Another pickups thread

[King Chaos]

I have never changed pickups in my life, and have only heard people say "Seymore Duncans" and "EmG 81s" etc, but I really don't know shit about what's hot and what's not. I play metal primarily, sort of in the vein of mastodon, opeth and from time to time MESHUGGAH, but would like to be able to sound nice clean too of course.

Any recommendations for some quality but good value metal pickups?

I was looking at the lundgren pickups (the M6)... and I have to say, I'm impressed with it.

 

[King Chaos]

Oh yeah, and another question *hoping some absolute legend will take a minute to look in this thread and will aid me*... I want to tune in C#, what would be the best gauge to use to achieve this? I used 11s to tune in D (standard not drop)... but even then they felt a tad slack.

Sorry I double posted instead of editing, I sort of thought about it and realised it makes no difference whatsoever really...

 

[Inazone]

It depends on what kind of wood your guitar is built from, if you are picky about tone. Active pickups like EMGs will be pretty consistent in most woods, but passive pickups combined with certain woods can sound very different from one to the next. My favorites right now are the Duncan Full Shred and DiMarzio Steve's Special.

For tuning below D or using heavier than 11s, you should probably take your guitar to a tech for a setup, because your truss rod and intonation will need to be adjusted. That would be a good time and place to ask about string gauges.

 

[King Chaos]

Thankyou kindly. I'm not sure what wood my guitar is, but I'm upgrading a jackson performer. Chances are I'm just going to myself up a set of the EMGs... they seem like the most reliable and suited upgrade for my sound. I'll have to look into getting the intonation reset for C#... 11.5 gauge would probably be best, dunno how that'll work like.