EMG81: love/hate relationship

Aynirar27 said:
Any EMG guys try the Fishman classics?
I couldn’t get on with the moderns at all, and I’m not totally sold on the classics, but they are by far my favorite actives so far. They don’t “sound” overly active, they just “act” active if that makes any sense
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The Classics are radically different, IME. They sound like a totally different breed of actives. I'm not going to say they sound 100% passive, but they've certainly not got the EMG bandpass EQ whatsoever.
 
valve said:
i didn't mean you specifically. If it's mid 90s of course it's not the "quick connectless" ones.

The earliest EMGs with the cable coming out of the Epoxy are not the "non solderless". (There where tan and then black ones). I would call them hardwired or without connector(/quickconnect)?
It's NOT clear what SBlue is refering to.

Did the solderless coming mid 2000s??? really change the sound? Will Pickups coming from 2001 sound different in a guitar wired for EMGs since 90s really sound different to Pickups from the 90s
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It's really simple... if they don't need solder, it's "solderless", and if they need solder to install it, it's "not a solderless", which is the same as "non solderless".
How come the early epoxy ones, both the black and tan, are not "non solderless", if they require soldering to install it?
I don't know exactly when the "solderless"(the ones with quick connectors) came out, but my ZW set, from 2007/2008, already had the quick connectors.
 
If that‘s what you are talking about, I take everything back.
I though you where talking about the left ones, since the tan ones always come with wire out of epoxy and not with the connector.

But I was under the impression that the ones without the connector are the „holy grail“, of course they are also non solderless, but it‘s a bad discriminator since non solderless is everything from the 80s to 90s.
And I still doubt that just when they changed pots to solderless that actually something changed with the pickups
 

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valve said:
If that‘s what you are talking about, I take everything back.
I though you where talking about the left ones, since the tan ones always come with wire out of epoxy and not with the connector.

But I was under the impression that the ones without the connector are the „holy grail“, of course they are also non solderless, but it‘s a bad discriminator since non solderless is everything from the 80s to 90s.
And I still doubt that just when they changed pots to solderless that actually something changed with the pickups
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The ones without the Connectors are the Holy Grail.
 
Aynirar27 said:
Any EMG guys try the Fishman classics?
I couldn’t get on with the moderns at all, and I’m not totally sold on the classics, but they are by far my favorite actives so far. They don’t “sound” overly active, they just “act” active if that makes any sense
Click to expand...
I have been curious about the Classics. I have the Moderns, but I do find them kind of cocked wah squaky. Even compared to EMGs. I wonder how the Classics are different.
 
Shask said:
I have been curious about the Classics. I have the Moderns, but I do find them kind of cocked wah squaky. Even compared to EMGs. I wonder how the Classics are different.
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I'd say the Classics are closer to passives in feel and tone, just with the typical Fishman clarity and consistency.

Voice 1 is kind of like a more detailed, less bassy Duncan '59 set.

Voice 2 on the bridge pickup is kinda like a more even/less spikey JB with some extra output. Voice 2 on the neck pickup I don't know what it's supposed to be. On clean, it sounds like it has a very narrow spike in the treble frequency giving it kind of werid chimey top, and distorted, that high-end spike is kinda less emphatic, and is just really round and dark. I honestly find Voice 2 on the neck pickup kind of unusable, TBH, but on the bridge pickup, it kills.

Voice 3 is supposedly a Fender-esque single coil voicing. It's cool, and much better than splitting an actual '59, which sounds horribly anemic, IMO. Fender-esque single coils are thin indeed, but they're certainly not split '59 levels of thin.
 
I'm not sure how the preamp works on Fluences, honestly.

If you record DI's with them, you can clearly see them clip/compress at almost the same level as EMG's, so their actual headroom is not really much greater, if any. But when you pick hard, you never actually hear them crunch up or distort the way EMG's do.
 
Rex Rocker said:
I'm not sure how the preamp works on Fluences, honestly.

If you record DI's with them, you can clearly see them clip/compress at almost the same level as EMG's, so their actual headroom is not really much greater, if any. But when you pick hard, you never actually hear them crunch up or distort the way EMG's do.
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That "Crunch up" Or Distort i think is what makes me not enjoy EMG's like i did when i was younger. The Crunch up to me resides in the Higher Frequencies & sometimes gets labeled as sizzle....which i don't like on the lower strings.
 
Bardagh said:
That's surprising, they sound very different to me. The 57 has less of the low end and high end filtered out, so while it is not "scooped" it has a wider ranged sound compared to the 81. I've got the 81 in two guitars and the 57 in one at the moment, and the 57 sounds noticeably different and for whatever reason pushes amps harder. I have to dial in less gain to get a similar level of saturation with the 57 vs the 81, and I do dial the EQ in a little differently as well.
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Really? I notice the high end but not so much any added lows, maybe it was just the guitar it was in?? I do notice the 57 maybe being a little bit hotter than the 81, but not by much. That said, i've got the older 81's in my guitars, ya know the block logo ones, they seem to sound a bit different than modern 81's... they changed something about them around 2013 or so. Oh, also, i disconnected the tone control on the guitars I have 81's in, that gives them an extra 3db's of ouput.
 
Detroit1973 said:
That "Crunch up" Or Distort i think is what makes me not enjoy EMG's like i did when i was younger. The Crunch up to me resides in the Higher Frequencies & sometimes gets labeled as sizzle....which i don't like on the lower strings.
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That's part of what makes EMG's EMG's, that's for sure.

They crunch up on all strings, though. I'm not sure they even crunch up during solos. If they do, I don't think it's as much as when playing rhythm. I don't think have they have so little headroom to clip on solos which are 99% of the time not nearly as loud as strumming power chords or down picking palm-mutes like a caveman.
 
So back to my original question:
did undust my Mesa Mark, and the bass on the PRE EQ does what i want to the distortion.
Lower the bass and the distortion gets fine grained and smoother (maybe not the best wording). Raise the bass and i gets more raspy and rougher.
Since in the Mark series, the controls are very early in the preamp, the pre EQ settings have a drastic effect on the distortion (They even changes the amount of distortion).
So to get the same effect with passive PU with "regular" amps i guess my only options are EQ-pedals/boosts and the passive Highpass in the guitar itself (but the cutoff freq. will be amp input impedance dependant for the passive solution).
This weekend i might actually find the time to try it
 
I absolutely love my ESP with the EMG81/85X combo with the 24V mod. Sounds mostly the same with slightly more output and a little more harmonics. Still tight and ferocious sounding under high gain.
 
My problem with the Fishman Fluence stuff is the ones I’ve tried are insanely bright, like strat bridge pickup bright. They’re improved if you activate the “high frequency tilt” on the pickup’s circuit board. I do otherwise like the Keith Merrow sig model Fishman pickup.
 
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