Hello all,
New to the forum, first time poster from the States so be gentle :P . I've read the forums for years and owned a few Nailbombs, and an MM set. I need lots of help so here goes, apologies on the lengthy post but hey too much info is better than not enough right?
I'm in the process of upgrading my main guitar to a full set of BKP's. I've owned several BKP's in the past but mainly just humbuckers. I've spent countless hours deliberating specs, reviewing forum posts, evaluating videos and I think I've basically overloaded my thought process into utter confusion. Therefore I need help, lots of it. Bear in mind I've been collecting the pickups piecemeal and second hand to reduce costs and I think that may have gotten me into worse shape. So let me give you the setup, requirements and dilemmas and hopefully you can sort me out and I pray you guys tell me I haven't made two bad purchases.
The guitar is an HSS San Dimas type of superstrat. It's an ash body with a matte finish, with a solid flamed maple neck machine bolted on (no wood screws per the luthier). Standard two point trem system. The guitar has a great natural resonance to it. I plug this guitar into an Egnater Tweaker 40 watt combo so it's plenty versatile and capable of doing Blackface tones to modern higher gain. For added versatility and for the extra gain situations I run a Bogner Red pedal into the clean channel with a Fender Mustang Floor in the FX loop (killer unit for cheap BTW) so i effectively have a three channel setup, from Fender-ish clean to modded Marshall to full on saturation modern high gain. A great little rig for both bedroom and live use. I play a wide range of music and love tones from David Gilmour to Van Halen / ZZ Top brown sounds as well as enjoying the 80's metal tones, Petrucci tones and even into the modern high gain Slipknots and Ola Englund tones. ( realize this guitar is not / cannot ever capture all of those tones in one nor would I try).. I'm just pointing out tones I admire. Essentially I want full bass, midrange bark and grease, artificial and natural harmonics etc but still want full neck position solo tones and warm round cleans. I'm thinking Tool / Alice In Chains thickness from the bridge, liquid non-nasal neck solos like Petrucci with the warm Gilmour cleans to narrow down.
Onto my purchases and thought process so far. I purchased an Alnico Nailbomb for the bridge. I've had this pickup before and really thought it brought up the bass and mids nicely on an alder neckthru ESP, but not so sure now it was a good choice for the Ash superstrat. I then purchased a Sinner neck position pickup (no baseplate) figuring the outputs would go nicely together and I'd retain that fullness and harmonics and emulate a humbucker tone with a single coil sized pickup, then I could just dial down the volume and tone pots for warmer Gilmour cleans. Further reading has me thinking I may have already made two bad choices and I haven't even chosen a middle pickup. That being said, I use the middle pickup the least and would mainly just use the 2 and 4 positions if and when I did. However bear in mind I'm looking for a middle single coil that has the higher output available because I'd like to sink the pickup as far as possible into the body and still keep tonal balance because my pick constantly strikes the edge of the middle coil which is maddening. I'd like to create more room between the strings and pickup height to make it easier to play.
Have I completely screwed up my choices? Should I have gone with a Holydiver bridge? Perhaps I should put the Sinner neck pickup in the middle slot to sink it and choose a different neck option? Help !! I'm utterly lost, confused and frustrated and don't really have the funds available to start all over. Mind you none of these pickups have arrived yet nor been installed for me to evalulate. I'm working with used pickups as it's much cheaper here in the States of course and it's difficult working with tone clips and write ups alone.
Cheers,
Chris
