Need Pickup Suggestion For Modern Hard Rock Record

[lolzgreg]

SD JB. can't go wrong with that. cheap too. make sure you have a stand alone tone control for that p'up for max flexibility.

Bullseye!

 

[se7en]

Hard to beat Motor City 2nd Degree Blackbelts for modern rock. I have them in a LP Custom...

 

[ericsabbath]

bare knuckle holy diver
sounds huge without being flubby or too high output
just a fat and clear midrange and smooth high end
best pickup for modern rock I've tried (despite of its name)
it's loosely based on the oldest JB, but cleaner, fatter and less trebly
the clean tone is awesome and it sounds very open on chords through distortion
you can hear every note, unlike the JB

I'm still waiting for my motor city afwayu/2nd degree blackbelt set, so I can't comment on those yet
from clips, I think the Afwayu would be in the same ballpark of the holy diver
and considering Jerry Cantrell uses the Afwayu and that the holy diver sounds PERFECT for his tone, I think they must have something similar

 

[nbarts]

from clips, I think the Afwayu would be in the same ballpark of the holy diver

I certainly hope not!

I don't know the old JB, but the HD sounds nothing like the new JB to my ear.

 

[MichaelG]

bare knuckle holy diver
sounds huge without being flubby or too high output
just a fat and clear midrange and smooth high end
best pickup for modern rock I've tried (despite of its name)
it's loosely based on the oldest JB, but cleaner, fatter and less trebly
the clean tone is awesome and it sounds very open on chords through distortion
you can hear every note, unlike the JB

I'm still waiting for my motor city afwayu/2nd degree blackbelt set, so I can't comment on those yet
from clips, I think the Afwayu would be in the same ballpark of the holy diver
and considering Jerry Cantrell uses the Afwayu and that the holy diver sounds PERFECT for his tone, I think they must have something similar

I find the Afwayu to be quite a bit meaner sounding than the HolyDiver. Completely different animals because of the mids structures to my ear.

Lots of good suggestions above. Looking at the OPs list of amps there is plenty of gain on tap, so my personal idea of a wall of sound would involve a lower output pickup to reduce the compression as much as possible. 2nd blackbelt would certainly work here, as would a MCP Angeldust or Detroiter... but also have a look at the WCR icebucker. It's lower output than you might think considering the music that Iced Earth produces, but it's plenty tight and open sounding with lots of harmonic grind. Apparantly it's a tweaked Godwood.

The basic problem is that there are too many really good choices!

 

[fearhk213]

Like mentioned above, the Warpig IS a wall of sound. Just a great full, crushing, grinding tone. The WCR Icebucker is awesome too. No where near the power of the Warpig, but every bit as good. I think both of these pickups would fit your bill well, but they definitely don't sound anything alike. You might want to search this forum because there was an Icebucker clip, but that's the only one I know of. There are plenty of Warpig clips on the BK forum.