Suhr Doug Aldrich Set

The story goes something like this. The best shredder in my arsenal, an RG550 from 1993, used to be outfitted with a set of EMG's. I played it for years. I played the devil out of it. Finally one day one of my pickups went out. I knew it would happen. Tired of active pickups, I decided to switch to some passive ones. After researching a lot of sets at all price points, I decided to roll the die on a set of aldrich pickups from suhr. To be honest I didn't know what to expect. I was told they were aggressive and good for hard rock and metal so that was right up my alley.

Considering these are hand wired I think the price is fair. Though we'll see just how good the sound is. Initial testing was done through a Soldano SLO 100 through a mesa standard 412 with vintage 30s in a practice space so I could crank the amp.

The first thing that surprised me was how much beef these had. I was told they had a lot of high end and not much bottom going on in the bass but I kind of have to disagree with that. These have a good strong chug in the bass and I had to really lower the bass on my amp to get the bridge pickup to tighten up. But after the amp EQ was dialed up properly they sounded great. The pickups have a nice upper mid bite and a real sizzle to them. Rhythm and lead sounds awesome on the bridge pickup. It's a real high gain monster. Unfortunately I haven't been as impressed with the neck pickup and I feel like i need to adjust the height maybe. It's pretty muddy at times. I feel like maybe I should have a treble boost pedal to use for when I switch to the neck pickup. The good news is they seem to split reasonably well. This is something I like to get out of my high gain humbuckers even if the guitar is more a a shred type.

I also tried these with a JCM800 and they did well with that amp too. I'm glad I got these. They seem to be pretty nice especially for the price.