EngelFaeuste
New member
Due to the immense popularity of this pickup (Backordered in Davis and several other online retailers), I have decided, as a service to anyone who is looking for a seriously high output monster of a pickup, to write and review for your perusal and to be of whatever assistance possible to help you make the decision whether to part with the $260 or not.
Pricetag: $260 (Davis Guitar)
The item is currently backordered with a rather unsightly waiting list of a few months, I coughed up another 20 dollars and shipped one in from the USA.
Stuff included in the box:
4x 25k pots + Associated mounts, with option of free long shaft pots from SD if you need it.
1x Stereo Jack
1x 9v Battery Connector
1x Incredibly useful wiring diagram sheet
And of course, the bloody pickups (DUH!)
Initial Impressions:
These pickups have an incredibly tight response across all frequencies when driven at high gain. The noise level is... wait, WHAT NOISE LEVEL? It was virtually dead silent even at unreasonably high gain settings. The sensitivity on those things are nothing short of amazing, every single pick stroke comes out very clearly.
Upon Further Messing around:
Serious chugging, doesn't really come naturally to these pickups. However, the low quality capacitors included in the box could potentially be at fault here, I'll update this section once I slap in an orange drop cap.
Upon even further wanking:
The incredibly sensitive pickups take abit of getting used to, approximately 30 minutes of playing was where I began to truly get along with my new toy. The amount of clarity is amazing for a pickup with such an insane amount of output. Pinch harmonics are also incredibly easy to pull. Suddenly, my tone sounds very polished, tight, punchy, like a wall of sound that knocks the wind out of you.
**BUT**
Where is the incredibly powerful chugging I was expecting? It's a massive letdown I would say. It's not really there, a real disappointment. Sure, I can still get a really decent chugging tone from it, but it seems to lack the extra bit of headroom to let the chugs really explode out of the guitar. (This might be my amp though, again, I will update when I try it out on a JCM900 on Thursday).
Wait wait wait, what about cleans?!:
Are you crazy? Buying these pickups for clean playing? Oh well fine... Sometimes the situation does require you to reluctantly hit the bypass button on your gain pedals or switch to the clean channel on the amp. All I have to say is that, these things sounds far better than EMG actives on cleans. At least there is some semblance of life, sterile, these pickups are not. That being said, I still would not recommend these pickups for playing clean. I would say the clean sound of these pickups are to the clean sound of say, a low output, chimey single coil is analogous to what power metal vocals of say, Hansi Kursch are to the voice of a well trained Jazz Singer.
The cleans sound tight, punchy, and you still get the "wall of sound" effect, without sounding as dead as EMG actives. Of course, it would still not be your cup of tea if your idea of cleans is that of Eric Clapton's cleans.
To add abit more 'life' to the cleans, I did use a VS H2O which worked wonders, but that's another story.
Final Verdict:
Want that wall of sound and unholy amounts of output? Get the damn blackouts. 'Nuff said
Gear used:
Jackson WRMG Warrior
(Schaller hardware including the trem, which has been zhnged with an outsize brass block, trust me, this matters, makes the guitar sound alot darker than it should be sounding)
Guitar > Rocktron Silver Dragon/AMT Du Hast > Boss EH-2 Enhancer > VS H2O > Line 6 Spider III 30(I'll update when I test it with a JCM900 head and cab on thursday)
My noise suppressor was disengaged to test how noisy the pickups were.
(Guess what, I tried 2 different types of gain to get the immense chug I was hoping for)
If I had to give a rating, I would not give one, it's either you really love it to death, or it you hate it's guts, if you bought it and didn't like it, don't say I didn't warn you.
If you need to know exactly what I was hearing when I was playing just now, check out Jag Panzer's album "Mechanized Warfare", not really there, but extremely close. Yup, my tone sounded incredibly similar to Chris Broderick's.
