don_joe
Experienced
I'm too lazy to have separate guitars for different kinds of tones, so I have just one guitar that covers the most of the ground from jazzy-funky over vintage rock to a lot of metal. I was experimenting a bit with different pickups and to my surprise, I found out that the juiciest tones come from a single coil (coil splitted in my case).
Not only that, also if you ask an average metal player what kind of pickup do you need for a decent metal tone, the answer would with a high probability be - a high output pickup.
I bought a Mayones Regius 7 string recently, it came with Seymour Duncan JB7s. The guy in the shop, where it firstly arrived set it up to his taste, so the pickups were almost underneath the strings. A lot of signal, relatively high output, not bad but it wasn't really exactly to my taste. Too much highs and not enough definition in the lows. With lowering the pickups, I have managed to get a better sound but I wanted to try different pups at the end.
I decided to try something more PAF like, which I have had in my old Gibson SG and which I missed. It felt better to play with it than with all 7 string guitar and pickup combinations that I have had afterwards. I went with DiMarzio PAF7 in the bridge and left JB7 as the neck pup cause I liked this pup in the neck after lowering it.
Both pups are now quite low, you could probably put a whole finger between the pups and the strings. They sounded the best to me like that. Since it's a good guitar, a nice acoustic-percussive quality is noticable now. Low setting, low output pup, splitted coils...and I have the best tones ever in my life, from vintage to prog. I can't stop playing in the middle position with both JB7 and PAF7 on, splitted. OK, that's good for rock, but metal riffs with splitted bridge pup?
How come? How is that possible with such a low output? Shouldn't that be everything contrary to achieving a good metal tone? Did I miss something? Do you have a similar experience? Are single coils and low output something usual in metal music these days? I just can't explain why does it sound so good.
Not only that, also if you ask an average metal player what kind of pickup do you need for a decent metal tone, the answer would with a high probability be - a high output pickup.
I bought a Mayones Regius 7 string recently, it came with Seymour Duncan JB7s. The guy in the shop, where it firstly arrived set it up to his taste, so the pickups were almost underneath the strings. A lot of signal, relatively high output, not bad but it wasn't really exactly to my taste. Too much highs and not enough definition in the lows. With lowering the pickups, I have managed to get a better sound but I wanted to try different pups at the end.
I decided to try something more PAF like, which I have had in my old Gibson SG and which I missed. It felt better to play with it than with all 7 string guitar and pickup combinations that I have had afterwards. I went with DiMarzio PAF7 in the bridge and left JB7 as the neck pup cause I liked this pup in the neck after lowering it.
Both pups are now quite low, you could probably put a whole finger between the pups and the strings. They sounded the best to me like that. Since it's a good guitar, a nice acoustic-percussive quality is noticable now. Low setting, low output pup, splitted coils...and I have the best tones ever in my life, from vintage to prog. I can't stop playing in the middle position with both JB7 and PAF7 on, splitted. OK, that's good for rock, but metal riffs with splitted bridge pup?
How come? How is that possible with such a low output? Shouldn't that be everything contrary to achieving a good metal tone? Did I miss something? Do you have a similar experience? Are single coils and low output something usual in metal music these days? I just can't explain why does it sound so good.