Alnico or ceramic for mahogany body?

[stevelightning]

Hi I have decided on some black hawk's for my Ltd ec1000 and can't decide on the alnico or ceramic. I know its a matter of taste but I think they both sound good. The guitar has a mahogany body with a fixed neck. I am just after your opinion guys if you can help. Thanks.

[Dave Sloven]

Personally I would go for the alnico one as it seems to be plenty tight enough and has enough of the character of other A5 pickups like the A-bomb for it to sound quite different from an EMG even though it can cover pretty much all of what an EMG can do.

[Slartibartfarst42]

I'd always go alnico rather than ceramic. The tone is simply better and the pickup is invariably more versatile.

[stevelightning]

Cheers guys. I was leaning that way it's just the sound clip on the bk site doesn't really sound as clear as the c hawk. I guessed it was just the recording that sounds a little quieter.  Thanks. On the emg note I don't want a pickup to sound like one as that's what I'm replacing. I want something really hard hitting that cuts through when palm muted.

[Slartibartfarst42]

Ceramics will always be tighter so in that sense you might argue that an alnico pup is less 'clear' but then you have to balance that against the quality of tone and versatility you're losing by going with ceramic. It's a balancing act based on where your priorities lie. It also depends a lot on the individual pickup. The Crawler has an incredibly rich and organic tone but it's also quite loose in the bass whereas an A-Bomb is at least as tight and aggressive as most ceramic pickups I've used.

[stevelightning]

So basically your saying I can achieve alot more with an alnico v ( as in tone wise) than I can with a ceramic. It's hard to decide coz when I listen to the sound clips the alnico sounds quieter and it sounds like it loses some umph compared with ceramic but when watching YouTube video comparing them they both sound bloody good. Thanks for your replies. I'm looking at ordering tomorrow and want to get it right.

[Telerocker]

If you play metal downtuned, go ceramic. If you play occasionally blues and clean stuff, I would pick the A-Bomb.

[Slartibartfarst42]

So basically your saying I can achieve alot more with an alnico v ( as in tone wise) than I can with a ceramic. It's hard to decide coz when I listen to the sound clips the alnico sounds quieter and it sounds like it loses some umph compared with ceramic but when watching YouTube video comparing them they both sound bloody good. Thanks for your replies. I'm looking at ordering tomorrow and want to get it right.

It all depends what you want. If you play a lot of Metal, especially high gain, go ceramic because it's tighter and the more gain you add, the less the tone of the pickup really matters as it's lost in all the distortion. Alnico will give you better tone and more versatility but you sacrifice some of that tightness. Having said that, even the alnico Black Hawk seems pretty tight to me.

[stevelightning]

Thanks. I don't play metal mainly thrashy 90s style punk so alot of fast palm muting.  The amp I play through is a blackstar series one 100w so it's quite ballsy. Just don't want a muddy sounding pick up and some do sound when doing fast pm's.

[Dave Sloven]

If you are playing hardcore punk I would seriously recommend the alnico magnet for the extra mids.  I am one of the few regulars here who plays that style and I would always recommend A5 mags for it.  The tighter A5 pickups in the BKP range like the A-Bomb and the A-Hawk are going to be tight enough for palm muting.  The only ceramic magnet I have is in my Cold Sweat equipped SG Standard, which I use for '80s metal like Judas Priest and Ozzy, and I don't notice a huge difference in tightness between it and the A-Bomb I had in it previously.  It's just a lot more mellow in the mids.

Out of the BKP contemporary range I'd say the ones that wouldn't be tight enough for you would be the Crawler, Holy Diver, and A-Pig.  Any of the others would be tight enough for this application.  There's more to it than just the magnet.

Like others have said either BH will be plenty tight enough, and I think you will find when you EQ your amp for hardcore the alnico one might even seem higher in perceived output just because it provides more of that mid-range rasp that you need for that style.

[stevelightning]

Thanks for that agent orange it's nice to get this info off someone who plays a similar style. Most the vids and samples are metal riffs so it makes it harder to judge for the style I play.  Although the metal riffs do sound good tho with most of the bk range.

[Dave Sloven]

Personally when I was playing in Terania (d-beat punk) I used a Stockholm P-90 for that 95% of the time.  Once I used my guitar with the A-Pig and another time I used my guitar with the A-Bomb.  All of them handled it pretty well and gave me the raw edge I needed.  Only one of our songs had palm mutes really but all of them seemed to handle that pretty well in D standard.  The palm mute part was like the main riff in Doom's 'Nazi Die', a xx5x5 d-beat pattern.  I've also played Celtic Frost and Ozzy on all of my guitars with no problems.  Our bassist (who hates metal) would always say 'what's this Pantera sh*t?' whenever i played a palm mute or a pinch harmonic, LOL.  I never played the really dry sounding palm mutes like you hear on the Aftermath clips though. I wasn't playing that kind of hardcore, I was playing hardcore punk (the '80s kind of genre).  But basically for any punk or hardcore genre except '77 punk I'd recommend A-Bomb, Painkiller, Stockholm, or A-Hawk as the ones to look at.