Which pickup should I go for, Crawler, Nailbomb, Aftermath?

[Starfighter]

Im about to build a superstrat with swamp ash body / Floyd Rose. I want a hot pickup, some aggression while retaining good harmonics. The kind where sustained notes bleed into a harmonic feedback, you know what I mean. A fine reference point is Accept 80s sound, ballsy, melodic, crunchy and no offensive mids/highs or booming lows. Wolf Hoffmann used EMG81 back then, but I already have a superstrat with EMGs.

My nr1 guitar has VHII which is awesome and I love it but it doesn't do high gain fast riffs. Becomes mushy and no obvious note separation. Dont have this problem with my EMG or SH5 loaded superstrats.

My research has narrowed me down to: ceramic Nailbomb, Crawler, Aftermath. The Crawler clips have super PAF voicing that has a special place in my heart, but I wonder if this pickup is too tame for heavy oldschool riffing and crunchy big chords. Crawlers technical specs at a quick glance seem to be quite powerful. Nailbomb seems to be the logical choice here as that one is told be exactly the type of oldschool / modern sound Im after and it definetly has the required power. Aftermath is an all modern pickup, but the sound clips are pretty good, it might just be the thing.

Pickup must be somewhat versatile as I want to play singing harmonic leads along with ballsy crunchy riffs.

Any help here will be appreciated.

[timmy_b]

For the kind of response that you're looking for, I would definitely stick to ceramic models and my instinct would be that the aftermath would give you the most gutsy tone for the kind of genre that you're aiming at and, indeed, will give you a closer output level to an active pickup, so your whole rig will respond in a more similar way with that pickup. The ceramic Nailbomb is definitely a great option, but does have quite a distinctly sharp high end, which might not be quite right for this. The Aftermath is much more midrange focused, so lends itself more to a tone where both the lows and highs are kept under control.

[Starfighter]

For the kind of response that you're looking for, I would definitely stick to ceramic models and my instinct would be that the aftermath would give you the most gutsy tone for the kind of genre that you're aiming at and, indeed, will give you a closer output level to an active pickup, so your whole rig will respond in a more similar way with that pickup. The ceramic Nailbomb is definitely a great option, but does have quite a distinctly sharp high end, which might not be quite right for this. The Aftermath is much more midrange focused, so lends itself more to a tone where both the lows and highs are kept under control.

Thank you for the reply. My only worry with Aftermath is it seems to be mostly favored by Djent and chug chug guys, which is something I do not do. Will Aftermath work with old school 80s type of metal?

[timmy_b]

yeah, absolutely! No pickup is going to lock you into a certain genre, although they certainly might have particular elements that make them popular within a certain scene.

Check out the video that Simon McBride did - not particularly the genre that you're talking about, but a good example that they are by no means a plug-in-djent pickup!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s4O6fYjlKk