Does Fractal Axe Fx Work Good With EMG 81/85?

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BattleRabbits

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I was wondering if there's any issues with using active pickups with the Fractal Axe FX modelers?

I heard someone say that active pickups only sound good through real tube amps and not modelers, so I was just wondering if this is the case?

And also, do you have to dial in the tone in a preset different for active vs passive to make it sound it's best?
 
Are EMG 81/85 only good for Metallica/Zakk Wylde tone, or would they work very good for SRV/Gilmour tone as well? I'm just wondering, is that set a one trick pony?
 
Actually NO. The Axe-FX uses the secret sauce input to identify active pickups and then activates a "you suck" effect block to make them deliberately sound bad. This is probably what that rumour you heard was all about.
 
Given SRV and Gilmour both are known for using strats with single coils why would hot active humbuckers make any sense what so ever ?


Just trying to do to a bit of trolling I take it?
 
I don't know why every time I turn around someone on here accusses me of being a Troll. We are living in a world that sucks in this day and age where if you think radically different than 99% of the rest of the planet then the rest of the planet thinks you must be a Troll. They just can't accept that some people think way different and have way more extreme personalities and much more extreme opinions.

I can actually get pretty convincing SRV tones/Gilmour/EVH/Slash from the Aldrich bridge humbucker in my Suhr... Even though I have a SRV signature strat, I can get in the SRV ballpark even through the Aldrich humbucker on my Suhr through a high gain Marshall Kemper profile. So it's not that crazy.

I've never owned a guitar with 81/85 or any actives before. I am trying to find out if all they do is Metal like Zakk Wylde/Metallica or if they have any other dynamics and versaltility to them.

By the way, I can also get a very convincing EVH Eruption tone from my bridge single coil in my srv strats texas special through a Marshall profile.

However, the pickups in my Eric Johnson signature strat do not pull that off anywhere near as well... so point is, just because something seems so crazy it has to be trolling, it isn't always.
 
I suspect active pickups used on the axe will have the same pros and cons as active pickups with real amps. In the axe you can easily sculpt the signal before it hits the amp though and this may get you closer to some of the other tones that are not typically associated with actives.
 
I think I am going to pass on Active pickups all together then. The only two guitarists I like that use them are Zakk Wylde and Kirk Hammett, that's it.

Active Pickups sound more complicated and more trouble than they are probably worth. Kinda seems like a gimmick to me now that I think about it more, I mean if Zakk Wylde or Kirk Hammet recorded the Black Album or No Rest For The Wicked Album with regular passive pickups I have a hard time beleieving people would have been able to tell much if any difference in tone.

I can get extremely OCD about tone though, so that's the only reason I brought up Active pickups. It was a passing thought but I think it's over now.
 
There are plenty of high output passive pickups out there now a days. I recently retired my 81/85’s for a set of Juggernauts.
 
high output? if that's the main reason people buy actives then that's probably all the reason i probably shouldnt use them. The majority of the time I play with more gain/distortion in my profiles than even Mark Day does, so I'm prolly better off with low output passives like screaming demons. i doubt maxxing out gain/distortion in a amp/peadl combo on a profile and then using high output pickups would work well, that would probably just be too extreme, prolly aproaching death metal brutality at that point while losing all the clarity/richness/harmonics/articulation.
 
I use medium output passive, my friend has emg’s and I can cop that tone/feel with a compressor block set to dynamics. I think your better off going passive too.
 
lqdsnddist said:
Given SRV and Gilmour both are known for using strats with single coils why would hot active humbuckers make any sense what so ever ?
Click to expand...

Well, Gilmour did use active pickups for the two post-Waters albums and tours. He went back to passive pickups afterwards but Seymour Duncan still advertises his old usage and offers a fully loaded out pickguard/pickup set as 'The David Gilmour sound'.
 
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