I recently completed my totally-not-money-wasting goal of owning every pickup currently made by EMG, Seymour Duncan, and Gibson, and I'm most of the way through DiMarzio, too. Plus a lot of boutique pickups from various winders. Not got them all at the same time, of course, but over the last few years I've gone through more pickups than I can count.
So far, my 'default' pickups are shaping up thusly:
Stratocaster singlecoil: EMG SVX (vintage stagger radius) or SAVX (modern flat radius). The most middle-of-the-road, all-round Strat pickups, and absolutely 0 noise. I don't like my Strat pickups to be too far on either the vintage or modern side, and the SVX/SAVX nail that balance perfectly. The 'X' preamp means you get the full dynamic range, more dynamic than passive pickups, rather than the compressed dynamics of regular active pickups.
Runner up: Fender Texas Specials. Totally standard Strat sound with just a touch more output, easily dialed down with the volume control or pickup height if you don't need it, or maxed out for when you do.
Telecaster singlecoil: Fender Vintage Noiseless bridge. Good all-rounder, and again, no hum. I've not settled on a default Tele neck pickup yet, and I keep putting Strat singlecoils in the neck position instead. I just don't like any Tele neck pickups, I guess.
Runner up: Seymour Duncan Hot Stack Tele. Slightly more attack on single notes and more consistent output for bending. Simply lower it if it's too powerful for you. Not actually as much of a humbucker-like tone as you might think; closer to a Firebird sound with the coils wired parallel.
Singlecoil-size humbucker: Seymour Duncan Cool Rails Strat any position, Hot Rails Tele bridge. The Tele bridge Hot Rails is the only singlecoil-sized humbucker I've found which actually does nail the sound of a full-size humbucker. The Strat version goes a bit too far, losing too much high-end; the Cool Rails gets the balance right but does lack in the power I expect when switching from a single coil to a humbucker.
Runner up: Seymour Duncan Little '59 & DiMarzio Area Hot T. The SD '59 does a 'good enough' job, but I'd always take the Cool Rails over it; the DM Area Hot T doesn't quite nail the full humbucker sound, but it's definitely second-best to the Hot Rails.
Full-size P-90: Creamery '57, alnico 4 bridge and 5 neck. As far as I'm concerned,
the P-90 tone by miles; bright and clear but with the grunt to drive a single-channel amp. Opting for the A4 in the bridge and A5 in the neck balances the set out best.
Runner up: Seymour Duncan P-90 Stack for the bridge & Gibson standard P-90 for the neck. Hum-cancelling where it matters most, and the stock Gibson pickup is fine as long as it
is stock and you're not paying for it. If you're going to pay for any P-90, though, just go straight to to the Creamery pickups.
Humbucker-size P-90: Creamery Hum-90, alnico 4, all positions. Surprise surprise, the maker of the hands-down best P-90 on the market also makes the hands-down best humbucker-size P-90 on the market. I've found the bridge and neck models are a little better balanced though, so there's less need to use different magnets in different positions.
Runner up: Tonerider Rebel 90. It's hard to screw up a P-90 design, so these cheaper units do just fine. There's no point in mid-priced humbucker-sized P-90s when the cheap ones sound identical. The Tonerider seems to be made slightly more consistently than other cheap versions (e.g. GFS), so that's my pick for the cheap hum-sized P-90s.
Classic humbucker: Gibson Burstbucker #1, both positions. Not a 100% historically correct PAF copy, which will annoy some deranged 'purists', but it's got the tone and it's more consistently made than any other PAF-style pickup, in my experience.
Runner up: Oil City Forces Sweetheart. Slightly more PAF-accurate if you're nuts about that kind of thing, but it's a boutique pickup so it costs a tiny bit more and you can't just buy one off the shelf; the sound is so close to the Burstbucker—just a tiny bit more open on the high end—that I find it hard to justify the bother.
All-round humbucker: EMG 60AX, both positions. It's a minibucker in a full-size humbucker shell, with mismatched and underwound coils, and an underpowered magnet, then fully insulated against noise and given a preamp to get the output back up to reasonable levels. Despite the fact lots of people will see an EMG and instantly assume it must be high output, the 60AX isn't. It can become high output if you put it really close to the strings, and it can be really low output if you back it far away, but at normal levels it's a plain medium output, with the dynamics of a low-output pickup.
Runner up: Gibson Burstbucker #3 or Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates. Both positions. Full dynamics and sharp response like a lower-wound pickup, but more output than a vintage model.
Higher power/modern humbucker: DiMarzio Evo 2 bridge, and Seymour Duncan Full Shred neck. Both are less screechy/shrill than most 'shred' metal pickups, but still clearer than most 'chuggy' metal pickups. They also both clean up really well.
Runner up: Seymour Duncan Full Shred bridge and DiMarzio PAF Pro neck. Yup, inverting the #1 pick. The SD in the bridge doesn't push an amp quite as nicely as the Evo 2 does, and the DM in the neck doesn't have quite the response of the Full Shred neck. But they're very, very close. You can swap the Evo2/Full Shred and Full Shred/PAF Pro around back-and-forth and it will take you months to begin to notice any real difference between them.
Special shout-out to the Creamery Dirty Shirt, both bridge and neck models. Lovely pickup, but doesn't really sound different from the SD and DM pickups mentioned, and it costs more and you have to wait for it to be made for you. Hard to justify when the SD/DM pickups do 99% the same thing.
Wide Range-size humbucker: Creamery Classic '71. Same deal as with P-90s, basically. Creamery just knocks 'em out the park. Even amongst all the high-priced boutique recreations of Wide Range humbuckers, Creamery stand out. More sparkle without going shrill, more clarity without going thin.
Runner up: Nothing. If you take the modern Fender Wide Range humbucker and simply disconnect the tone control, replace the volume control with a 1meg, and back the pickup far from the strings, you'll get just as close to the 'real' Wide Range sound as any non-Creamery Wide Range pickup I've tried. Either pay for the Creamery model or mod the stock pickup.
Minibucker: Oil City Marlene. More open than the SD minibuckers and clearer wound strings than any other boutique minibucker I've tried.
Runner up: Nothing else comes close, and I've not even found a cheap "I guess it'll do" minibucker.
Firebird: Oil City Winterizer. Seems to be a similar wind as the Marlene, but it's definitely got the added sparkle and attack that the dual magnets of a Firebird design gives you.
Runner up: Creamery Classic Firebird, alnico 5. Same deal, just a fractionally different wind which I found to give a tiny bit more power but loses a fraction of the top-end I expect from a Firebird pickup. I've not tried the A2 and ceramic versions, though; the ceramic Creamery may equal the Oil City A5 pickup.
Weird stuff I love but isn't easy to categorise:
- Swineshead AMP & Oil City BrassKnuckle. Humbuckers made with 12 pole magnets instead of a bar magnet + screws & studs. Almost a Wide Range tone when in series, and a proper Stratocaster tone when split. Seymour Duncan make one, too, called the Stag Mag, but that's wound for the split sound and the humbucker tone suffers as a result; the wound strings get really boomy.
- Seymour Duncan '59/Custom Hybrid & Oil City Creature. Pair a modern coil with a vintage coil and get almost the best of both worlds. I use these as my all-round humbuckers in excessively dark guitars which need the extra openess you get from mismatching coils, compared to my usual picks for balanced guitars.
- Seymour Duncan Hot Stack Tele bridge in the neck. Bit of a coincidence seeing as he recently died, but go listen to the clean/rhythm parts of Prince's Purple Rain, or most of the tracks which Wendy Melvoin played on. That's the Hot Stack Tele bridge, but in the neck position—and upside down—of a Rickenbacker. I've tried it myself and it's seriously amazing; just hard to become a true 'default' as it really is too bizarre in most guitars. Keep it strictly to heavily chambered & set neck guitars.
- Creamery Dirty Shirt neck, as a dogear P-90 in the bridge positon. I can't really call this a 'default' as I only use it in one guitar, but boy, nothing is better for a Les Paul Junior. Better than any stacked dogear design, by a long way. Totally humless, but it's still a low-profile dogear design, far from the strings and with the same response you'd expect from an overwound P-90.
- EMG 60AX with alnico 4 magnets. This is my #1, end-all, favourite pickup for any application. I'll take it from country to gothic metal without changing a single thing other than my amp's gain level. Works great in every guitar, allowing enough of each guitar's characteristic tone to come through, but averaging out things just enough to keep everything very flexible. You could remove every other pickup I've ever had and only give me A4 60AXs and I'd be totally fine with it. The only problem is that only one set of A4 60AXs exist in the world. They were a special order I asked for before the 60AX was publicly available, and I had to jump through a lot of hoops before EMG agreed to make them. Every other 60AX uses A5 magnets. An A5 to A4 swap isn't that huge of a difference in a common passive humbucker, but actives are way more sensitive to magnet changes. The output is basically the same as a SD Pearly Gates or other 'hot PAF'—varies slightly depending on the guitar it's in and the strings/tuning used—and the tone is clear and open when used with low gain but thick and tight when you dig in. My set has been through nine different guitars, but they've finally found a permanent home, I think, in an ESP Eclipse. I only wish I could wire them out of phase without needed another battery-powered switch.
One day I'll stop buying pickups. Today is not that day.
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