EMG Retro Active pickups

Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

jeremy said:
why would you think that?
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In the evenings I don't dare to play my EMG's , our flat is near some public power lines, and when the public lights are on, and the consumption also increased the noise picked up by the EMGs is unbearable. I have exchanged many emails with Rick Hunt, and turned out my EMGs are both genuine and non-defective. He kind of "accepted" that this noise is normal. This is part of the design due to imbalanced coils. The rest of my humbuckers (DMZ, SD) are way less noisy. My EMGs sound great clean and nice distorted (during daylight). I was thinking of switching to Blackouts.
 
Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

greekdude said:
In the evenings I don't dare to play my EMG's , our flat is near some public power lines, and when the public lights are on, and the consumption also increased the noise picked up by the EMGs is unbearable. I have exchanged many emails with Rick Hunt, and turned out my EMGs are both genuine and non-defective. He kind of "accepted" that this noise is normal. This is part of the design due to imbalanced coils. The rest of my humbuckers (DMZ, SD) are way less noisy. My EMGs sound great clean and nice distorted (during daylight). I was thinking of switching to Blackouts.
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do you think a good power conditioner would help out with that?
 
Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

The noise discussion is strange to me - I've always found actives to be *quieter* than passives in terms of noise.

This EMG version of the Blackouts preamp idea certainly interests me. SD could probably do likewise (and extend the shelf life of the Blackouts preamp product) by introducing more pickup sets specifically designed for it. To my understanding, the Gus G is currently the only set developed this way.

I'm seriously curious about the Fat 55. It would be awesome if I could truly get the tone and feel of PAFs with the advantages of actives (lower noise, low impediance for longer cable runs). The 57/66 may have vaguely PAF voicing, but they are so high output that the only thing truly vintage about them is the fact they have visible pole pieces.

ESP is pretty progressive about putting new kinds of pickups into guitars, so maybe sometime an EC or Viper will come out with these already installed.
 
Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

darthphineas said:
do you think a good power conditioner would help out with that?
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I do the tests with a battery powered boss me-25 and headphones. No mains involved. When I go to the other side of the flat, away from the source of 50Hz EMI, the EMGs are much quieter. (In Greece we have 50Hz 220V, vs 60Hz 120V in the USA). As a result of the whole phenomenon I was alerted, bought some equipment to measure low/mid/high freq EMI and concluded that the numbers I was seeing about low freq were verified by the way the EMGs hummed. So, EMGs apart from being very good sounding pups can serve as a detector of low freq magnetic fields :)
 
Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

Yeah, it would be nice to see a video highlighting a little more than just heavy driven tones for both sets.
 
Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

Interesting concept. Looks like they really worked hard and designed a set of pickups...oops, my mistake, I mean copied an already exiting design.......Yep Seymour already has this with he coil packs and Gus G pickups. Had if for several years. Funny they are touting the differential preamp and each coil is voiced differently...Um I think we heard this before.

Anyway all my guitars have Duncan's and one has a Dimarzio Breed. I have a ESP Eclipse that originally had the EMG 81/60 combo. I yanked those out and put in the 57/66 EMG's, some improvement, only sounds good at 18v. So I ordered these retroactive's to give them a try since they are a simple plug and play replacement. So we will see how they sound. BTW I love the Gus G blackouts, I only wish they wouldn't have that silly logo on them, really distracts from the style of the guitar.
 
Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

I like that they have unique voices, whereas the BMP essentially gives you different shades of Blackouts.
 
Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

it seems to me that that the EMGs have a flat/generic sound, I would go for a Duncan for paf voicing, if the noise is a problem i have noise gates
 
Re: EMG Retro Active pickups

Okay, here is my review. You can't buy these yet from anywhere, only direct from EMG, they had a special on their FB site for black Friday. I will first say that the majority of my guitars have passive Duncan's, and I am a passive guy.

I have tried the GUS G Blackouts which I really liked quite a lot. The only down side to them is the silly GUS G logo, sorry but it really distracts from the guitar, otherwise I love them.

I picked up a ESP Eclipse a few years ago that came with EMG 81/60 set, and I couldn't get them out fast enough. I didn't want to tear the guitar down and go passive (though I thought about a few times). So I first tried the Hetfield EMG's...I though the 81 was sterile, these were 81's with all treble and no bass. Even at 18v I disliked them. So then I dropped in the newer EMG 57/66 actives, at the time they were a big improvement, but I had to run them at 18v to sound good. But they still had that annoying EMG top end sterile sound to them.

So when I saw the Retro actives, they looked like a clone of what Seymour did with the Gus G pickups. Passive into differential preamps and since all I had to do is pull the 57/66 set out and plug these in, I decided to plug them in. I got the 55 set. They IMO are the best EMG offering out there. Warmer, fatter and more organic. SO I am pretty happy with them. But head to head the GUS G Duncan system is better. The EMG's have a very almost non existent mag pull, where the Duncan's are more significant. That tells me the EMG's are more preamp tone based, and the Duncan's have more passive influence. But all in all these are EMG's best offerings in the active world. But Duncan has better sounding actives.
 
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