Re: SH-8 invader reviews
Darker = more bassy and less highs. Bassy (dark) sounding pickups in Bassy (dark) sounding guitars means the output will be mushy and indistinct. You will hear the note, but it won't be clear. It will sound indistinct and kind of like someone stuffed your ears with cotton. All high frequencies will be non-existant and you will only hear mids and bass. Guitar without the high frequencies is like a stereo with no tweeters and none of thos 4" midrange speakers that also cover the bright shimmery sounds we love. Gotta have high frequencies to have good sounding guitar IMHO. That being said, there is such a thing as too much high frequencies and not enough of everything else.
The goal is usually to seek balance. A bright guitar like a strat sounds pretty darned good with a bassy pickup like the invader in it. The dark pickup balances out the bright guitar. The bright strat also sounds good with somewhat bright strat pickups in it, but that's for a different kind of sound. They still have to be somewhat balanced. Dark or bassy guitars like the all mahogony SG are going to need a bright sounding pickup to balance out the bassy nature of the guitar itself. Nothing extremely wild, but you do need some highs for that guitar. Stay away from MOST alnico II pickups as they tend to have softer highs or nonexistant highs. Some underwound Alnico II pickups are bright and will work ok, but most will be woofy and darker than ceramics or Alnico V. Look up the tone chart supplied on this thread and check the numbers out to the right side under "EQ". Anything with highs that has a number higher than the bass should be ok. Don't go with something that has nothing but highs, but don't get something with tons of bass also.
The distortion would be a great choice really. He's loving the Invader, so clean and undistorted sound isn't a concern to him. He wants something to rule a distorted amp with.
