Did you ever end-up trying a 57?
I have not , but I've always read people saying they are close to an 81 with a tad more lows and actually a bit more output.
57 is quite different from the 81. A lot more low-mids, a very different EQ profile. Thicker. But because of the steel in the 57, it's inherently more noisy than any other EMG. I have severe EM/RF pollution here and the 57 is so noisy, it's completely unusable. Only in my apartment, though. Everywhere else I've plugged in, the 81, GTV, JR, etc, are as quiet as a guitar could possibly be thru high gain, and the 57 has a noticeable but minor noise. But here, the noise from the 81, etc, is barely manageable and the noise from the 57 is so bad, it's audible over the guitar.
The 81 has a pronounced peak in the high-mids but is quite lacking in the low-mids. This is why a lot of people feel it to be 'thin' - it's not for a lack of bass, but of low-mids. And the harshness often complained of is from that high-mid peak, but not that alone, but with the high-mid peak AND the missing low-mids, the harshness becomes more pronounced.
I was really hoping to find something just like the 81 but with more in the low-mids to balance out the high-mids and give it some thickness. There's only one YT demo of the GTV, and it's compared to the 81, and from that one video, it seemed like the GTV might have been what I was after. But now that I have it, it just has way too much bass for a bridge pickup and is fairly scooped in the midrange. It does have a nice clarity, but the bass is overwhelming and with the scooped midrange it can get buried in the mix.
In comparisons of the 81 vs the JH Het set and the KHBB set, it seems like they took the 81 and boosted the bass and rolled off the treble. But I really think that simply boosting the low-mids is all the 81 needs to be made perfect and remedy the common complaint of 'thin & harsh'.
I also have a JR Daemonium set. This bridge pickup has much higher output than the 81, more bass, more low-mids, but can be kinda dark & boxy.
Another thing I noticed about the GTV is that it has slightly lower output than the 81.
I finally got a Fishman Modern ceramic humbucker yesterday to try for the first time. The older 2-voicing model. It also has a HF Tilt option that rolls off some treble, a low-gain option for voice 1, and the ability to coil tap either coil. It integrated into my solderless EMG pots/wiring just fine. I don't have any push/pull pots or switches yet, so I used the white & black EMG connect cables to extend the terminals for the V2, HF, & V1 lo-gain options out of the cavity/pickguard, then I used a red power distribution port (6 pins for the 9V) as a jumper to engage any combination of the 3 options.
This pickup has so much higher output than the 81 and GTV, and voice 1 is even higher output than the JR Daemonium. It's much more present in the midrange, a more balanced tone. And is much less noisy than the EMGs.
I have an EMG VMC, EXG, VLPF active tone, and ABC active balance control instead of a switch, and the Fishman works with all of these and with the EMG Daemonium still in the neck position. This is my favorite neck humbucker for clean tones so far. I haven't tried a Fishman in the neck, but I don't like alnico. My other guitar has an EMG H humbucker-sized single-coil in the neck with a GTV in the bridge for now. But I might just have to swap that bridge for another Fishman.
I did some comparison recordings of the GTV vs the Fishman and the bass in the GTV is so huge and distorted. Voice 2 on the Fishman has more bass than voice 1, but it's still not as much as the GTV. And the Fishman is just smooth under high gain, while the GTV is gritty. Yet the Fishman is much higher output.
