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Tom Dalton wrote:"I want to be as big as I can if it's going to stop a bullet."
maggot wrote:One person's heavy is another person's stupid. I think that the Powertrons will work great if you're trying to get get heavy from a guitar that creates a lot of acoustical energy, for example if you play Baritone, or use big strings with a semi-hollow. If you use a regular guage strings and a more restrained attack, you may have trouble getting heaviosity out of them.
Heavyness is so personal - you have to really zero in on your frequencies. I play tuned low (at least when I'm trying to be heavy). For low-output pickups I really like various Alnico IV pickups, because even though they're not loud, they sound really stringy clean and then really punchy with distortion, and their lows don't stand out too much. They sound like higher-output pickups once they start to drive some distortion. Examples would be Bare Knuckle Mule and Abraxis, DiMarzio PAF Masters, Duncan Saturday Night Specials. I use a custom-wound Buddha A4 humbucker, and it's not particularly heavy, but it's punchy and clear, and can move a lot of air. It's certainly heavy enough to do some palm-muting and move some slabs of distortion around.
For medium-output pickups, Duncan Customs sound more or less like regular 59 humbuckers but with a little added punch and unpleasantness that reads as heaviness. I'm curious about some other mid-output models.
As for true high-output pickups, IDK, because I don't like them that much. I have a soft spot for Duncan Invaders, and these generic Bill Lawrence knockoffs I had, but I probably wouldn't recommend either of them.
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goroth wrote:My two cents: I think these days there are better ways to push an amp than via the output of your pickups. Get a heavier amp, use an eq pedal or a booster or something. Pickups should be there to provide the basic eq for the sound you want. But sometimes I have a hard time getting my head around this. I'd played humbuckers for years, Dimarzio Tone Zone and Lundgren M6 primarly, then bought a Nelson guitar with low output Nelson singles. I guess they are somewhat filtertron-ish. Anyways, when I play with a fuckload of volume, with the band, it is just the most glorious heavy sound I've ever heard. It cuts like a razor, palm mutes, and has a tiny bit of gnar that is just awesome. But whenever I play by myself I always find the higher output humbuckers more gratifying. They get more saturation, and the lower clarity you get fills out the sound nicely. And also palm mutes hit so hard. But those aspects that make it fun to play by myself just make it disappear a little in a loud context. Not a lot, I mean, I still think my humbucker equipped guitars sound good with the band, but they don't slay like the Nelsons.
If nothing else I say test something really different and see where it gets you - once you dial in the rest of your gear around it to kinda compensate for the lower output/lower fun factor.
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ALLisNOISE wrote:you can dial in some wonderfully smeared 12bit cascades of cicadas leveling a hail of rockets against an army of rusty box fans!
goroth wrote:TBH I bought it because it was lightweight and sexy as shit. I figured I'd test whatever crappy low output non-humbucking pickups were in it, then chuck a ToneZone in there after a week or two.
But that didn't happen.
There is just this nutso level of clarity, that makes hitting stuff hard so insanely satisfying. And at bedroom levels I just turn the gain up a bit.
I can still get pissed that the output is low - I've gotta turn the volume down on like all my gain pedals so that it doesn't create a massive volume spike (guessing that humbuckers are more compressed, with higher average output and greater perceived volume) - but that's just stupid. Because my pedals sound the same as when I turn them up to volume match the humbuckers. And I have to work a bit harder to get the squealiest of the squealy pinch harmonics. Can still get them but that aren't as gratifying as with higher output humbuckers.
Maybe having a less thick sound from the pickups allows you to lay it on a bit more with the amp and pedals.
We're getting our first proper album mastered now, and the other guitarist was rolling Gibson LP with humbuckers into a JCM800, I was doing Nelson>Elements>clean amp. You'll hear what I mean.
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