which pickups to choose...

Really? I thought actives (EMGs) have very less sensitivity to wood type compared to passives.
Infact, that is the reason why a lot of guys put EMGs into Ibanezes. It is pretty much the easiest way to get a good metal tone out of a cheap guitar.

 

That's what I thought too. I tried dropping EMG's into my LTD M-50 and although you can get a workable high gain sound, it just sounded like something was missing. Besides, you should be 'able' to do clean and low gain too with EMGs but those sounds were simply not up to the mark. It might have been a one-off but I prefer passives now anyway.

 

Is that the reason why Ibanez guitars, having basswood body, have passive stock pickups?

 

yeah...i too have come across issues regarding active pickups and their poor clean tones...

 

plus i checked out the sd website...59 has a warmer sound than the jazz it appeared, though the overall difference was not much (to my ears)....maybe im tone deaf...

 

Why would anyone install actives for clean tone anyways? Actives are meant for high gain stuff... if you need versatility, go for the passives suggested previously...

 

another query...when you r saying emgs for high gain.....how high do u mean....death metal types high?....cant you get that type of tone with a ....say jb and a good stompbox....?

 

Dude you can play any genre with any guitar with any pickup and you won't even realize it...But over a period of time as you discover/understand tonality (which is a slow process) you'll realize the difference and especiality of each. You can't simply have a pickup which can do all 70s 80s rock, blues, jazz, Metal etc.. There's a reason kirk uses EMG actives, Dave uses Livewires and Dimebag used the SH-13 (dimebucker).

You cant get all kinda tones from a single guitar. The pups suggested before are versatile and can do justice to any genre but they are definitely not the best. There are much much better pups than the EMGs for metal. Bareknuckle, X2N, lundgren D-Activator etc etc are some of them.

Correct me if i'm wrong.

 

Active pickups have a battery powered pre amp which allows them to have a higher output so a higher gain..

 

lol....and here i was thinking hamett was getting kickbacks for using emgs....:-D

 

what I meant was that the overall sound was simply hollow. this was more noticeable in the cleans than the high gain stuff for obvious reasons.
anyway, once you have developed a sense of sound to the point where you know what sound floats your boat, selecting pups becomes much easier.

 

Actually, the advantage of an EMG is that it is dead quiet. You do get passive pickups that are as hot as EMG. Problem is, the hotter you make a passive pickup the more it tends to pick up background noise and hum. This can make your guitar sound terrible when using a lot of gain. EMG overcomes this by using a very low output pickup and an internal preamp to give you the high output without the noise.

 

Regarding clean tones, I thought the guy wanted Pink Floyd kind of clean tones and some heavy metal tones. The EMGs have a bit of compression that gives a slight colouring to your cleans. The tone obviously varies from one pick up to the other.

The 81 is great for all out heavy distortion with tight bottom and a lot of pinch harmonics but is not good for cleans.
The 85 on the other hand has a lot more bottom end to it and is warmer, so cleans come out better and it is great for bluesy tones too.
The 60 has a bit more of low mids so you get awesome clean tones and also some good bluesy tones too.

Tone is obviously subjective. So I had suggested these based on the preferences he had mentioned.