FourT6and2
Well-known member
Yeah, low-outputs rock through the VH4. But I also love the way a JB sounds. Don't think I would ever go higher in output than that, though.
Halikus
New member
So with all this talk of using low output pickups for the VH4 its got me wondering if Einstein will sound sweeter with some lower output pickups. And since I need to replace the stock pickups in my Ibanez1527 anyhow I thought I'd see what advice you guys can provide.
Currently I'm using relatively hot pickups all round from 17k(Tone Zone) - 25k(super3) Now I'm looking at the bareknuckle aftermath bridge and thats reading 14k, is this low enough or should I really be looking at 9-12k or even lower?
Currently I'm using relatively hot pickups all round from 17k(Tone Zone) - 25k(super3) Now I'm looking at the bareknuckle aftermath bridge and thats reading 14k, is this low enough or should I really be looking at 9-12k or even lower?
philbag
Member
Well the aftermath is extremely articulate apparently, I'm not sure if mixing it with the VH4 (highly articulate amp) would be too much articulation and sound strange? I suggest emailing Tim at BKP with information about your rig/guitar and he'll be able to suggest something nearly spot on for you.
FWIW - I use a bareknuckle piledriver in the bridge of my telecaster, it's 13k single coil and has tremendous clarity, thump and surprising amount of chunk (ch4 is alot of fun with it
).
FWIW - I use a bareknuckle piledriver in the bridge of my telecaster, it's 13k single coil and has tremendous clarity, thump and surprising amount of chunk (ch4 is alot of fun with it
).
spirit7
Active member
You should bear in mind that any weirdness caused by excessive output in the VH4 can be cured by using a decent boost.
durbodill
New member
philbag":ovagvuoq said:
Tastes differ. I personally am absolutely blown away by the sound of my VH4 through a 4x12 Orange cab w/V30s. Especially concerning CH 3, I couldn't imagine it to sound any better. And I use EMG's exclusively. There are so many variables involved in sound shaping and personal tastes, I just wouldn't make such a simple statement.
Just my 2c, though...
Till
philbag
Member
Agreed 
. Perhaps "massive, massive disservice" was a little strongly worded, however I only emphasised that fact due to the difference in tone I perceive between my EMG equipped guitars and my and my housemates passive guitars. It was surprising, in a way. Compared to my active guitars, my passive guitars with lower output pickups sounded larger/wider/fuller, felt more 'organic' (ergh, hate using that word) and noticeably more alive through the VH4. With further experimentation, it continued to illustrate how sensitive the VH4 tone is to different pickups while still retaining it's core voicing characteristic. It was great fun discovering all these new nuances that weren't coming through just using EMG's. However, the same could be said about using most pickups if you only used the same pickups in your guitars. At the end of the day, the amp and passive guitar combo felt more flexible in comparison, which was surprising because I was able to get quite flexible results with all my amps and my EMG guitars until then.
I definitely wasn't saying that EMG's sounded bad through it at all . I did continue to play my EMG guitars through my VH4 for the last year and a half, however the difference is definitely noticeable and personally, I just prefer the sound of the lower gain, passive pickups through that amp. As a result, now when I plug in active guitars and play, I feel I'm taking a kind of 'sonic step backward', so to speak. Just my opinion of course 
. Perhaps "massive, massive disservice" was a little strongly worded, however I only emphasised that fact due to the difference in tone I perceive between my EMG equipped guitars and my and my housemates passive guitars. It was surprising, in a way. Compared to my active guitars, my passive guitars with lower output pickups sounded larger/wider/fuller, felt more 'organic' (ergh, hate using that word) and noticeably more alive through the VH4. With further experimentation, it continued to illustrate how sensitive the VH4 tone is to different pickups while still retaining it's core voicing characteristic. It was great fun discovering all these new nuances that weren't coming through just using EMG's. However, the same could be said about using most pickups if you only used the same pickups in your guitars. At the end of the day, the amp and passive guitar combo felt more flexible in comparison, which was surprising because I was able to get quite flexible results with all my amps and my EMG guitars until then. I definitely wasn't saying that EMG's sounded bad through it at all
. I did continue to play my EMG guitars through my VH4 for the last year and a half, however the difference is definitely noticeable and personally, I just prefer the sound of the lower gain, passive pickups through that amp. As a result, now when I plug in active guitars and play, I feel I'm taking a kind of 'sonic step backward', so to speak. Just my opinion of course
durbodill
New member
I get your point, philbag. 
I'm definitely not at the end of the quest for the ultimate guitar tone (is anyone?) so I will keep trying different things and maybe check out passive pickups again. I switched to actives when my main amp was a Hughes & Kettner Triamp (great amp by the way). It was an experiment first, I bought an EMG 81 just to try it with my Les Paul. I wasn't that impressed with the tone first, it was the EMG 89 that won me over. The clarity in the clean channel and the flexibility of a combined single coil / humbucking pickup were exactly what I was looking for. Now that was with the Triamp a couple of years ago.
Right now - playing a VH 4 - I am totally happy with my distorted tone, but I still don't really feel at home in the clean channel. When I play it dry, it's just so super linear (don't know if that's the real word for it but that's the way it feels) and pretty much unusable for me as long as I don't add any effects. The H&K was a lot more HiFi, shimmering, glossy, whatever you might call it. If I could remotely reproduce that sound with a VH 4, I'd even go back to passive.
Gotta get some sleep now...
Greets,
Till
I'm definitely not at the end of the quest for the ultimate guitar tone (is anyone?) so I will keep trying different things and maybe check out passive pickups again. I switched to actives when my main amp was a Hughes & Kettner Triamp (great amp by the way). It was an experiment first, I bought an EMG 81 just to try it with my Les Paul. I wasn't that impressed with the tone first, it was the EMG 89 that won me over. The clarity in the clean channel and the flexibility of a combined single coil / humbucking pickup were exactly what I was looking for. Now that was with the Triamp a couple of years ago.
Right now - playing a VH 4 - I am totally happy with my distorted tone, but I still don't really feel at home in the clean channel. When I play it dry, it's just so super linear (don't know if that's the real word for it but that's the way it feels) and pretty much unusable for me as long as I don't add any effects. The H&K was a lot more HiFi, shimmering, glossy, whatever you might call it. If I could remotely reproduce that sound with a VH 4, I'd even go back to passive.
Gotta get some sleep now...
Greets,
Till
spirit7
Active member
Hmm, perhaps I've disproven my own theory: played my Ibanez J-Custom with a DiMarzio x2N bridge through Ch. 3 yesterday, everything at noon. Absolutely wailed.
Peter Diezel
Well-known member
durbodill":2j650lym said:I get your point, philbag.
I'm definitely not at the end of the quest for the ultimate guitar tone (is anyone?) so I will keep trying different things and maybe check out passive pickups again. I switched to actives when my main amp was a Hughes & Kettner Triamp (great amp by the way). It was an experiment first, I bought an EMG 81 just to try it with my Les Paul. I wasn't that impressed with the tone first, it was the EMG 89 that won me over. The clarity in the clean channel and the flexibility of a combined single coil / humbucking pickup were exactly what I was looking for. Now that was with the Triamp a couple of years ago.
Right now - playing a VH 4 - I am totally happy with my distorted tone, but I still don't really feel at home in the clean channel. When I play it dry, it's just so super linear (don't know if that's the real word for it but that's the way it feels) and pretty much unusable for me as long as I don't add any effects. The H&K was a lot more HiFi, shimmering, glossy, whatever you might call it. If I could remotely reproduce that sound with a VH 4, I'd even go back to passive.
Gotta get some sleep now...
Greets,
Till
Komm´ doch mit dem Amp und Deiner Gitarre mal nach Bad Steben
durbodill
New member
Lieber Peter,
Das werde ich sehr gern tun, und zwar nicht, weil ich etwa mit dem Sound unzufrieden wäre. Auch einfach mal so ;-) Sicherlich im Juli/August. Bis dann und vielen Dank für die Einladung!
Till
Das werde ich sehr gern tun, und zwar nicht, weil ich etwa mit dem Sound unzufrieden wäre. Auch einfach mal so ;-) Sicherlich im Juli/August. Bis dann und vielen Dank für die Einladung!
Till
O
Oz Hofstatter
New member
Peter Diezel":2ls6am3t said:
Ditto!
Oz
C-4
New member
It is only speculation on my part, but I believe that most commercial amps started needing higher output pickups back when Marshall was building amps in the early 1970's that could benefit from an added boost at the input stage due to the way music was progressing at that time. Hence, DiMarzio Super Distortion pickups and those other aftermarket higher wound pickups, and foot toys that followed.
Some of the younger players here may not have started playing when all that was available were stock Gibson type PAF pickups. I have used weaker version pickups all of my playing life, finding the higher output pickups less useful for getting the amp to wind up tight and sounding more natural. It is just my perception and how I hear things. The higher the pickup winds, the more un-natural and compressed the pickup made the amp sound to me.
Recently, I tried experimenting with PAF Pro DiMarzio pickups in my guitar and an Einstein combo by using a length of .042 guitar string cut to length of the 6 pole pieces rising out of the coils on my pickups. I tried every which way of setting this length of string across the bobbins and finally decided that to my ears, using two cut strings sitting on either side of the south coil pole pieces on the neck pickup reduced some of the lack of clarity I was finding in the front pickup. The cut length of strings stay in place due to the magnetics of the pickup holding the string steady.
Please note that different gauges of string size affect the response from the pickups I was using to do this. I used a thicker gauge to get more of a differing response from the pickup.
Just to note, I have gone through all of the adjustment phase of pole piece height, pickup height, et. al. and was using the neck pickup lowered as far from the strings as the set screw length would allow and I adjusted the individual pole pieces to taste for string balance. The addition of the cut string length actually cleared up a lot of the bassier response this particular pickup was giving me, and seemed to weaken the pickup response. I am not good with a soldering iron (ask Peter about this
) and cannot replace pickups in my guitar myself, so I choose pickups as wisely as I can.
I believe the next set of pickups I will get, at least for the front humbucking pickup, will be closer to the 6.5 mark with an alnico 2 magnet, to allow even more clarity and a more transparent response from the pickup. What this actually does is allow the amp more leeway in getting all the different tones I desire from it without putting limits on the amp due to the number of winds on the pickup. I still prefer the bridge pickup to be closer to 7.5-8, but it must sound as a Tele on steroids when the amp is cranked into saturation, and be clear and transparent without being harsh, when played clean.
This of course is just personal preference, and your results may vary, but I find that I have that much more flexibilty from the amp with very weak pickups that offer just enough balls when cranked through the amp to still allow articulation of the individual notes played in a saturated setting and offer the sustain and controlled feedback I desire, without sounding whimpy. The nuances this allows me in tuning the amp to the guitar and room have been very rewarding in what I am hearing from the amp.
Some of the younger players here may not have started playing when all that was available were stock Gibson type PAF pickups. I have used weaker version pickups all of my playing life, finding the higher output pickups less useful for getting the amp to wind up tight and sounding more natural. It is just my perception and how I hear things. The higher the pickup winds, the more un-natural and compressed the pickup made the amp sound to me.
Recently, I tried experimenting with PAF Pro DiMarzio pickups in my guitar and an Einstein combo by using a length of .042 guitar string cut to length of the 6 pole pieces rising out of the coils on my pickups. I tried every which way of setting this length of string across the bobbins and finally decided that to my ears, using two cut strings sitting on either side of the south coil pole pieces on the neck pickup reduced some of the lack of clarity I was finding in the front pickup. The cut length of strings stay in place due to the magnetics of the pickup holding the string steady.
Please note that different gauges of string size affect the response from the pickups I was using to do this. I used a thicker gauge to get more of a differing response from the pickup.
Just to note, I have gone through all of the adjustment phase of pole piece height, pickup height, et. al. and was using the neck pickup lowered as far from the strings as the set screw length would allow and I adjusted the individual pole pieces to taste for string balance. The addition of the cut string length actually cleared up a lot of the bassier response this particular pickup was giving me, and seemed to weaken the pickup response. I am not good with a soldering iron (ask Peter about this
) and cannot replace pickups in my guitar myself, so I choose pickups as wisely as I can.I believe the next set of pickups I will get, at least for the front humbucking pickup, will be closer to the 6.5 mark with an alnico 2 magnet, to allow even more clarity and a more transparent response from the pickup. What this actually does is allow the amp more leeway in getting all the different tones I desire from it without putting limits on the amp due to the number of winds on the pickup. I still prefer the bridge pickup to be closer to 7.5-8, but it must sound as a Tele on steroids when the amp is cranked into saturation, and be clear and transparent without being harsh, when played clean.
This of course is just personal preference, and your results may vary, but I find that I have that much more flexibilty from the amp with very weak pickups that offer just enough balls when cranked through the amp to still allow articulation of the individual notes played in a saturated setting and offer the sustain and controlled feedback I desire, without sounding whimpy. The nuances this allows me in tuning the amp to the guitar and room have been very rewarding in what I am hearing from the amp.
D
DvE
New member
Wow, nice post C-4.
If you like a lot of clarity I can recommend looking at Bareknuckle Pickups.
Although I am into the heavier stuff, they also make low-output pus.
What I really like about them is that they stay very clear and articulated even under tons of gain (and I like a LOT of gain )
Cheers, Dom
If you like a lot of clarity I can recommend looking at Bareknuckle Pickups.
Although I am into the heavier stuff, they also make low-output pus.
What I really like about them is that they stay very clear and articulated even under tons of gain (and I like a LOT of gain
) Cheers, Dom
angelspade
RT Kimg
I posted this over at the HC amp board...Somewhat related to this discussion about the VH4/EMG thing:
I appreciate the feed back and comparisons guys. In the demo video Hetfield mentioned that he was "testing" many (like 20) different prototypes of these pickups on the road. As we know, his "main" amp is now a Diezel VH4, so imagine that his taste test were performed through that amp. It would make sense that they took a little compession out of the pickups voicing as the VH4 is already compressed enough. It would also make sense that they tried to warm the pickup up, smoothed out the highs and took a little of the "supercharged", over the top qualities and added a more even and broader voice. I own a VH4 (great amp), and I will tell you that in my opinion an EMG 81 in the bridge does not work all that well with that amp (with the Herbert it's great). It's almost like the the 81 magnifies the characteristics of the amp that don't need it...The VH4 is already very tight, compressed with an aggressive top end. Long story short, it sounds like Hetfield and EMG may have addressed the qualities of the 81 / 60 that don't work all that well through the VH4. A lot of speculation on my part...Just a guess. I love my EMGs for the most part, but I have always wanted an active EMG that was a bit fuller, warmer and had some of the midrange characteristics that I associate with my Duncan passives. Look forward to hearing more reviews of this pickup before I pull the trigger...I'm still intrigued.
It seems there has been quite a backlash against EMGs over the last two years and I think that has more to do with amps than with the pickups. the EMG 81/85 were conceptualized and released to the market a long time ago (late 80's I believe). Back then most amps (especially when used for "metal") could really benefit from the additional attack, bite, gain and clarity that the active EMGs provided...They seemed to "push" your average Peavey, Mesa or Marshall just enough to add that tight, aggressive, ripping feel that made most of us love them to begin with. Well cut to the mid 2000's and most stock high gain amplifiers have MORE than enough gain (most have too much in my opinion), are signifigantly tighter, more compressed and have an inherantly aggressive voicing. You combine this with active EMGs, and the result can be over the top...Just too much of a potentially good thing (as is the case with the Diezel VH4). Add to the total equation the present "vintage craze" in both gear and music in general...And you have a lot of guys frowning upon the sound, look and general sentiment sorounding active EMGs. Just my thoughts.
In any case, if theEMG Het Set is a essentially an EMG 81/60 set that is slightly rounder, warmer and more organic...While mainting most of the qualities that I still love about EMG actives...Then I am most likely down for rolling the dice and dropping a set in one of my Explorers or Les Pauls as I belive they will get along better with my amps. Sorry for the pontification.
I appreciate the feed back and comparisons guys. In the demo video Hetfield mentioned that he was "testing" many (like 20) different prototypes of these pickups on the road. As we know, his "main" amp is now a Diezel VH4, so imagine that his taste test were performed through that amp. It would make sense that they took a little compession out of the pickups voicing as the VH4 is already compressed enough. It would also make sense that they tried to warm the pickup up, smoothed out the highs and took a little of the "supercharged", over the top qualities and added a more even and broader voice. I own a VH4 (great amp), and I will tell you that in my opinion an EMG 81 in the bridge does not work all that well with that amp (with the Herbert it's great). It's almost like the the 81 magnifies the characteristics of the amp that don't need it...The VH4 is already very tight, compressed with an aggressive top end. Long story short, it sounds like Hetfield and EMG may have addressed the qualities of the 81 / 60 that don't work all that well through the VH4. A lot of speculation on my part...Just a guess. I love my EMGs for the most part, but I have always wanted an active EMG that was a bit fuller, warmer and had some of the midrange characteristics that I associate with my Duncan passives. Look forward to hearing more reviews of this pickup before I pull the trigger...I'm still intrigued.
It seems there has been quite a backlash against EMGs over the last two years and I think that has more to do with amps than with the pickups. the EMG 81/85 were conceptualized and released to the market a long time ago (late 80's I believe). Back then most amps (especially when used for "metal") could really benefit from the additional attack, bite, gain and clarity that the active EMGs provided...They seemed to "push" your average Peavey, Mesa or Marshall just enough to add that tight, aggressive, ripping feel that made most of us love them to begin with. Well cut to the mid 2000's and most stock high gain amplifiers have MORE than enough gain (most have too much in my opinion), are signifigantly tighter, more compressed and have an inherantly aggressive voicing. You combine this with active EMGs, and the result can be over the top...Just too much of a potentially good thing (as is the case with the Diezel VH4). Add to the total equation the present "vintage craze" in both gear and music in general...And you have a lot of guys frowning upon the sound, look and general sentiment sorounding active EMGs. Just my thoughts.
In any case, if theEMG Het Set is a essentially an EMG 81/60 set that is slightly rounder, warmer and more organic...While mainting most of the qualities that I still love about EMG actives...Then I am most likely down for rolling the dice and dropping a set in one of my Explorers or Les Pauls as I belive they will get along better with my amps. Sorry for the pontification.
philbag
Member
Nice post angelspade, well said.
SonicPulverizer
Member
Ah, this is interesting to me. I noticed yesterday that P90s sounded much more pleasant than humbuckers on the VH4 I tried out. Possibly due to the lower output as suggested? They were stock p90s (seymour duncan) in a prs standard singlecut soapbar. Sounded ungodly fierce!