Sanscardinality
Newbie
- Messages
- 23
One weekend into my new build (Black Korina Tele on Just out of box forum) and I have some comments on these pups in case any of you were considering them. These are "X series" pickups, which means they are somewhere between traditional passive voicing and EMG active. They have a ton more feel and naturalness than other EMGs I've played, and use of the volume knob produces the same kind of effects you'd expect from passives. Overall, the side-by-side coil mode has the fullness of a traditional bucker, plus a lot more headroom and clarity. They are extremely articulate and sensitive - I feel like everything I'm doing on the guitar is passed transparently to my amp (I've played these clean through my Fender Princeton 65 Reissue, and gainey/effectsy through an Ibanez SS head and a line6 TonePort). The Princeton sounds absolutely huge with these pickups, but not boomy. Overall, I love the sound of the side-by-side mode.
But these are actually 3-coil pickups - one side of the pup has a stacked humbucker built into it, along with a separate preamp for single coil sounds. My main guitar to date has been an American Telecaster, set up with nocaster repro pups and a Warmoth boat neck. I've played this guitar for about 5 years, and am very familiar with traditional tele sounds and how the pickups respond. My other electric is a 1947 Montgomery Ward with a lipstick pup (same exact model played by Big Boy Crudup) that I use for a lot of brazilian and slide blues. In other words, I've been and old-school single coil kinda guy.
These pickups in stacked mode don't sound or feel like traditional single coils. They are smoother, less spikey on the bridge (you can still get ice pick tone if you want, but I roll off the tone on the bridge alwayws anyway) and to me sound like a cross between a tele and a strat, but with much glassier, clearer tone. There is less character in the sense that they are noise-free and have very even response - I'd say they have less "hair" to them - just pure, pure tone. I was able to get very satisfactory early Buddy Guy sounds (Hoodoo man blues era) as well as Gilmourish soloing tones from the neck. Andy Summers' rhythm work is pretty easy to dial in as well. Im still getting used to/figuring out the stacked/single mode, but so far I've found a bunch of useful sounds in there.
So I wanted a tele setup with push/pulls (master vol, master tone, p/p for side-by-side/stacked) and these pups come with EMG's solderless connectors. I emailed their support for that config and they sent me a wiring diagram. It was a simple matter of plugging in all the connectors, though getting those connectors through the routed holes was a little challenging. Overall, I spent about 30 minutes wiring the entire guitar, including the battery box. I built a similar setup using Duncan P-Rails and traditional wiring, and it took my about three hours of setup. I LOVE the solderless system. It is real progress and everyone should jump on the bandwagon. There is no advantage to solder over connectors - its just anachronistic.
To go along with my old pickups in my other guitars, I have an even older house (1910) with some very noisy electrical wiring. Even humbuckers hum like mad in my house. On top of that, the college radio station is half a block away. If I plug in any other guitar and leave the amp on, I can hear their programming coming out of the speaker. So when I turned on the Princeton to 4, and plugged in the guitar I thought I had wired the guitar wrong. The only noise I could hear was the gentle pulse of the tube tremolo, so I turned that off. Now complete silence prevailed and I figured I must have done something wrong, but I tried hitting the strings and it was working perfectly. I pulled the pots to put it in stacked mode and still complete, tomb-like silence until I hit the strings. This may be the best reason for me to like these actives, but it wouldn't be enough unless the tones were there. My wife was sitting across the room when I hit the first chord and she said "wow - that thing sounds great - really big and clear."
Yes. Yes it does
- Josh
But these are actually 3-coil pickups - one side of the pup has a stacked humbucker built into it, along with a separate preamp for single coil sounds. My main guitar to date has been an American Telecaster, set up with nocaster repro pups and a Warmoth boat neck. I've played this guitar for about 5 years, and am very familiar with traditional tele sounds and how the pickups respond. My other electric is a 1947 Montgomery Ward with a lipstick pup (same exact model played by Big Boy Crudup) that I use for a lot of brazilian and slide blues. In other words, I've been and old-school single coil kinda guy.
These pickups in stacked mode don't sound or feel like traditional single coils. They are smoother, less spikey on the bridge (you can still get ice pick tone if you want, but I roll off the tone on the bridge alwayws anyway) and to me sound like a cross between a tele and a strat, but with much glassier, clearer tone. There is less character in the sense that they are noise-free and have very even response - I'd say they have less "hair" to them - just pure, pure tone. I was able to get very satisfactory early Buddy Guy sounds (Hoodoo man blues era) as well as Gilmourish soloing tones from the neck. Andy Summers' rhythm work is pretty easy to dial in as well. Im still getting used to/figuring out the stacked/single mode, but so far I've found a bunch of useful sounds in there.
So I wanted a tele setup with push/pulls (master vol, master tone, p/p for side-by-side/stacked) and these pups come with EMG's solderless connectors. I emailed their support for that config and they sent me a wiring diagram. It was a simple matter of plugging in all the connectors, though getting those connectors through the routed holes was a little challenging. Overall, I spent about 30 minutes wiring the entire guitar, including the battery box. I built a similar setup using Duncan P-Rails and traditional wiring, and it took my about three hours of setup. I LOVE the solderless system. It is real progress and everyone should jump on the bandwagon. There is no advantage to solder over connectors - its just anachronistic.
To go along with my old pickups in my other guitars, I have an even older house (1910) with some very noisy electrical wiring. Even humbuckers hum like mad in my house. On top of that, the college radio station is half a block away. If I plug in any other guitar and leave the amp on, I can hear their programming coming out of the speaker. So when I turned on the Princeton to 4, and plugged in the guitar I thought I had wired the guitar wrong. The only noise I could hear was the gentle pulse of the tube tremolo, so I turned that off. Now complete silence prevailed and I figured I must have done something wrong, but I tried hitting the strings and it was working perfectly. I pulled the pots to put it in stacked mode and still complete, tomb-like silence until I hit the strings. This may be the best reason for me to like these actives, but it wouldn't be enough unless the tones were there. My wife was sitting across the room when I hit the first chord and she said "wow - that thing sounds great - really big and clear."
Yes. Yes it does
- Josh
