Sixstring
Legend!
+1 I think it's more about how those type of pickups are voiced. With active pickups they tend to invoke there sonic foot print rather than letting the natural tone of the guitar to happen.
The 81 is ceramic, the 85 is alnico 5, and just as with passives it is quite common to go for a ceramic bridge and an alnico neck. The Alnico neck, be it active or passive, will generally give a warmer smoother tone.
I take it your "yawn" comment was meant to be either condescending or just rude. You'll notice in my post I used the word "generally". In a 2 line response to a question it really isn't possible to go in to every possibility and minutiae of pickup design, but in general, pickups made using alnicos will be made to sound smoother and warmer than ceramics.
The EMGs are love/hate, because they make a lot of presets sound awesome and are noiseless... but I started craving some "tone coloring" again.
I do not believe an active pickup
is better suited for the axe. Active pickups having a low impedance output negate the loading effects of capacitance and also disconnect the interaction between the pickup and first tube in a tube amp.
The axe has hardware to adjust input impedance to load a passive properly, you lose that with an active.
As for the highs being lost with high output pickups. Well a few things are in play here, the resonant frequency will shift around depending on the resistance in the circuit. Swap out your volume pot for a one meg and tell me your high output passive has no high end, for that matter try the pickup wired directly to a jack.
Emgpickups are not a humbucKer pickup output fed into a preamp. The Emg has a differential input amplifier that mixes each coil together after amplification a different process yielding a different sound. Emg pickups have a resonant frequency that more closely resemble single coli pickups than humbuckers. That will account for the "loss of highs " your hearing when a/b ing against Passives.
The total bandwith of Passives and active are still in the same ballpark btw.
I just had the chance to work on a 7 string with Emg's ,81 and A 60 ,running 9 volts .And was surprised how they cleaned up when using the guitar volume.Emg's sounded great thought my ultra,did have to bump up the treble on a tube amp. I think they have a cocked wah tone to them,in a good way Couldn't stop playing Crazy babies from the Ozz.I think the Emg's are great for hard rock and metalI would add to this that EMG's don't really clean up the way passive pickups do. .