Very happy to report that the Black Winter pups are excellent. Installed them into my Subsonic baritone and played through several different rigs (a Peavey 6505+ half-stack, a Line 6 Flextone half-stack, and my Marshall EL34 tube power amp and multi-FX processors into a Mustaine sig Marshall cab), to see how they would perform in fairly different setups. A lot of times when we travel (especially overseas) we wind up using rented backlines which differ from what my normal rig would be, so I was curious to see what I could expect. What I got was a tone that didn't drastically change from what I'd had before with my other Duncans, but added a bit more meat and edge, which is a welcome thing! Honestly I was quite happy with the tone I'd been getting before.....or at least I thought so until I heard what my guitar and rig sounds like now with the BW's, because I now have an added edginess to my tone that I hadn't realized I was really missing. As you know from having heard our material, while we go for the heavy low-tuned crunchy sound, at the same time we utilize a lot of odd chord shapes and melodies we move around within the chord patterns that require having a distinct clarity in our tone as well as chunk and distortion. The Black Winter pups definitely give me that, I am happy to say. One thing I personally dislike about pickups like, for example, active EMGs is that they give you heaviness and chunk, but I always feel like I'm losing that bite and clarity that I really need. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when I have used passive classic pups like 490/498s, they have great tone but they don't give me that beefy heaviness that I need from the low-tuned baritone. The Black Winter pups seem to fit right into that perfect middle ground, for lack of a better term, that I really need. I can see why these would work great for black metal bands and more progressive death metal bands, who also need that clarity and definition when picking out the melodies and all the little intricacies while simultaneously thrashing out the heavy bottom end riffs. These Black Winter's definitely seem to give me a good balanced tone, yet with teeth!
I was impressed that I didn't have to alter my amp settings too greatly, other than backing off the gain a bit due to the seemingly higher output. Honestly one of my concerns was that these pickups might be a bit too rough for my clean tone, because I know sometimes when I've tried using similar styled pups in the past I've found that they break up my clean sound in a way I didn't care much for. VERY happy to report that wasn't the case this time! Rather than causing any unwanted distortion in my clean sound, I had a bit more of a brighter midrange-to-high happening, and the neck pickup really sounded great on the clean channel, especially through the Peavey and Marshall rigs. Seemingly unlike many guys in brutal bands, I tend to use my neck pickup a lot, or set the guitar in the middle position between the two humbuckers, for a lot of my rhythm playing. These pickups somewhat surprisingly worked very well for that, because I still got that percussive smooth tone I like but also with an added bit of edge that I was lacking before that definitely helped me cut through everything with more clarity.
I'm trying to think of any kind of constructive criticism I can offer on these..........honestly so far I cannot, haha. Maybe after a bit more time I might start being able to nitpick a bit more thoroughly, but as for right now I'm very much enjoying these pups in my arsenal. Can't thank you enough for setting me up with these, I really hope they catch on because I think they'll really appeal to a lot of players out there if they give 'em a chance. Oh and I definitely think these don't have to just appeal to guys who play extreme metal, they've definitely got a diverse enough tonal personality that could be used for guys playing everything from NWOBHM old school stuff to even guys who want to play mainstream rock looking for some different tonal possibilities. I have a feeling these would be amazing in one of my old Explorers, that's going to be my next task!
