nailbomb is a good all rounder. Sounds good when split too if you want some more jangle.

[Dave Sloven]

Nailbomb is a good all rounder. Sounds good when split too if you want some more jangle.

I've thought of putting a coil split on mine, and also a parallel/series switch.  I wonder if I can wire up the one pickup to do both using push-push pots for both volume and tone (SGs have a three way toggle plus a volume and tone for each pickup)?  I'll have to look into it.  I'm thinking I can probably move the existing volume and tone pots over into my Explorer as they are very nice ones (Mojotone CTS), and add a push-push volume pot to the Warpig neck on that guitar to split the coils.

Yeah I always get a laugh out of people who claim this or that is legit, either in punk or metal.  Actually I think this is one of the less positive things that the metal scene picked up from the hardcore scene in the early '80s.

On the positive side there was a LOT of cross-pollination between punk and metal in the '80s.  I remember quite a few metal bands that were popular with the punks.  Besides the first three Black Sabbath albums they were also very much into the early Celtic Frost, Sodom, and Destruction records.  A lot of metalheads got into the early hardcore stuff too, especially the thrash bands (worldwide, not just Metallica etc).

[Dmoney]

Yeah I always get a laugh out of people who claim this or that is legit, either in punk or metal.  Actually I think this is one of the less positive things that the metal scene picked up from the hardcore scene in the early '80s.

Not so sure what you mean by that.

[Telerocker]

It comes down to the interpretation of punk(sound). I guess you can play punk with any guitar and pickups. If you have a highgainamp you don't need a highoutput-pickup and vice versa. I've seen people playing punk with Gretsches.

[Dave Sloven]

Yeah I always get a laugh out of people who claim this or that is legit, either in punk or metal.  Actually I think this is one of the less positive things that the metal scene picked up from the hardcore scene in the early '80s.

Not so sure what you mean by that.

If you look at the thrash scene in metal that's where the whole obsession with metal 'cred' started. I tend to think it is something that was picked up via punk to some extent, but no scene has been obsessed with all of that so much as the anarcho-punk scene.  There are so many songs complaining about 'scene police' in the '80s hardcore stuff.  In metal I tend to think it has manifested itself in more nerdy ways, i.e., what demos you might have collected, what obscure 7" singles or first press LPs you have, etc.  It tends to be worse in some places than in others, some sections of a scene more than others.  It sort of went along with the development of the underground in both genres.  It is something that a lot of people over 45 don't know much about, at least in metal, if they sort of were in it when they were young and then drifted away.  I know people who were into the metal scene here in the early-mid '80s and have absolutely no clue about the underground scene, but then there are a lot of people slightly younger - say those who finished school in '85-'86 - who were heavily into it.  I think Glasper picks up on this in the third of his books.

This is just my vague memories though. I was part of the slightly older group (I finished school in '84) and didn't catch on until a few years later, in the late '80s.

[Dmoney]

Ah I see. I thought you were going to say people being judgmental was picked up from the hardcore scene, but it's all just human nature really to behave like that.

I've seen an interview with Scott Ian were he says Hardcore bands are Thrash bands that can't play. I mean, that's daft to me. The Mid 80's crossover stuff Cro-Mags, Leeway, Agnostic Front etc were doing was incredible. Although bands like Void, Bad Brains and Discharge has moved away from that 70's punk blueprint already by then. That whole record/demo/shirt collecting thing is a big part of hardcore now. It's regional and weird and hard to explain. It's pretty dumb some of it. I think it's an age thing too. nobody I know who is around 30 and over cares much about what people think. They've been involved long enough to know they have nothing to prove. Some people just grow older and priorities change. It's less frequent that I get excited by a hardcore band, but sometimes something really interests me. The band Red Hare from DC feat dudes from Swiz is a good example. Lets not forget the influence of Hip Hop in hardcore either because that is pretty huge. Also, bands like Burn (Burn are awesome) were doing wild stuff in 88. Anyway... I don't think punk rock needs to fit a particular sound or aesthetic to be legit.

I once read an Interview with Vinnie Stigma were I think he suggested Agnostic Front's sound changed over the years because of what equipment was available. the Marshall 2203/2204 came out in 75 and became the JCM800's in 80. the Split channel with the diode clipping appeared in 82. The SLO100 arrived in 87 I think. The 5150 didn't arrive until 92 and then the JCM900's popped up, possibly the Dual Rec... So there was a whole period of 'high gain' development over that era that had to filter down to products that would then become widely available. What is considered the first high output pickup and when did that arrive? I find it interesting to wonder just how much sound from gear shaped the songs people played using it when it first became available. I would be interesting to see some sort of timeline pairing gear with recording they were used on. 

[Dave Sloven]

Yeah, on the changing sound thing I was thinking about that today when I listened to Venom's 'Cast in Stone' for the first time in a couple of years.  It was recorded in 1996 and I think the difference in sound between that and what they were doing in the 1980s largely reflected changes in amps - especially the availability of high gain amps - and other equipment as much as changes in production methods and playing style.

I quite like the '80s sounds so rather than 'updating' the sound I'd prefer to use more recent gear to perfect those sounds, if that makes sense.  It seems to me that in the '90s a lot of bands were using the technologies to try out new sounds rather than hone their old sounds, which to them probably just seemed like they were due to the limitations of their equipment.  I read an interview with Tom G. Warrior (Celtic Frost and now Triptykon) about his sound; he was using different equipment in the late '80s and '90s - most notably with his industrial band Apollyon Sun, which sounds very '90s now - but went back to his old Ibanez Iceman (one of the cheapies with the bolt-on neck) to recapture his classic sound when Celtic Frost reformed ten years ago.  He definitely uses more recent amps and other equipment now but he went back to that guitar for its dark sound and is conscious of his 'signature sound' in a way that he wasn't after To Mega Therion.  It's likely that he simply thought of that sound as what was possible at the time.  I'm sure a lot of other older bands have been through the same process.