Need somthing un muddy.

[jezuse]

Now i recently bought an Ibanez RG4EXQM1 in grey
and it has a quilt maple top with bass wood body.

now i play black/death stuff and what i like to do is let things ring alot in distortion
1 prob i have with the pick ups i have on it now are just crappy.

now ive seen the DiMarzzio Evolution and those caught my ear but idk what to get so i came here for help knowing your guys expertice in this sort of thing.

i have a H S H set up....i wanna replace them allz.

the sound im going for is a clean distortion. nothing muddy when chords are hit and something that has powerfull hits with palm muting aswell. i always stay Standard Tuned. idk if that helps but i really want these Ibanez Inf pick ups out.

i have a roland cube 15x amp by the way...hope to get an Engl fireball later on tho.

for those who help thank you for your time and opinion.

 

[JamesL]

Okay so death metal in standard tuning.... Got it..


check out the Ibanez branded Dimarzios, or one of my personal faves, the Duncan SH-6

 

[blue313]

Ibanez Inf's arent too horrible, but I've always liked the with Dimarzio equipped ones.  What song/bands tone are you after?

 

[bpmorton777]

+1 to the Duncan SH-6. I have a pair of the Duncan Designed version in my Hamer. Very powerful pickup, not too dark. You probably will have to pair them up with another single in the middle for ballance. They sound pretty good split as well.

Brian

 

[taez555]

I've got an Evolution in my Ibanez Jem and it cuts like a razor blade through the mix.  Very clean and powerful.  Definitely not as muddy or dark as my Duncan JB in my warmoth, but conversly not as high endy and piercing with much less articulation than my Bill Lawrence L-500 in my N4.

erik

 

[Superlizard]

I'd suggest using a low-output bucker (approx 8-10k) and let the amp/stompbox do all the work.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

I would go the other way than a low output pickup.  If it is metal I would use an active pickup or a ceramic magnet pickup.  I am not a fan of the active pickups because I am the guy whose battery always runs out.  Given that, I'd look at the ceramic magnet pickups because they tend to have a tight sound that you can detune without losing definition, or leave in standard tuning and get the benefits of the extra treble and bite from strings that have tension on them.  If you have tried ceramic mag pickups and they are a bit too much, "fingernails on a chalkboard," for you, then Alnico 5 pickups's are probably the next in line.  But, both ceramic magnet and active pickups have a huge output, so you might have to lower the output on the distortion box or feedback becomes quite annoying.
Patrick

 

[dudesweet157]

For the real chugga chugga stuff, I do feel that you need a ceramic magnet in the bridge.  The Dimarzio "Steve's Special" is a good choice for the bridge pickup as it doesn't have the girthy midrange that most over-wound humbuckers have (it's the overbearing midrange that makes your tone muddy). 

For the neck position, I would get something in a PAFish vein with AlNiCo V magnets as it will give you a more fluid, violin-like tone with few jagged edges when you pile on the gain.  I personally would choose the Dimarzio Air Norton.  It's pretty much the most amazing neck humbucker ever invented for high gain soloing.

The middle position really doesn't matter all that much as it is only going to be used for coil-splitting in positions 2 and 4.  I would leave it as is.  Single coils are already uber bright, and the 500k pots in you RG are going to accentuate that.

So my vote goes towards:

Bridge: Steve's Special
Middle: Stock single coil
Neck: Air Norton

This is, coincidentally, the exact combo that John Petrucci has in his signature models.  I don't know if you're into his tone or style of music, but it's worth checking out.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8pUqln36po[/youtube]

 

[guitarjunky]

I would go with active as well Seymour Duncan live wire set  , I have an axe I set up with old school  kaler trim and live wires. and thy are very high out put and great for death mettle  but also have a nice clean tone  when I back off the volume

 

[Ted]

clean distortion

isn't that an oxymoron ? :laughing7:

 

[kreig]

clean distortion

the answer here ,to me , is to roll off the gain.

train your ear to hear the difference between too much and not enough distortion.

what I do is look for sparkle and sustain, at the reference point of "hitting" a chord, a firm hard spank, that tells me when chords mush out.

some will know exactly what I'm saying.

 

[guitlouie]

You had me at "firm hard spank".

 

[Vol. Knob]

"Black" or "Death" metal on a Roland Cube?  You definitely need a bigger amp, not different pickups.

IMHO, however, you don't need super high output pickups to acheive good metal tones.  In fact, I like to let the stompboxes do the work.  Also IMHO, a Marshall JCM800 is the ideal amp for metal, not the highest gain out there, but again, let the stompboxes handle that department.

Any classic styled 'bucker will do.  Be it Seymour, Dimarzio, GFS or my new favorite, Reed James ( http://www.reedjamescustom.com ).  Then there's the classic EMG 81, popular for a reason.

 

[thumb55]

+1 on the EMG 81.  The 85 is a great pickup too, a little cleaner, less distortion buzz.

the Duncan distortion and JB are similar 81/Distortion to 85/JB.  To me the JB does have a little bit of  nasal sound though. (kinda like a wah just barely on)

check into someone who's tone you like and check out what they use.

Depending on your amp and how much gain you have available you may or may not need a pickup with a lot of zzzzz.  But it just depends what you are going for.

 

[JamesL]

"Black" or "Death" metal on a Roland Cube?  You definitely need a bigger amp, not different pickups.

Yea, No one caught my standard tuning joke...

Playing on a cube isn't going to be very metal either... on small shitty amps pickups don't make much difference anyway because your sound's so horrible to begin with.

 

[blue313]

Did the OP disappear?  :dontknow:

 

[hailstorm350]

Did the OP disappear?  :dontknow:

looks like it

This thread has helped me though, even though I dont play death metal or anything...  I have a tonezone in the bridge position of my current ax, and I love it, so I think Im going to go with DiMarzio again, but what are those other brands that everyone talks about? the super expensive hand made ones I believe...
I can't afford em, just curious

 

[Graffiti62]

I say go with SD Invaders. They sound beasty enough, plus the allen wrench adjustable pole pieces are bad a** looking.