I know i have been going after this topic for a long time but i simply cant decide so please help me. After searching a while and a bit of research i found that the dimarzio evolution in the neck and the BKP painkiller in the bridge are good for me. But one can only know so much from online reviews, that is the risk involved with pickups anyway. The only place i can get the evolution is bajaao. I've had a bad experience with them recently i called them up before placing my order to conform if they have the pickup. They said the dimarzio pickups are imported on per order basis so the pickup i order will have to come from america. They have given an estimate of 20 days for delivery. And then there is the choice between the regular and the f-spaced version. The price difference is of Rs.800 between the two. My guitar has a nut width of 43mm and width at last fret 58mm. The stock pickup i have now in my guitar is regular spaced and i can clearly see the last three strings not lying exactly over the pole. The pickup itself is inclined from the low e to the high e. So what do i do, buy the regular or the f spaced version? Then is the other question of price, the f spaced version costs 6100, the painkiller bridge costs 8112. I emailed and asked bkp people which pickup sounds closest to the evo, they said it is the painkiller. So now i am not able to decide if i go for the painkiller set which will cost around 14k(both f-spaced) same as that the evo and painkiller bridge will cost. Everyone i have asked says BKP's are superior to Dimarzio's and SD's so i'm not sure what to do. Sigh... why does choosing the right pickup have to be so difficult?
Measure the distance between the high & low E strings(1st & 6th string) over at the pole piece area of the neck and bridge pickups. Both the slug side & the coil side. Check that with the pickup dimensions available for the regular & F-spaced from Dimarzio or BK or Duncan. It doesn't matter if the A,G,D,B strings are not lining up exactly at the center of the pole piece. It is a problem if the last outer strings are either off or at the very edge of the pole piece. In that case for the high 'e' string downstrokes will sound weaker compared to the upstrokes, and the reverse will happen with the low 'E' string. In most cases you only need F-spacing for the bridge pickup if it has a Floyd/Trem equipped on it, and even then sometimes the strings may not line up exactly at the center of the poles. The neck is most of time regular spaced, but do measure & check to be on the safer side. There is no increased price for a regular or F-spaced dimarzios or duncans, they sell for the same rate, only covered & coloured ones would cost differently here. Not sure on the BK's. Bajaao prices are weird, you are better off having someone carry one home for you for 45% less than buy from them right now. For the price you are paying, may as well get the BKs since it's just 2k more. It's scatter wound by hand so there's that versus machine wound, in a way you get a custom pickup built for you if you go the BK route. But that 6k is way high a price for the Evo. Your relative or friend would be able to pick one up for half of that used on ebay in US or buy one new for about ~4.3k. It's a bad time to buy duncan or dimarzio pickups in India right now, it won't be long before the old stock goes empty & you end up paying the new prices for every one of them in the range of 6-8k. That's awful & sad really.
BKPs do great for metal.. I have rarely seen them being used otherwise... And AFAIK, F spaced are meant for tremolo bridges.. They are the dimarzio equivalent of Seymour Duncan trembuckers... So if you have a trem, go for the f spaced pickup for lining the strings with the pickup poles perfectly...
^ They are popular with the 7-8 string crowd for djent stuff because they tune down to B(maybe lower) at times. That's where BK's shine because the lows don't muddy up & string definition is retained. But they do have models that cater to the various other genres as well. In short they won't sound sterile when used for something other than modern djent~metal stuff. With DM & SD, they have very few models that can handle extreme downtunings as good as these do, so people pick BK's for more tonal variation choices between pickups. If you aren't playing that stuff then the regular DM/SD stuff is fine, plenty of choices to pick from these guys that work.
I humbly beg to differ, the BKP have a lot of vintage pickups that sound really good, better than the DM/SD offerings. I mean they are hand wound, and are better sounding in many respects you need to listen to them and you can tell the difference. Even their single coil offerings are hugely popular.
If you find their offerings better sounding from the clips you are hearing, then you shouldn't be having this dilemma. Get the one that sounds right for you. You won't be satisfied if you get something from the other two big names at this stage. That's why I said I earlier, it's a 2k difference only, not that big. Go ahead and grab them while you can at those prices. Or you can get the usual mass produced machine wounds and keep regretting your choice.
