Thanks for the comments guys, after coming back today & listening with fresh ears there
are differences so perhaps it wasn't a totally wasted effort :)
For sure it wasn't a strictly scientific test as the 3 guitars are so different, but then these clips & my "first impressions" posts are about how they sound in
my guitars. A few words about the 3 guitars I used here:
Charvel (PK) - maple neck-thru/rosewood fretboard, poplar body wings (if they're alder then it's a very dense piece of it), schaller floyd. This guitar weighs a ton & acoustically is the bassiest of the 3 with the most sustain & a thick dense tone, despite the woods & having a floyd.
Flying V (MM) - mahogany set neck/rosewood fretboard, mahogany body, tunomatic w/tailpiece. Quite light by Gibson standards with a vibrant, snappy sound. Acoustically it's the loudest electric I own (if that makes sense!)
Jackson (HD) - maple neck-thru/ebony fretboard, alder body wings, tunomatic w/string-thru ferrules. By far the lightest weight of the 3 guitars & the brightest acoustic sound too. See
this earlier thread about what the HD did for this guitar :)
So, perhaps some of these guitars have qualities that are offset by the pickup I've installed - i.e. it's not necessarily bassiest pickup in bassiest guitar & vice versa. Adding a Holy Diver clip was an afterthought, it's the odd one out with an Alnico V magnet, but I wanted to show that it is very much a
metal pickup that can do this kind of stuff.
FWIW, the Holy Diver is still my favourite BKP - it's a bit more "open" than MM or PK, I love its lead tone & IMO it's miles ahead of MM or PK for clean sounds. But if you mostly play the kind of riffing I've played here, then you won't go wrong with either MM or PK...