Wormhelmet
New member
Hello. First post here. I have been putting a George Lynch Screamin Demon in bridge position on various guitars since the 80's and this year decided to buy a new axe as my current Ibanez Artist is about 16 years old. The Ibanez has a good neck, GL Screamin Demon bridge and Ibanez stock neck, Schaller locking tuners, good setup by my local luthier. It survived a house fire in 2000 and used to be bright red, but now dark red with some smoke damage on headstock edges and back of the neck where natural wood showed. Bit of a sentimental thing that plays really well and sounds great with mild output great tone of the demon. Stock neck is very clear and round sound with flat eq response.
This year I decided to get a new guitar and tried out some EMG actives. I liked them a lot. Mostly play metal, heavy rock, some punk, and a bit of acoustic fingerpicking type stuff. I ended up buying a Epiphone Prophesy Les Paul with EMG 81/85 set, then decided I would step away from usual stop bar tailpiece and get my first guitar with a floyd rose tremolo. I know, brave stuff here, right? I bought a Jackson soloist with floyd rose and it had EMG passive pickups I didn't care for so I decided I wanted to try Duncan Blackouts actives in the Jackson. I went with Blackout Metal in bridge with boost on a push-pull on my tone knob (boost is pulled out, in is normal) and regular blackout AHB-1 in neck.
I know from a little reading that a lot of people don't like actives, but I really like them after having very similar tones in various guitars since the 80's with my go to pickup the Screamin Demon. I think I went nuts over the high output and not having to run pre-eq gain boost or anything before dirt box to get a hot sound out of the screamin demon. Anyway, i really like the Duncan Blackouts. Neck is where I usually play clean and it sounds very clean. Mix of neck and bridge needs a little volume roll back to sound clean, and just bridge for high gain is really nice to my ears. I like the big mid punch it has. Boost on is ok too, but only occasionally use it. The normal mode has very high output already.
I have found I can keep the gain down a good deal on my amp or preamps and still get incredible crunchy gain that sings. I like to keep gain knobs around 12:00 position on amp or preamp now and run OCD with gain on about 2 and volume about 3. It doesn't need the OCD as I could just turn gain up to 2:00 position for same amount, but I like the extra bite from OCD as it colors sound like a TS a little bit.
So, I just wanted to post how much I like the actives. In both guitars. EMG set very good too, but I think I like the low end and mids punch of the blackouts for my styles better. They have a good thump in low end when I chug chords and they still stay very articulate in low end. Great with some downtuned stuff too.
Anybody else like theirs too? Didn't see too many posts on the actives here. My luthier did the passive to active conversion for me and put in push-pull boost on tone knob too. He setup both new guitars as well as my old guitar about 6 years before the new ones. Great work and great setups. They all play incredibly good and all have shredder necks.
This year I decided to get a new guitar and tried out some EMG actives. I liked them a lot. Mostly play metal, heavy rock, some punk, and a bit of acoustic fingerpicking type stuff. I ended up buying a Epiphone Prophesy Les Paul with EMG 81/85 set, then decided I would step away from usual stop bar tailpiece and get my first guitar with a floyd rose tremolo. I know, brave stuff here, right? I bought a Jackson soloist with floyd rose and it had EMG passive pickups I didn't care for so I decided I wanted to try Duncan Blackouts actives in the Jackson. I went with Blackout Metal in bridge with boost on a push-pull on my tone knob (boost is pulled out, in is normal) and regular blackout AHB-1 in neck.
I know from a little reading that a lot of people don't like actives, but I really like them after having very similar tones in various guitars since the 80's with my go to pickup the Screamin Demon. I think I went nuts over the high output and not having to run pre-eq gain boost or anything before dirt box to get a hot sound out of the screamin demon. Anyway, i really like the Duncan Blackouts. Neck is where I usually play clean and it sounds very clean. Mix of neck and bridge needs a little volume roll back to sound clean, and just bridge for high gain is really nice to my ears. I like the big mid punch it has. Boost on is ok too, but only occasionally use it. The normal mode has very high output already.
I have found I can keep the gain down a good deal on my amp or preamps and still get incredible crunchy gain that sings. I like to keep gain knobs around 12:00 position on amp or preamp now and run OCD with gain on about 2 and volume about 3. It doesn't need the OCD as I could just turn gain up to 2:00 position for same amount, but I like the extra bite from OCD as it colors sound like a TS a little bit.
So, I just wanted to post how much I like the actives. In both guitars. EMG set very good too, but I think I like the low end and mids punch of the blackouts for my styles better. They have a good thump in low end when I chug chords and they still stay very articulate in low end. Great with some downtuned stuff too.
Anybody else like theirs too? Didn't see too many posts on the actives here. My luthier did the passive to active conversion for me and put in push-pull boost on tone knob too. He setup both new guitars as well as my old guitar about 6 years before the new ones. Great work and great setups. They all play incredibly good and all have shredder necks.
