Re: Black Winter owner.... Feedback so far????
So, I've had the Black Winters for over a week now and tested it at different pickup heights with a couple of my fav pedals through my JMP 2204.
Great clarity, extremely tight and cutting without getting harsh. Backing off the volume, you get a clean sound that really lets the guitars natural tone come through.
They work best for me with an OD808 in front of it. Without the overdrive, the bass response does get a bit overwhelming. It's certainly not muddy or loose, there's just a lot of it in my Les Paul (which is a real picky brat as are all my ebony board axes) and the Winters tend to really bring that out.
The neck pickup makes leads effortless and fun with a defined attack and is even tight enough to do some rhythms with it.
The bridge pickup, like Lucy Diamond said, works great if you dial in your amp gain to your desired max. level and then use the guitars volume to go from tight and searing metal tone to chunky rock tone to clean.
There's certainly some compression going on which makes leads on both pickups sing fluidly, but there's still enough headroom for dynamic rhythm playing.
Compared to the Distortion (with which they're often compared), they're tighter, have better clean and lead tone and have more definition and clarity (string to string and overall presence). Compared to D-Activators they have a far better clean sound and more of an organic growl to them.
In the end, I have to say they're a bit more allround then I was searching for personally (as I already have the Aldrich set for that). They're amazing pickups for sure, but I feel they're not the perfect match for this particular guitar and amp combo, for my taste, at this time.
I'd still highly recommend them to anyone looking for hot and versatile pickups with a modern voicing though.
