« One trick pony EMG »

For many years EMG was the only name in the active pickups department. The EMG active pickups use a pair of rail magnets with a built in preamp. As you probably know active pickups require a battery to power them. Rail magnets are better than the normal magnets used in pickups because there is no gap in the signal. When you bend a string with normal pickups the string moves slightly away from the magnet that string is associated with, and you get a slight decrease in signal. With rail magnets there is no gap in detection of the string vibration. With EMG's they can also use weaker magnets due to the fact that the signal will be boosted in the preamp. With the weaker magnets the magnets cause less interference with the strings. The strings are very sensitive to how powerful your magnets are. High output passive pickups can reduce the sustain of your guitar with all the magnetic drag These active pickups run on a battery to power the preamp. You will need a 9v battery in your guitar to make these pickups work. The 60 is designed to be clean alternative to the 81 and the 85. This limits the pickups use in metal where you would normally use active pickups. This pickup is pretty much a neck only pickup. This guy does not have the output of the 81 or the 85 and does not sound that great with high gain distortion. This pickup is best for cleans. Its most famous user is James Hetfield from Metallica. He used this pickup in the neck position of his guitars for many years and used it for its clean tones. Clean tones are something that Is usually not too good in active pickups so EMG made one just for cleans. So this is a good neck position pickup if you are running an active bridge pickup and dont intend on using the neck position for any high gain stuff.