« The godfather of active pickups »

When someone says active pickup you think EMG. When someone says EMG you thing the EMG 81. The EMG 81 put EMG and active pickups on the map in the guitar industry. 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. The 81 first came out in 1981 along with the EMG 85. The 81 is the more focused pickup of the two. It has a searing high gain metal sound. When I play music with a lot of palm muting I can get an awesome tone. The 81 really shines when you are playing tight chugging riffs. Tight chugging riffs and single note lines are what this pickup is best at. When you downtune all these traits just help to keep the sound nice and tight. It is very hard to get a muddy sound from this pickup. With the built in preamp it has a ton of output. Because of the built in preamp the magnets dont have to be as strong so there is less string pull so you get more sustain. Because the pickup is so focused on metal it may for some people be lacking in other areas. Sometime if I am playing with a clean tone I can feel like the tone is a little cold or sterile. It can also sound a little “off” when you are playing wide open chords. If you are looking for an active metal pickup for the bridge position this is the way to go.