Looking for pickup advice

[Headof75]

Bottom string = lowest. Sorry, got those the wrong way round - 3/32" on lowest pitch string and 1/16" on highest.

Generally sounds like you're doing the right things, altho' pickup may be a little high if you've been measuring from unfretted strings. At the end of the day the measurements are just guidelines, but they seem to work pretty well in my experience.

You're also right, the Full Shred has a higher output than JB so you may feel the need to back off on volume, but this might be where you are losing 'tightness' as you won't then be driving your amp so hard.
I use an Invader, which has very high output but I find that if I roll off the volume it starts to get loose and flabby. It's an all or nothing kind of deal.

 

[Morgan138]

Thanks, I really appreciate the help.

Now I'm wondering if measuring the two guitars against each other isn't just a fundamentally bad idea - it's not like I break strings often, or play so many shows that I need to have a backup guitar I can drop into my rig without having to adjust anything.

Maybe it would be more interesting to try something totally different - I've always wanted to try EMGs, and Breadwinners were the first guitar to have active pickups in the early 70s (I think)...

 

[viggen666]

I like the fullshred alot in my les paul, no lack of bottom there, and really clear.
the invader was pretty cool too, keeping that one in my flying V, that guitar has less bottom than the les paul, matched excellent with the fatter sound of the invader.

Jb was cool too in my Jackson Soloist i used to have, but no succes in my V, matching pickups with guitars can be lot's of trial & error i've found out, and some guitars just stay mediocre, no matter what you put in them.

 

[JBroll]

Passive pickups will only enhance certain tones already found in the wood and build of the guitar, where as actives completely mask the guitars natural tone.

Bullfuckityshit. They're a coil around a magnet, not a tonewood-deathray-of-doom. This is a stupid myth that needs to die and shows exactly why one should always assume guitarists to be full of shit. If anything, the reduced coil count shows a clearer picture of everything, as an electronic preamp is much cleaner, clearer, and less 'smudgy' than a bunch of coils.

The Bare Knuckle and Nailbomb are made by some UK company, right? I'll look into those, although I'm guessing they won't be cheap in the States.

Bare Knuckle Pickups is the brand, the Nailbomb is one of their products.

Another thing, are you paying any attention to the output of the pickups?

There are these little things called 'gain knobs' that render output all but irrelevant. Go for character.

Also, the 80s JB pickups and today's JB pickups are a bit different, if I'm not mistaken - now they're wound hotter, and as a result can be a bit 'flubbier'.

Jeff

 

[Tommy Gun]

Bullfuckityshit. They're a coil around a magnet, not a tonewood-deathray-of-doom. This is a stupid myth that needs to die and shows exactly why one should always assume guitarists to be full of shit. If anything, the reduced coil count shows a clearer picture of everything, as an electronic preamp is much cleaner, clearer, and less 'smudgy' than a bunch of coils.

Thanks Jeff, but someone already got me on that one.

 

[JBroll]

You were asking related questions.

The pickup thing is really very simple. What you have is a bunch of coils around a magnet, or in the active case a few coils around a magnet and a preamp. The strings' vibration, which is influenced by everything from the strings themselves, the build and woods, and the player's style, causes an electrical charge to come about in the field caused by the coils and magnet before being sent to the output jack (passives) or a preamp and then the output jack (actives) - there's no secret ingredient that makes something sound more 'real' or hide the woods being used or suck all the tone away or use a bunch of little gremlins that replace the sound captured by the pickup with some other monstrosity that makes you sound like everyone else.

While you did get called out on it earlier, and you might think you fixed things with another mostly-misinformed explanation that still used an ungrounded assumption (namely 'actives don't depend as much on the wood in use'), there's not enough critical thinking going around and too much dependence on the word of other guitarists who know nothing about what they're talking about. BAD combination.

Jeff

 

[Tommy Gun]

I see your point.

 

[NickL]

Actually I explained that actives DO depend on the wood in use. Read my post again.

 

[JBroll]

I'm not going after you. You did fine, and may have earned a biscuit.

My point is that there is actual science behind this stuff and critical thinking should ALWAYS be used over the word of other guitar players.

Jeff

 

[NickL]

I'm actually not sure if I was talking to you or Tommy Gun.

Either way, I agree. We should all be checking out and comparing instruments whenever the chance arises.

 

[Tommy Gun]

Yeah, totally. And I fully admit that, 9 times out of 10, I just do what Seymour Duncan info tells me to. Probably why I've stuck with the JB for SOOO long and never really experimented with anything else. If I sweat a JB to death, I don't really do any window shopping. I just go and buy another JB.
Don't get me wrong, I love the JB. But I haven't tried to find out if there was anything else I'd like more.

 

[NickL]

I'm not really sure why I've owned nothing but EMGs... It must have something to do with me being a Metallica fanboy in grade school

 

[Morgan138]

Wait, are actives really underwound compared to passives, with the preamp making up the volume difference? I had no idea, and that's interesting.

 

[Headof75]

No.

Have a look here, that way you're not just taking another guitarist's word for it.

http://www.emginc.com/support.asp

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_(music)

 

[JBroll]

I should clarify: they're louder than a lot of pickups with comparable impedance (and yes, we all know that impedance doesn't measure output reliably, but coil count - especially where coil wires really don't change much - isn't too far off), as instead of just tacking on more coils they use active electronics to make the output obscenely high.

Jeff

 

[Morgan138]

Sorry if this is obvious, but does the fact that they have fewer windings mean that they get the clarity and dynamics you're supposed to get out of less-hot pickups, but with the preamp providing the volume that you'd normally get out of a super-hot pickup?

I'm interested in the (more or less) scientific ways actives are different from passives aside from their volume.

 

[AmirH]

I think it's more that you don't get the same type of compression as with a hot passive, which is why actives tend to be so clear. In terms of dynamics- not quite. You can get a great piano like clean from an 85 neck, but generally they output quite a lot and are less sensitive to the volume control. I like actives, but I actually far prefer a low output passive to just about anything. In the next day or two I'll be making some preliminary clips of my mesa and I'll do a comparison between an emg 81 and a seymour Jazz bridge- let you guys be the judge.

 

[Tommy Gun]

I think it's more that you don't get the same type of compression as with a hot passive, which is why actives tend to be so clear. In terms of dynamics- not quite. You can get a great piano like clean from an 85 neck, but generally they output quite a lot and are less sensitive to the volume control. I like actives, but I actually far prefer a low output passive to just about anything. In the next day or two I'll be making some preliminary clips of my mesa and I'll do a comparison between an emg 81 and a seymour Jazz bridge- let you guys be the judge.

So, you'll be making some clean channel clips then? If so, that's awesome. Bring it.

 

[viggen666]

using duncan neck pickups in the bridge can work pretty well too.
tried a full shred neck in the bridge last week, sounded amazingly clear and bright.

 

[Morgan138]

So I think for now the solution is going to be putting the JB in the mahogany guitar and the Full Shred in the basswood. They're both in the same general ballpark now, but still have their own tone. The basswood Jackson + Full Shred has a slightly thicker and warmer low end and midrange, while the mahogany Breadwinner + JB has a tighter low end and more clarity up high.

I think the reason this threw me for such a loop was that I'd been using fairly similar guitars for the past 5+ years (SGs and the Breadwinner) and didn't realize how huge a difference the basswood would make.

Thanks for all the suggestions and advice, this thread was really helpful. I can definitely imagine actives sounding great in a basswood body, but maybe I'll wait and try them in a nicer, future guitar.