holy diver help thoughts and whatever else

[winterlong666]

So I've now tired 4 bare knuckle pickups in my guitars and love them all but one, and that one would be the holy diver.  I had bought a stone/ spanich revenge custom and was excited to that it came with bare knuckles especially the holy diver in the bridge because i liked the idea of this pickup. To my surprise I didn't really like it in this guitar, although playing higher sounded nice the low end kind loose and woolly. So I put a different pickup in the guitar and now the guitar is almost too bright.  Anyways I tried the pickup in several of my other guitars and always got a less than what I desired sound out of it. Including a all ash esp horizon that I usually think of as being a rather bright guitar, but total low mud. And I'd just assume this the character of this pickup but I always see it compared to a jb on here and in my experience sounds more like a super distortion minus the fuzziness. I actually think my a-bomb sounds more like a jb but tighter and not as sharp(love that pickup by the way). So what i'm asking is am I missing something? Is my holy diver just somehow not a normal or very good one? or is my evaluation basically right and its just not the pickup for me?   Also I play mostly thrash.

[ericsabbath]

maybe you just don't like it
in my experience it sounds the best with higher string/bridge setup and very close to strings
this makes it sound thicker, but also tighter in the picking response, and also hotter in the output perception

[Dave Sloven]

The Holy Diver to me is not really a 'thrash' pickup

Pickups in the range that fit that description would be the Cold Sweat, Miracle Man, Nailbomb, and Painkiller (different flavours of thrash, obviously).

[winterlong666]

maybe you just don't like it
in my experience it sounds the best with higher string/bridge setup and very close to strings
this makes it sound thicker, but also tighter in the picking response, and also hotter in the output perception

Yeah I liked it better really close to the strings and the bit airier quality of higher strings as well.

The Holy Diver to me is not really a 'thrash' pickup

Pickups in the range that fit that description would be the Cold Sweat, Miracle Man, Nailbomb, and Painkiller (different flavours of thrash, obviously.

Yeah I totally like the nailbomb better. Even the black hawk.

I assumed it's just not the pickup for me although it had several nice qualities. If only I was playing slower it would actually rule. It's just the people I saw saying it was like tweaked jb made me think I was missing something.  I really hear no jb in the pickup at all. And that's neither good nor bad. Just not the comparison I'd make, so it made me wonder if I was missing something. 

Thanks for your replies guys it was very helpful.

[mantrasky]

winterlong666, I have the Holy Diver Calibrated set in an Alder Strat style guitar and before I settled on them I went through a number of pickups, Duncan Distortion/JB/Pearly Gates-neck/'59/EVH/'79. The Duncan Distortion I preferred the most whereas the JB wasn't, the others were nice for different styles. The BKP I tried were MM/WP/HD/CS for me by far the HD in a band situation sounded and responded the best out of all the different pups, very vocal from smooth to aggressive depending on technique. I also really like the "Black Dog" in a Fender Strat for more of a vintage tone. Great Pickups!