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wwhhhaatt « Good but not what I expected »
Published on 05/18/11 at 11:36Installed in the bridge position of a Carvin dc127 with and Alder and maple body matched with a maple neck and ebony board. Typically running into a Framus Cobra head and sometimes A Peavey 5150 or Hughes and Kettner triamp.
This pickup was recommended to me by a couple guitar playing friends of mine when I was looking to get out of the EMG active sound. I always check how a pickup sounds clean first to get a general idea of the EQ. I was really impressed with the clean tone of this especially considering I always hate the sound of bridge pickups clean. The pickup is warm and full and sounded kind of similar to my neck pickup which was a stock carvin at the time. I played around with the height for a bit and found I liked it best close to the strings to get a little more bite out of it.
Switching over to distortion and I quickly realized it wasn't going to work for what I do with this guitar. Low gain sounds were great and the pickup cleaned up nicely with the volume knob. The problem for me was with higher gain settings and faster chord riffing. Leads were still great sounding with high gain but riffs in the lower register were too muddy and lacked attack. The pickup just has too much fullness (sounds crazy I know) almost like the amp was getting too much signal even though it's not that hot of a pickup. Slow chugging riffs were very fat but any type of typical metal playing just didn't have the cut I need.I played around with the EQ settings for quite a while and got the pickup closer to what I need but after extensive tweaking I just felt it was not a good match. Once you start cutting bass and adding high mids with an EQ pedal the pickup starts to lose it's core sound and sound a little over processed.
If you're looking for a pickup versatile in the clean to mid gain styles I'd say give it a shot because it has a great character it just didn't do metal for me
This pickup was recommended to me by a couple guitar playing friends of mine when I was looking to get out of the EMG active sound. I always check how a pickup sounds clean first to get a general idea of the EQ. I was really impressed with the clean tone of this especially considering I always hate the sound of bridge pickups clean. The pickup is warm and full and sounded kind of similar to my neck pickup which was a stock carvin at the time. I played around with the height for a bit and found I liked it best close to the strings to get a little more bite out of it.
Switching over to distortion and I quickly realized it wasn't going to work for what I do with this guitar. Low gain sounds were great and the pickup cleaned up nicely with the volume knob. The problem for me was with higher gain settings and faster chord riffing. Leads were still great sounding with high gain but riffs in the lower register were too muddy and lacked attack. The pickup just has too much fullness (sounds crazy I know) almost like the amp was getting too much signal even though it's not that hot of a pickup. Slow chugging riffs were very fat but any type of typical metal playing just didn't have the cut I need.I played around with the EQ settings for quite a while and got the pickup closer to what I need but after extensive tweaking I just felt it was not a good match. Once you start cutting bass and adding high mids with an EQ pedal the pickup starts to lose it's core sound and sound a little over processed.
If you're looking for a pickup versatile in the clean to mid gain styles I'd say give it a shot because it has a great character it just didn't do metal for me