Re: Black Winter owner.... Feedback so far????
So I put The Black Winter bridge in my guitar today, along with a new CTS 550k pot, wired up with no tone pot, as I usually do. It sounds great...
My guitar is LTD VB-300, 27" scale neck, mahogany body, maple neck, and rosewood board. The strings are a set of 12-56 tuned to B standard. My amp is a slightly modded 6505 head on top of a Mesa standard cab with Celetion K100's and Celestion 12-65's.
First I'd like to say I have always been huge fan of the Duncan Distortion, so there might be a little bias involved in my review, and as I am speaking about the DD, it serves only as a reference to compare the Black Winter, as it's been regarded as a beefier Distortion.
I'm really digging this pickup. I've experimented with a few high output pickups, and this is my favorite so far. I've had the Lace Drop and Gain, Dirty Hesher, Dimarzio SD, Dimarzio TZ, BPK Warpig, BPK Black Hawk, Duncan DD, Alternative 8, Blackouts, the El Diablo, and of course, the EMG's.
All in all, it does what it says it does. It has a lot of clarity with huge mid/top end presence and a big low end, but at the same time stays very tight. It carries that distinctive high-mid rasp during fast riffing, more so than the DD, which is what I was looking for. I've read people don't like it for leads. It's difficult to find a pickup that does great rhythm and great leads, but with some pole piece adjustments, it does leads just fine. The DC resistance is the same as DD, but almost sounds like it has less distortion, I think due to the higher resonant peak relative to the DD, giving the clarity I mentioned earlier.
To make a list of cons about this pickup would be difficult. I haven't used it in any other guitars, so I'll refrain from speaking beyond my own experience. If there is one thing to say, I will say this, it is a decently bright pickup (I like bright, so...). I did have to turn down the treble and presence, but that's fine. If you're thinking 250k pots, I say no, it gets do dark/muddy for me in high output pickups.
Maybe I'm just in the honeymoon stage right now, but Seymour Duncan got this one SPOT ON. It's as good, if not better as pickups twice the price, and I hate to say that because it almost sounds like I'm describing SD as a budget pickup company, which they're not.
I know it's hard to use YouTube demos as an trustworthy source as to what pickups sound like in the real world, but Ola's demo is pretty close. Aside from the jangly-ness (which I think is a characteristic of the Satan), it shows accurately what this pick up sounds like for that type of metal.
Unfortunately I have no decent means by which to record a demo. But trust me, if you've read this far, you'll love it.
Overall, it's crazy sounding. It sounds like it's going to fall apart in the low end and blow a hole in your speakers with the mids and highs, but it pulls itself back together and stabs your soul before you can strum the next chord.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, the aesthetics are pretty sweet. The goth script, black pole pieces, and the black baseplate add to it's demonic persona. I'm very happy with it, and as budget permits, I'll be getting the neck version ASAP.
