Re: stoner rock pickup
I noticed that and was wondering about it. That the el diablo has A2s as the rails themselves. So the normal rails pickups like a cool rails or a dimebucker have a ceramic bar magnet beneath the coils like normal but with non magnetic rails as the poles? What are the rails made of?
Usually one of the more magnetically permeable grades of stainless steel. Thickness of the blade varies pretty wildly, too. Compare a Dimebucker to the L-500XL that inspired it, and then to the single coil-sized dual blade humbuckers...
Whole bunch of interesting variables for coil geometry and inductance, with interactions for tone and output.
For added wackiness, some manufacturers have messed with ceramic magnets underneath/between alnico polepieces. [One of the many Iommi models, IIRC.]
Back to the original topic... Besides attacking via pickups, you could always get a digital feedback eliminator, or a parametric EQ [graphic EQs often cut too wide a band, with unwanted side effects, compared to an adjustable Q parametric set to reduce only as much as is needed] and cut the feedback-prone frequencies. That'd give you more freedom in pickup choices, but at the expense of another signal processing stage. Misconfigured they can kill wanted feedback, though, so there may be a learning curve/trial and error involved.
As far as pickup choice, that's wide open for personal preference. Stoner is usually more about the choice of distortion [fuzz and/or distortion and/or amp distortion] than the pickup. There's a wide gamut from classic PAF-style to all-out metal pickups, plenty of examples of nonstandard choices like P-90s and Filter'Trons, too.
I'd go for a boost and/or a fuzz before giving up on a low output pickup I liked. But if you prefer the feel of a hotter pickup but need to manage feedback, well, then stuff the body with dampening materials [there's much better options than rags or newspaper these days, like a medium or higher density acoustic foam]. If you don't like the tonal impact of that, either you struggle with finding a pickup that deemphasizes just the right frequency, or you use signal processing to remove the unwanted frequency.
Oh, and there's other angles of attack on feedback in a guitar. Vibrato bridge users in particular have long done tricks like scrunchies or foam under the strings at the headstock, though plenty of high volume arena rockers have done it on fixed bridge guitars, too. Same for stiffer pickup mountings [whether it's higher tension springs or cut to height tubing] and foam under the pickups.
Lots of options, all valid.
