Guitar Pickups

[Ermz]

Alright, a question to all you guitarists out there...

I'll start with some background;
At the start of this year (when I didn't know all that much about guitars) I bought myself an Epiphone Special SG model and an Epiphone 10 watt amp... at first, I was quite happy with the sound, but as I kept getting more and more into music I realized the great imperfections of my guitar and amplifier... in shorter words: it sounds like shit... so the other day I bought myself some Dean Markley strings, which give that nice metallic *twang*... I was hoping this would somewhat help my muddiness problem... but obviously not... so I figure my two major problems are my guitar and amplifier...

Now, since I won't have the money to go for another guitar or amp any time soon I ask you all.. what are good, affordable guitar pickups?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Todeswalzer]

Depends on what you`re searching after.. What sound do you want? At what cost? Passive or Active?
After replacing the crappy Ibanez stock pickups in my guitar the sound improved drastically.. I use EMG 81 (active) pickups in my guitar, and it sounds incredible good.. Killer distortions,harmonics and pretty decent clean-sound. But not everybody likes active pickups..
Seymor Duncan pickups are also nice... shred and invader type for instance. Di marzio also? Havent tried them out..

Good luck deciding !

 

[nevershine]

If the sound is what you say "muddled", you should get pickups with clearer sound more mid and treb maybe...
...You should check out for example Seymour duncan homepage. The are decent specs for all the pickups. Maybe it will help a bit.

 

[Ivanohe]

Seymor Duncan pickups are great
If you play metal ( what I suppose), choose double coiled pickups, it will give you a more powerfull sound when using distortion.

A good idea to get a better sound would be to buy a multi-effect pedal...

hope it helps...

 

[7 Dying Trees]

Pickup wise you won't achieve as much as buying a new amp. Pickups cost quite a bit unless you get them second hand, so investing your money in a better amp will pay of a lot more than buying new pickups, seriously. Once the amp is sorted, then maybe worry about pickups and the guitar. You won't really get much out of new pickups if the amp is still shit.

For the rest, I quite like EMG's (81 for bridge, 89 for neck) and DiMarzio's as well. Seymour Duncans I've never tried but am planning to.

Good luck anyways!

 

[Ermz]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone... I'm still trying to figure out what I'll do.

 

[bleed for me]

the two big pickup companies are seymour duncan and dimarzio. emg's are good for metal too but they only have active pickups, which mean that they need a battery to work. since your epiphone doesn't have a battery slot in it, you'd have to get work done on your guitar to cut one in and have it rewired and all this sutff that will cost alot and can effect the resonance of your guitar. so basically you need to get yourself passive pickups.


as for pickup models, check out the full shred, invader and dimebucker by seymour duncan and the steve's special and x2n by di marzio


i myself am gonna get a steve's special in a couple days to put my ibanez rg.

 

[Autumn Falls]

I just want to make a quick note. If you want the best neck pickup ever made I suggest you get the Air Norton by DiMarzio. It quite rocks.

DiMarzio pickups are recommended by me.

Brandon

 

[despair]

10W amp? ehm... im sorry, i think nothing would help with this amp :\

 

[Ermz]

Yeah despair, nothing WILL help the amp, haha, that's the problem. I was thinking about getting a decent distortion pedal to help it out a bit, coz the onboard gain just sounds like 'a siren trying to fuck itself'. But thanks alot for the suggestions people... I'll look into Seymour's and DiMarzio's.

 

[Punisher]

try emgs. 81 for the neck and 85 for the bridge. great sharp sound and never muddy. some might thing they have to much treble in the sound but i think that's awesome.....

 

[Ermz]

Yeah I think some more treble would be nice, but as bleed for me said, I can't really go into active pickups right now... I don't really know though, I'm thinking about just leaving it, saving up some money for a real guitar, amp and THEN actually replacing the stock pickups. THANKS A HEAP FOR THE SUGGESTIONS THOUGH PEOPLE! I'm gonna save this thread for future refference...