Good Neck Pickups for Clean As Well As Progressive/Shred, etc.

[HorrorcoreXIII]

I've been eyeing the Painkiller neck pickup for quite a time now to go with an Aftermath bridge pickup. I'm worried however that due to having ceramic magnets they won't produce a good clean tone in my guitar. Does anyone know if these do in fact produce a good clean tone? Especially in an application such as creating ambient music or getting a tone as nice as Mark Holcomb's when using delay (I do plan on purchasing his signature delay and a few others later)? Also in the case that you don't believe these would produce a good clean tone, could you possibly recommend a pickup which would pair well with the Aftermath (would you recommend a calibrated set or a whole different pickup in general)?
Even if the Painkiller would produce a good clean sound, I'd love to here about some others. Hearing about your experiences and the sounds you've created with some of the pickups you've tried would be awesome.
Thanks in advance guys .
P.S. I have coil tap/split (not sure which is the correct term) if that makes a difference.

[Yellowjacket]

I've heard the Aftermath neck can produce a good clean tone.  VHII is great for clean and the Juggernaut Neck is a beautiful, warm, rich, thick, lush, and buttery sounding pickup while clean and it shreds effortlessly under gain.

[PK]

I've had a lot of fun with the Emerald neck in my Mayones Setius.
Very vesatile. Both clean and overdriven.

[darkbluemurder]

Holydiver neck is my favorite of those I tried in the BKP line. It may be a bit weak with the Aftermath bridge so Cold Sweat neck should also be considered.

Cheers Stephan

[Slartibartfarst42]

Of those I know I prefer both the Emerald and Holydiver neck pickups to the Cold Sweat but I feel the Cold Sweat would be a more natural fit with that bridge pickup. Other than that, I have read a few positive posts about the Juggernaut neck.

[seancorker]

I've been eyeing the Painkiller neck pickup for quite a time now to go with an Aftermath bridge pickup. I'm worried however that due to having ceramic magnets they won't produce a good clean tone in my guitar. Does anyone know if these do in fact produce a good clean tone? Especially in an application such as creating ambient music or getting a tone as nice as Mark Holcomb's when using delay (I do plan on purchasing his signature delay and a few others later)? Also in the case that you don't believe these would produce a good clean tone, could you possibly recommend a pickup which would pair well with the Aftermath (would you recommend a calibrated set or a whole different pickup in general)?
Even if the Painkiller would produce a good clean sound, I'd love to here about some others. Hearing about your experiences and the sounds you've created with some of the pickups you've tried would be awesome.
Thanks in advance guys .
P.S. I have coil tap/split (not sure which is the correct term) if that makes a difference.

The cold sweat is perfect for shred, clean and pretty much everything I could throw at it. It splits beautifully (with Slowhand in a HSH set up) and will do funk and retains enough clarity to handle distorted rhythm.

[Dave Sloven]

Cold Sweat is good for this ... you might want to consider rewiring the coil split as a series/parallel switch

[JCN1218]

Nantucket 90
it'll do anything you ask, and it'll do it spectacularly

[Wayne_S]

My 2 cents .... Rebel Yell neck 

[MerlinTKD]

I have a PK set in my basswood 7; under gain the neck pickup is liquid, with a distinct edge, not dark but not too overly bright, while clean (especially using Fender-style amps) it's edgy and fat and clear. It does that Tesseract clean out of the box, as it were. It actually reminds me of the Duncan Jazz neck, if you can imagine that in a ceramic version!

Hard to say how well it'll match up to Mark's tone, but I will say that my immediate impression after watching his video was "well, Seymour Duncan makes Painkillers now, how about that!" ;)

On the other hand, I think a lot of PII was done on guitars with Aftermath sets (pretty sure the intro to All New Materials was done on an Aftermath neck - at the very least, there's a video of Misha playing it on that pickup.

My experience with the PK says it depends a lot on your guitar. If it's basswood, I'd actually say Aftermath; mahogany, PK; alder or ash, you could go either way, with the PK being the more aggressive of the two.

[m t soule]

My fave so far is the vhii. Bright, woody hollow with a nice pick attack.
I did a quick vid of it split with an irish tour middle on my instagram account below in my signature.