passive thrash metal pickups

Re: passive thrash metal pickups

ah the alder dinky.... epitome of 80's metal and since then a favorite with thrash and shredders
a lot of what thrash is about is agression and atittude, since then there are a lot of shades of the thrash tone, there is the darker thrash tone with bosted lows, sightly scooped mids and medium highs, the there it is the angrier agrier tone dave mustaine made popular, with highs at full throttle, bosted mids, tight lows, or the german thrash massacre, a big yet tight bottom, bosted not honky mids and controlled highs wich can sear through the mix.

everything from either the JB or Custom family can do thrash very well, from the calssic JB work horse of Dave and Scott, to the vicios Invader wich fulfilled James thick and defined rythms, the Custom whose provide Exodus the power, the Classic Dimarzio Super Distortion providing drive to Kerry king and to the germans at Sodom, or ultimately the dimebucker, embodyment of clarity, paf like quality and texan fizz, also there are modern contenders, the middle earth pickups, desingned for definition or the improved version of an old metal classic and even there is a pickup for consumated full shred-ders

none of them will sound bad in alder, all of them had the bottom wich brings palm mutes and muddy tones with them is often user fail, your best is descrive the tone you want more precisely and get the pickup with that base tone
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

With that 10 watt amp and its 8 inch speaker his pickup choice will do very little...

waxing poetic about the fine nuances between pickups is pretty worthless through that rig.

A low end guitar with low end amp with nice pickups is still a "meh" rig

A low end guitar with stock pickups and a decent amp is an "ok" rig
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

my fault i didn't saw the marsahll mg part, it's odd but even the ms (the ones wich are battery powered and you can clip to your belt) sounds more marshall than a lot of the mg series
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

meza_666 said:
I'm using a Marshall MG10CF and a ehx metal muff
Click to expand...

Edgecrusher is right. I missed this the first time around. Pickups won't help you at all through this rig.

You don't need a colossal or even expensive amp for live or studio anymore but the price of both of your pickups are going to exceed 2x over the price of your amp, even that pedal costs as much as that amp does. You could buy a duplicate of your set up for what it would cost to get these 2 pickups and have a professional install them. Not to say cheap gear can't be used to great effect or make really unique tones, but getting new pickups while running through that thing would be like buying a 40 dollar saddle for a 10 dollar horse. Shoot for an amp of greater quality in that department first and you might not need to change the pickups as opposed to changing the pickups now, realizing you need a different amp later, and then getting it anyway.

Running hotter pickups into a metal muff distortion and into that little thing would crush the sound to dust with distortion before it even gets to the amp which would also not help you. One of the main reasons that people get higher output pickups aside from the difference in the response and eq curve is that they want a hotter signal to hit their amp so it distorts or overdrives more easily. Your amp would break up at incredibly low volumes already and it would not sound pleasant doing it. Getting the pickups you're thinking about would actually be shooting yourself in the foot with this amp. Try it yourself: plug your guitar in and crank the volume up a lot higher than usual with the amp running clean and see how it sounds. Chances are you got the distortion pedal because you weren't even satisfied with how the overdrive/distortion channel/switch on the amp itself sounded, let alone it's actual overdriven tone. Your amp doesn't even have a 3 band eq or anything, just a contour knob.

The goal for an amp is 2 things: make that overdriven break up distortion sound GOOD at the appropriate volume, or keep the tone as clean and non distorted as possible at the ideal volume. This is technically how tube amps and solid states try to usually function. Tubes have a softer and fatter break up tone with more harmonic content that is pleasing to hear while solid states have a much harsher and harder clipping sound, leading them to strive for as much clean headroom as possible and using other circuitry such as distortion pedals or gain channels to produce the break up in a more controlled way (like how you are using yours, except your amp doesn't have the headroom to stay clean, nor the tonal flexibility with just one contour knob).

There are grey areas too where tube amps are striving for more clean headroom while solid state amps are using more technology to emulate that tubelike response while being able to stay totally clean when you want them to be. Even hybrid amps exist now that are good or great at doing both. There are even exceptions, like the traditional Pignose. It's 5 watts solid state, even battery powered, and only has a volume knob on it, but it's overdriven tone when cranked is really unique and pretty cool, kind of like an old school fuzz pedal. Your amp wasn't meant to behave like that however and has a dedicated distortion/overdrive channel.

It doesn't have to be much, maybe like a 30 watt tube amp that you can overdrive easily, or a solid state head and cab combo with a lot more power so it doesn't clip at such low volumes and you can control your gain more through pedals or other circuitry. If you're serious enough about guitar to start changing your pickups, then you should get a serious amp first, something where you can hear yourself over a drummer without someone having to mic the amp up to a PA first. Amps like these are fun to play with and squeeze cool tones out of but they are not your bread, your butter, your meat, or your potatoes.
 
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Re: passive thrash metal pickups

Heck, even a good 5 watt tube amp like a blackheart little giant would be a huge upgrade. I would recommend one of the jet city amps by soldano as a good, inexpensive option.
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

meza_666 said:
I'm using a Marshall MG10CF and a ehx metal muff
Click to expand...

Methinks this thread isn't quite serious....

But my suggestion is the JB or Custom if one plans on playing leads.
If not...Invader is the best pickup for playing thrash rhythm IMO.
I'd use a guitar with an Invader for every rhythm guitar part if I was recording a thrash album, and another guitar with a JB in it for all the solos. The Invader also splits incredibly well for those "Fight Fire With Fire" clean intros.
 
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Re: passive thrash metal pickups

Falloffthebonetone said:
Running hotter pickups into a metal muff distortion and into that little thing would crush the sound to dust with distortion before it even gets to the amp which would also not help you. One of the main reasons that people get higher output pickups aside from the difference in the response and eq curve is that they want a hotter signal to hit their amp so it distorts or overdrives more easily. Your amp would break up at incredibly low volumes already and it would not sound pleasant doing it. Getting the pickups you're thinking about would actually be shooting yourself in the foot with this amp. Try it yourself: plug your guitar in and crank the volume up a lot higher than usual with the amp running clean and see how it sounds. Chances are you got the distortion pedal because you weren't even satisfied with how the overdrive/distortion channel/switch on the amp itself sounded, let alone it's actual overdriven tone.
Click to expand...

Bone here gets it.

Here is a blind leading the blind story relevant to this situation, When I was a kid I had a friend who started playing guitar a few months after me. He has this Kramer strat copy that was HSS. One day he comes over to my house to jam and I let him plug into my rig and we note how different the 2 guitars sound. His is kinda thin and bright I tell him its cause his humbucker is weak. I get it in his head a new "hot" pickup will be the ticket. A month or so later he orders a SD Invader like I had in my guitar and.. its a huge disappointment.

Didnt ever occur to either of us we were comparing the guitars through my Marshall JMP. He had this little Fender "R.A.D" amp... was i think 15 watts... had 4 pre-programmed sounds and a contour knob. The invader through that amp with no headroom created fuzzy mush... and a ton of feed back. Eventually I messed with it and got a usable sound out of it by dropping the pickup down flush to the pickguard.


The OP is in a similar position, he needs something that has a bit of head room so hes able to get some articulation going on. Particularly on the lows the headroom is important. Doesnt have to be a huge or expensive amp either. An amp that can be found used pretty cheap and has a killer thrash tone is the old Marshall Valvestates series. You can find the 8080's for around 200 bucks.
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

I'm gonna get flamed for this, but last night I gigged my recently aquired jap jackson dinky DKMGT that i slapped a duncan performer detonator in, and boy if it didn't sound great! it came w EMG HZ's and the detonator was much clearer and fuller, it hung w my EMG 81 loaded Ibby RG (we do 80s metal, rig is a mesa mini rectifier & old school mesa 2x12). from what i've read here, this cheapy import pup is closer to a duncan distortion (big ol ceramic mag) than an invader. FWIW, I'm not a fan of JBs but it might be apples and oranges, as i had them in different types of guitars (24.75 mahogany setnecks, not 25.5 alder shred sleds).

jackson duncan.jpg

also enjoyed the dimebuckers i've used in the past FWIW...
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

ten four, I assumed the cork sniffers might sieze the opportunity to pounce on a newbie, ha (i'm used to the pecking order on thegearpage.net, a-HA!)
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

Brooks said:
ten four, I assumed the cork sniffers might sieze the opportunity to pounce on a newbie, ha (i'm used to the pecking order on thegearpage.net, a-HA!)
Click to expand...

The Detonator bridge is one of the best pickups you can get with the word Duncan on it.
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

Brooks said:
ten four, I assumed the cork sniffers might sieze the opportunity to pounce on a newbie, ha (i'm used to the pecking order on thegearpage.net, a-HA!)
Click to expand...

Oh uh, ok yeah I can do that.

Um. I tried the Detonator and then I started vomiting out of my ears. I'll stick to my 59 PAFs handwound by Ernest Hemingway. Clarity, clarity, dynamics, organic, warmth, clarity.
 
Re: passive thrash metal pickups

meza_666 said:
I'm using a Marshall MG10CF and a ehx metal muff
Click to expand...

I would say a new amp is going to better get you where you want to go.

If you're in the UK, I highly recommend a used Marshall of the JCM2000 flavor. The TSL100 and DSL100 can both do thrash metal admirably!

As for pickups, I would have to also +1 on the Duncan Distortion overall.
 
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