SG project - pickup advice

[Pickles]

Hi, I’m kicking off a bit of a Gibson SG repair/upgrade project and am looking for some pickup advice. I haven’t had the opportunity to try any BKPs first hand but heard and read a lot of good things so was really keen to try some out in the SG. The SG will spend the majority of its life in drop c or d standard. I’m currently leaning toward a ragnarok in the bridge and wondering if a juggernaut in the neck would be a good match for cleaner tones? Would the rag be a good fit for the sg to begin with? Thanks in advance!

[Dave Sloven]

I have a couple of SGs with BKP humbuckers in them, one of them in C standard

The C standard one has an alnico Warpig.  It is fine, but maybe the ceramic version would be better for this application.  If the Juggernaut set had been released when I bought the Warpig set I might have been tempted to combine a Warpig bridge with a Juggernaut neck.

The one in standard tuning has a Miracle Man, which I think is an excellent pickup for SGs.  While it is scooped in EQ the SG has a mid hump so the end result is balanced.  They also apparently work well in low tunings although I haven't tested this out.

[Pickles]

Thanks for the reply. I'll have to take a closer look at the miracle man. I'd been tossing up between a warpig and ragnarok for the bridge, but wasn't really sure if the ragnarok would be to mid heavy in an SG.

[Nolly]

I would definitely get behind the recommendation of the Miracle Man or Ragnarok in the bridge - with SGs it tends to be the upper mids that are more pronounced, where the Ragnarok and Miracle Man have resonant peaks lower down the spectrum so should balance nicely. I wouldn't describe the Miracle Man as scooped, it's really just that it punches more in the low mids where pickups on the lower output end of the contemporary range have more aggressive upper mids.
What kind of clean tones are you after from the neck position? Both of those bridge pickups are really powerful so you're going to need something quite hot to balance suitably, which will of course reduce the sparkly high end you might be after. If you're feeling adventurous you could consider an HSP90 in the neck position - something like the Mississippi Queen would deliver some gorgeous cleans and leads in your SG, and would balance out well (with two bar magnets feeding one coil, P90s drive a lot harder than their DC resistance might make you assume!)

[Dave Sloven]

I have found that my Cold Sweat neck matches the Miracle Man quite well in my SG Standard; SGs tend to suffer a bit from 'boomy neck / thin bridge' syndrome so you can afford to go for a slightly less powerful neck than the Miracle Man neck if you need to.  The Rebel Yell, Nailbomb, and Holy Diver necks might also match up okay with the MM, depending on your tastes.