active pickups...

dezb1 · Post by **dezb1** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:48 pm

Any good for anything other than ultra compressed metal sounds?

I've been offered a guitar for cheaps, kinda looks like an ESP les Paul thing...

Rox · Post by **Rox** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 7:50 pm

Just acts like an ultra hot pickup. You can get good bright cleans as well. I had a Charvel with EMG actives where there were good cleans . Also you get cool sound when muting you can't get with passives not to mention more sustain.
I just hated unscrewing the back of my guitar to change the 9 volts.

George · Post by **George** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:07 pm

Good for sticking up your arse

Post by **Doog** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:16 pm

dezb1 · Post by **dezb1** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 10:50 pm

George wrote:Good for sticking up your arse

In that case I'll pass, too many sharp angles.

Gabriel · Post by **Gabriel** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:35 am

They have a weird overly compressed sound. Less dynamics and quite scooped sounding. They're not bad per say as they have their own thing going but that isn't really my thing.

bradzeera · Post by **bradzeera** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:48 pm

I do not like the idea of needing batteries to play guitar through an amp, so I've never had a guitar with EMGs. I have played a few and they are pretty decent, depending on the model of pickup.

Janine · Post by **Janine** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 9:23 pm

How much truth do you reckon there is to the whole "EMGs sound the same no matter what you put them in"?

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 9:26 pm

I remember chatting to Machinehead's guitar tech and he was grumbling that they had all these fifties and sixties Gibsons with an 81/85 set in all of them making them all basically identical.

George · Post by **George** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 9:39 pm

Jani wrote:How much truth do you reckon there is to the whole "EMGs sound the same no matter what you put them in"?

The same being shit

YuriK · Post by **YuriK** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 9:40 pm

they just sound really sterile. They sound like a guitar that's already been recorded and made into an mp4 file, but not in a cool lofi way, in a boring lifeless way.

Noirie. · Post by **Noirie.** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 10:50 pm

EMG 81's are actually quite a moderate output pickup. Something like 10k iirc.

Janine · Post by **Janine** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 11:04 pm

I think I'd like to do the experiment for myself with a bawls guitar and a used emg and see what happens.

honeyiscool · Post by **honeyiscool** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:13 pm

The EMG single coils sound beautiful and glassy. To me, they have a tone that really holds up to pedals really well, especially delays and such. If you watch a lot of David Gilmour performances, he uses his EMGs quite a bit.

EMG humbuckers, I'm probably take it or leave it about them.

But the thing is, you can get most of what's good about EMG pickups by getting good quality low noise passive pickups. DiMarzio, Kinmans, especially Lace. And then you can get the nice beautiful glassy sound without having to deal with batteries.