Wich BKP For my new custom Guitar !

[mickaelc]

Hi guys !

I'll own my own custom guitar really soon and I'm not quite sure about witch pickups i should go for...

It's a Mohagany body, Koa top, rosewood neck and fretboard !
Bolt on neck with floyd rose, this will be a shred machine so i need a great bridge pickup for fast clear legato run and stuff like that with a good mid range, the guitar will be plug in a Victory V30, fat brittish mid tone !
For the neck pickup it will be the Emerald, wich i aldready heard in this prototype guitar...
For the bridge i was thinking Holy diver, what you guys think ?

[Slartibartfarst42]

The Emerald neck and Holydiver bridge is one of the great BKP combinations so in that regard you can't go wrong. My only hesitation is that from the specs you mentioned, I'm anticipating that it will be a very warm sounding instrument so I think you might need something a bit brighter overall. I think that in your guitar, a Painkiller in the bridge might be a better option. You could still pair it with an Emerald neck, though a Cold Sweat neck would be a more obvious choice and is also an incredible pickup for shred.

[Dave Sloven]

Yeah, they do seem like they might be too warm and dark.  From the perspective of shred I also thought a Rebel Yell set might be good in this guitar.

[Nolly]

I would back the Holy Diver decision here - it's a fat mid voicing but since it's one the cooler end of the contemporary range the low end response is not extended enough to get flubby, and the treble is still fairly open. I've never suffered a lack of high end or muddiness with the Holy Diver in a Les Paul, quite the opposite really - I think they should do excellently in this guitar too.
The Painkiller and Rebel Yell are both fairly dry pickups with upper-mid emphasis, I don't think they'd be top choice for a predominantly lead-oriented guitar.

[mickaelc]

Thanks guys ;)

My luthier called me early this morning, he just received a holy diver bridge ! We'll try it this afternoon on my guitar ;) will give you my feedback ;)

[mickaelc]

Ok guys i couldn't wait anymore so i took my car and went try this pickup this morning ;)

So 1st of all i was impressed by the punch i got in my chest when i hitted a simple A chord... wow !
I should mention that those are my 1st bareknuckle pickups, i used to play only dimarzio or EMG on my Ibanez guitars...

So here is what i noticed immediatly :
_Great articulation on chords, i hear every string ring perfectly
_Great power, this felling comparing to the dimarzio... i don't talk about volume, but pure power, you get punch in the chest like i said earlier with the BKP
_This guitar is darker than my Alder/mapple Basswood/maple ibanez, but this is not a bad deal for my ears... my Jem was sometimes too bright in the higher strings that i needed to roll back my treble knob, i much more prefer the BKP high end, not agressive at all, i think it fit good in this wood combination !

But i needed some adjustment to get comfortable with the pickup :

_1st, i needed to raise fairly high the pickup to release the full power wich was not the case with the Emerald, the pickup seems to be very sensitive to the hight !
_Even with this full power mode, i needed to push the gain a little bit higher to be get comfortable with legato/tapping run, maybe because of the warmer/darker wood combination...
_i also noticed that a i get a better articulation on lead/solo when i roll back the mids on the amp ! Maybe i got to much mids in my configuration : Victory amp : brittish mid amp/V30 celestions/HD pickup...
_the major issue i had was strange to me : after those adjustment, i was clearly enjoying my lead tone ! Time to go clean just to hear, and what a surprise, the clean volume is really low ! Wow... i swapped instantly with another guitar, hit hard an A chord, feel the tube breakup, switch to my new guitar, hit the same chord but... not as loud than the dimarzio... ain't that strange ?
So i raised again the 2 pickups and it seems to be the solution, the cleans are not so agressive but this must be due to the character of the guitar, the warmer combination of woods !


So guys, what are your opinions on my little review ?

[Slartibartfarst42]

The Holydiver does work a lot better when close to the strings and I also found that it was a pickup that loved an overdrive pedal.

I don't quite get the clean issue you're referring to. If your clean tone comes from a different channel on your amp, can't you simply increase the volume of your clean channel? However it works, it's a matter of balancing the different volume components in everything you're using until it all works together. Anyway, it sounds like you're happy with the Holydiver/Emerald combo and it's not too dark. It's certainly one of the best pickup combinations that BKP do in my opinion.

[mickaelc]

Yeah i can turn up the volume on the clean channel of my amp but i needed to do it only with my BKP equiped guitar, but like i said i've resolved the poroblem by raising the pickup height again !

and do you think Painkiller bridge and Cold sweat neck on this dark guitar could work better for fast satriani/vai like legato ?

I Have an ibanez jem witch is a really bright guitar and maybe holydiver/emerald could sublimate this guitar... so i was thinking on putting this set in the Ibanez and put a Painkiller/Cold Sweat in the Mohagany one what do you think ?

[Slartibartfarst42]

While I happily accept that a Holydiver can work in a warmer sounding instrument, I do think it's natural home is in a superstrat style guitar and they tend to be a bit brighter. On that basis, the Holydiver/Emerald combo sounds like it's better suited to your Ibanez. In this guitar you need something brighter while retaining plenty of mids and there's more than one way to achieve this.

The Painkiller offers you the mids and the ceramic magnet will make things tight enough but it's a very different proposition to the Holydiver as it's more of a Djent pickup in many respects. It depends if that's what you're after but the more I think about it, it strikes me that anyone looking at a Holydiver, probably wants tone more than anything else so I'm going to go in a different direction.

You want mids, you want tone and you want something brighter and the obvious way to do that is to go with a lighter wind as hotter pickups are usually darker. Take a Holydiver and make it brighter overall and you end up with a Black Dog, which is also tighter while retaining loads of glorious tone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaqEET376-I

The Black Dog is used a lot for Metal because in many ways it's the best of all worlds.

[mickaelc]

Ok thanks for your advice i'm gonna check the Black Dog ;)
And what about the Miracle Man ? it seems to be great for shred according to the description on the website !

[Slartibartfarst42]

The Miracle Man has a lot in common with the Holydiver because despite its ceramic magnet, it sounds surprisingly warm and organic. By a long way it has the best ceramic tone I think I've ever come across. I don't normally like ceramic pickups as they're too cold and sterile but the Miracle Man is one that even I really like. It's also nothing likie as scooped as the EQ chart suggests. It does have mids, it's just that it tends to be focused a bit more on the lower mids and the scoop takes place in the upper mids. This is why it's the number one choice for neck-thru guitars as they're usually maple, which tends to naturally have upper mids anyway. Think of the Holydiver you tried, give it a bigger bottom end, more screaming highs for awesome solos, make it tighter and make it a bit more aggressive. Pinched harmonics are easy with this pickup. I think there have been a few reviews where it's worked very well in Les Paul guitars so it should be fine with yours, it will just sound a bit darker overall than the Holydiver, though that may not bother you with it being tighter and also having more highs.

Also sent you a PM on this subject.

[Telerocker]

I think you got the wrong pickup with that guitar and amp/speaker-combo. I guess the Rebel Yell would be a better choice.

[mickaelc]

Thank you guys for all your advices :) i contacted the BKP team they suggested me a ceramic like the MM, gonna check this out ;)