What's your pickups choice in your 80's hotrod guitar for that hairmetal tone?

dupere11497

dupere11497

Experienced
I own several guitars I use each for a specefic style! For that hair metal shredding thing, I use a custom made superstrat with a Mahagony body with a thick maple top and bolt on maple neck! It was made a famous Montreal Luthier, Liberatore qho's quite famous having built guitars for artists such like Jon Bon jovi and Aldo Nova! Anyway, mine is a H-S configuration with original floyd rose tremolo. The guitar came woth an old Seymour Duncan TB-5 and a noname cheap neck single coil.

So I swapted those out of the guitar to replace by a Suhr Aldrich in the bridge and a SD-Hotrails in the neck. Now, this guitar was
Made out from the best quality wood with topenotch crafman quality. This makes this guitar sing and sustain forever, even unplugged. Now the Suhr is kind of too trebly. Too much out put too, porpably due to the already good naturaly resonnance the guitar can produce. And the Suhr scoops some mids which I don't like. I love my mids.

And I absolultly hate the SD hotrail in the neck position! I split him for single coils applications amd humbucker mode! Both useless to my taste! The hotrail is sterile, muddy, poor pick attack response and feel. So I bought a bare knuckle Holy Diver for the bridge and a Dimarzio Pro track for the neck! I already have one of those install on the neck position of
a music man silhouette special and it is awesome! Great creamy sustaining notes, great pick attack. Since my guitar is already on a bright side, the Holydiver will tame some unpleasing shrill highs while the pro track will give more clarity, less noisea and as much sustain as the SD. Should be a
Good balance in term of output and frequencies covering!

What about you guys, what's your secret recipie regarding guitars and pick ups for your 80'glorious hotrod guitar??
 
What's your pickups choice in your 80's hotrod guitar for that hairmetal tone?

I own several guitars I use each for a specefic style! For that hair metal shredding thing, I use a custom made superstrat with a Mahagony body with a thick maple top and bolt on maple neck! It was made a famous Montreal Luthier, Liberatore qho's quite famous having built guitars for artists such like Jon Bon jovi and Aldo Nova! Anyway, mine is a H-S configuration with original floyd rose tremolo. The guitar came woth an old Seymour Duncan TB-5 and a noname cheap neck single coil.

So I swapted those out of the guitar to replace by a Suhr Aldrich in the bridge and a SD-Hotrails in the neck. Now, this guitar was
Made out from the best quality wood with topenotch crafman quality. This makes this guitar sing and sustain forever, even unplugged. Now the Suhr is kind of too trebly. Too much out put too, porpably due to the already good naturaly resonnance the guitar can produce. And the Suhr scoops some mids which I don't like. I love my mids.

And I absolultly hate the SD hotrail in the neck position! I split him for single coils applications amd humbucker mode! Both useless to my taste! The hotrail is sterile, muddy, poor pick attack response and feel. So I bought a bare knuckle Holy Diver for the bridge and a Dimarzio Pro track for the neck! I already have one of those install on the neck position of
a music man silhouette special and it is awesome! Great creamy sustaining notes, great pick attack. Since my guitar is already on a bright side, the Holydiver will tame some unpleasing shrill highs while the pro track will give more clarity, less noisea and as much sustain as the SD. Should be a
Good balance in term of output and frequencies covering!

What about you guys, what's your secret recipie regarding guitars and pick ups for your 80'glorious hotrod guitar??
 
For me it's a mahogany body with a maple top, bolt on maple/rosewood neck and pretty much a cliche for the electronics: Dimarzio PAF PRO on the neck and ToneZone on the bridge side, 1 Vol - 1 Tone. Unbeatable!!!
I unforunately sold the guitar a couple years back as I didn't play it. Now I miss it so much that I'm planning on building a parts o caster with these specs.
 
I've got a washburn N4 that I salvaged that I love. As a matter of fact I used put an original floyd rose on it the other night. It was tough to find one in copper. But the pickup configuration of the Bill Lawrence 500XL in the bridge and the SD 59 in the neck is really hard to beat even though I'm not sure that it'd be mid heavy enough for you.
 
In the 80's?

The stock humbuckers in my ES-335 that I picked up used in 1977 (both, but especially the neck pickup). :)
 
Got a EVH Frankenstein in my costom build strat style with carved curly maple top, mahogany body and ebony neck, a Seymoure Duncan 78 Model (EVH) in my Epi Elitist 61 SG RE and a Amber classic Rock in my ibanez rga321f spb (carved flamed maple top, mahogany body, maple/walnut neck)
 
I have a 1992 Washburn N4 with an original Floyd rose and a set of EMG 81 in the bridge and EMG 89 in the neck (nice Single coil tones from the 89). IMHO there's not much better than the EMG 81 for *that* type of tone. I HAVE THE 18V MOD WHICH I FEEL MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

I use other guitars with passive pickups for a more "woody" tone but again IMHO for the RAWK tone there's not much to beat the classic EMG setup (with the 18V mod that is).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ooly59sz178mpd/My N4 with Cream EMGs.jpg
 
Neither one of these are really "80s hotrod" type of guitars but I have a PRS SE Akesson with a Duncan JB and a PRS SE 245 with a Dimarzio Super Distortion. Both do the 80s hairmetal tone very easily.
 
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