Which PU for a Schecter Demon?

[Dave1978]

I was thinking about upgrading my guitar lately, since I like the sound of my cheap Santander Les Paul with Seymour Duncan Invader PUs much more then the tone of my Schecter Demon with Duncan Designed PUs (Blackout clones).

The Demon 6 has a basswood body, a maple neck, a rosewood fingerboard and a 25.5 scale.

I'm playing music in the style of Paradise Lost or Katatonia. I need overtones & sustain, but a bity and aggressive rhythm sound as well. What set of PUs would you suggest?

 

[EffigyForgotten]

D-Sonic is what Anders from Katatonia uses, good overall sounding pickup that works in basswood. You might want to look into a crunchlab as well, its a little tighter and sounds better with leads and open chords.

Anders also uses the duncan distortion but I think that would be a bit to much for your guitar, the distortion has a crazy mid spike and not that much low end while basswood is pretty flat other than a mid spike and maple necks are usually brighter than say a mahogany neck.

 

[nw-productions]

Yes had the same problem - those duncan designed pu's suck. I built in some EMG81 (in my case the 7 string version) and the sound was so much better. Now i play a Schecter Hellraiser c7 with emg707tw and i never heard any better pu (even splitable) the only thing whats not perfect with them is that they are likeley to have some scratch noises if you come to near to the bridge humbucker while playing. If i try any new pus i will try the Duncan Distortions but they look awful without a cover imo.

 

[Backe]

Anyone who feels the need to use an abbreviation for a 6 letter word - in a thread topic - should seriously plan his or her life better. Because if you don't have the 0.72 seconds it takes to spell out the word 'pickup', then the time you're spending pondering the matter of guitar pickups is clearly too much. Maybe if you postponed your bedtime by a few seconds you wouldn't have to confuse the thousands of audio engineers lurking this forum daily by using abbreviations for words that are neither commonly used nor difficult/tiresome to spell out.

If you're looking for sustain, nothing beats active pickups with a fresh battery. Anything with a price tag that doesn't scream "oh, what a bargain" will do. Once you're playing in the quality pickup league and start switching between brands, you'll realize that a guitar pickup is responsible for about 2% of the guitar sound going "to tape", like Wagener says, whereas the mic placement on the speaker is responsible for about 80%.

My recommendation would be the EMG81, or since it's a 5 character term we can call it E for short. The E truly is the most affordable, reliable and versatile pickup out there. It's the missionary position of guitar pickups if you will. It's not exotic and hand-wired in some basement in the UK and tie-dye painted like a 70's Volkswagen Type 2, but it gets the job done every time. So go buy the E, it's a great PU for your G.

 

[EffigyForgotten]

He isn't playing death metal guys, the EMG 81 sucks terribly with open chords and leads and has a sole purpose for playing the lowest string as fast as possible, and it sounds good recorded yes, but it sounded sterile as a terminator while playing by yourself.