Nazgûl (Nazgul) - short review
There aren't a lot of reviews of the Nazgûl yet, so I thought I'd post a "first impressions" type of thing for those interested in this pickup. If you have any questions, ask away and I'll try to answer to the best of my knowledge. Just to clarify, I no longer have the pickup installed, as it turned out it wasn't exactly what I wanted for this particular guitar.
I wanted to replace the pickups on a 2009 Ibanez RG1527, which has a basswood body, a rosewood fretboard, a maple/wenge neck and an Edge Pro 7.
Having considered all the usual options, I decided to go for something new and exciting: the Sentient/Nazgûl set. I really liked the idea that these pickups were specifically designed for 7 and 8 string guitars from the ground up.
I got the ones with the black metal covers. After spending a moment in awe of their cool, sleek appearance, I noticed that they're definitely too tall for this guitar, so I had to modify the pickup cavity. (Slightly off topic: Now, contrary to what the Internet would have one believe, it's not always necessary to use a router to modify shallow pickup cavities to accommodate tall pickups, nor is deepening the entire cavity. I did it with a power drill and two drill bits and removed precisely the amount of wood that was absolutely necessary. A lot of people seem to have the same problem, many with this guitar, so I'm going to write a more detailed explanation later.)
When I plugged the guitar in, my first thought was "This thing sounds EVIL." The sound is very aggressive and, for lack of a better word, nasty. As the tone chart suggests, it has a strong emphasis on the highs and higher mids, the low frequencies are somewhat subdued. Lots of presence and clarity, the low B sounds absolutely fantastic. It will cut through a mix and work really well when recording several layers of guitars to create a massive sound. I know that at least one of you will want to know if it's any good for djent... Yeah, it is.
I noticed that it lacked the heaviness I had grown accustomed to when using the DiMarzio Crunch Lab. Especially when palm-muting, it just didn't have that fullness and weight to it, it sounded a bit... clanky, I guess. So I did some testing with a guitar that had the Crunch Lab installed in it and, sure enough, the Nazgûl clearly had less output. I confirmed this with a DI recording. Of course, these were two different guitars, but the difference was pretty dramatic. I think that the product description might be a bit misleading, as I'm not the only one who has been surprised by the relatively low output of the Nazgûl. Some of you are probably thinking that output isn't everything, and you're right, but it does seem necessary for the type of sound I prefer. Using a clean boost pedal worked well with the Nazgûl: the clarity and aggression was still there, but it also had that full, saturated heaviness to it.
I mostly used the pickup with high gain distortion, both coils on, so unfortunately I can't comment on the clean/split sound all that much, I can only say that I didn't find it particularly spectacular or horrible. To me, perhaps the sound with both coils on had a bit too much bite in it to work as well with clean sounds as it does with high gain distortion.
There aren't a lot of reviews of the Nazgûl yet, so I thought I'd post a "first impressions" type of thing for those interested in this pickup. If you have any questions, ask away and I'll try to answer to the best of my knowledge. Just to clarify, I no longer have the pickup installed, as it turned out it wasn't exactly what I wanted for this particular guitar.
I wanted to replace the pickups on a 2009 Ibanez RG1527, which has a basswood body, a rosewood fretboard, a maple/wenge neck and an Edge Pro 7.
Having considered all the usual options, I decided to go for something new and exciting: the Sentient/Nazgûl set. I really liked the idea that these pickups were specifically designed for 7 and 8 string guitars from the ground up.
I got the ones with the black metal covers. After spending a moment in awe of their cool, sleek appearance, I noticed that they're definitely too tall for this guitar, so I had to modify the pickup cavity. (Slightly off topic: Now, contrary to what the Internet would have one believe, it's not always necessary to use a router to modify shallow pickup cavities to accommodate tall pickups, nor is deepening the entire cavity. I did it with a power drill and two drill bits and removed precisely the amount of wood that was absolutely necessary. A lot of people seem to have the same problem, many with this guitar, so I'm going to write a more detailed explanation later.)
When I plugged the guitar in, my first thought was "This thing sounds EVIL." The sound is very aggressive and, for lack of a better word, nasty. As the tone chart suggests, it has a strong emphasis on the highs and higher mids, the low frequencies are somewhat subdued. Lots of presence and clarity, the low B sounds absolutely fantastic. It will cut through a mix and work really well when recording several layers of guitars to create a massive sound. I know that at least one of you will want to know if it's any good for djent... Yeah, it is.
I noticed that it lacked the heaviness I had grown accustomed to when using the DiMarzio Crunch Lab. Especially when palm-muting, it just didn't have that fullness and weight to it, it sounded a bit... clanky, I guess. So I did some testing with a guitar that had the Crunch Lab installed in it and, sure enough, the Nazgûl clearly had less output. I confirmed this with a DI recording. Of course, these were two different guitars, but the difference was pretty dramatic. I think that the product description might be a bit misleading, as I'm not the only one who has been surprised by the relatively low output of the Nazgûl. Some of you are probably thinking that output isn't everything, and you're right, but it does seem necessary for the type of sound I prefer. Using a clean boost pedal worked well with the Nazgûl: the clarity and aggression was still there, but it also had that full, saturated heaviness to it.
I mostly used the pickup with high gain distortion, both coils on, so unfortunately I can't comment on the clean/split sound all that much, I can only say that I didn't find it particularly spectacular or horrible. To me, perhaps the sound with both coils on had a bit too much bite in it to work as well with clean sounds as it does with high gain distortion.
