Big thanks for your reply. I am not sure the Nailbomb is working for me. When I bought the Jackson about 8 years ago I emailed Tim, saying my concern with the maple through neck and the Floyd Rose was that the sound would be a bit thin. Hence he recommended the Nailbomb. Living in New Zealand made it a bit tricky to send things back, and it certainly wasn't thin sounding. I would definitely like something smoother and sweeter. Just out of interest, what did you end up with in your SL3?
Sorry for the late reply but we're moving abroad so things are a bit hectic right now.
The A-Bomb wasn't 'thin', in my SL3, it just had a lot of upper mids that tends to sound a bit aggressive, which was accentuated in my opinion because maple neck-thru guitars tend to be middy, especially in the upper mids. I just thought the A-Bomb would be more at home in mahogany with a Les Paul probably being ideal so I'd buy another one, just not for a maple neck-thru. I tried two further pickups in that guitar and both were more successful. First up was the Holydiver, which sounds odd because that pickup has plenty mids but unlike the A-Bomb, the mids are more evenly spread instead of being concentrated in the upper mids. The 44AWG wire used in the Holydiver also helped to smooth things out as the 43AWG used in the A-Bomb tends to be more raspy. I liked the Holydiver a lot in that guitar.
Next up for the SL3 was a Miracle Man. This is going to sound odd because when you look on the website, the Holydiver is alnico with a load of mids while the Miracle Man is ceramic with scooped mids but in actual fact, these two have an awful lot in common. Both are very smooth and despite being ceramic, the Miracle Man is surprisingly warm sounding. The idea of it being scooped is a bit misleading; it has mids it's just that the 'mid mids' are moved a bit either side so it has a bit of a scooped feel while still having a mid-range presence. I was looking for a pickup that was essentially a Holydiver with a tighter and slightly more aggressive bottom end and more screaming highs for solos but findamentally in the same ballpark as the Holydiver. BKP said I'd basically described the Miracle Man and that's how it turned out to be. The Miracle Man is just a bit scooped where the SL3 has most of its mids so the two go together extremely well.
