Tips for Duncans in an old Ibanez RG

R

robo

New member
Hey guys! I need a bit of advice. I'm an ex metal guitar player who have been playing the blues for the last 20 years or so. Back in the day though I was a full on shred guy (Vai/Satriani-style leads) but played death metal (Florida-style). I'm in my 40:ies now and looking back feeling death metal nostalgia creeping up on me. I have quite a few guitars nowadays but no metal guitar. So I pulled the trigger on an 2003 Ibanez RG, black and everything! Let the mayhem begin, of sorts.

The guitar's great but the pickups (stock) are too muddy for my taste. What pickups should I buy? I know nothing about metal pickups. Way back when we only used stock pickups and never thought much about it. But you get pickier.

I'm looking for a bridge pickup that's tight enough in the bass for some great Chuck Schuldiner chug. But still with great separation and highs for a Vai-like solo tone. It's maybe impossible but the best of both worlds kind of pickup. And yeah, it has to be Duncans. There are a gazillion pickup winders out there and to narrow it down I decided long ago that Duncan's my brand. They're huge and have a ton of pickups.

For reference:
In teles I use Jerry Donahue lead and Vintage for tele neck
In Les Pauls: 59/Custom lead and 59 neck
335: Seth Lover all over.
 
JB or Custom with A8 magnet both sound great in the bridge for the purpose. Paired with Jazz, Full Shred or 59 in the neck.
 
AdrianSD said:
JB or Custom with A8 magnet both sound great in the bridge for the purpose. Paired with Jazz, Full Shred or 59 in the neck.
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Huh! Maybe the good old JB's still got it. I had one of those, didn't quite like it. But I wasn't looking for a metal pickup then… Thanks for the tip!
 
Duncan Distortion is another option, very tight for riffs but I just couldn't bond with it, not very musical for leads. But I love the high gain sound I'm getting from a JB with either a rough cast A5 or A8, or Custom A2, A8 or ceramic.
 
Are you adverse to trying Dimarzios? I mean, that's what Vai uses . . . so if you want to sound like him . . .
 
Take what I say with a big 'ole grain 'o salt, because I'm neither a performing musician, or have owned these. Going strictly by the vid's, you may want to also consider the Mark Holcomb Alpha & Omega set. Check out the video's on the webpage. Especially the "Half Moon" vid. These pups look like they'll chug and still do cleans very well.

These might be my next Duncan set, and I don't do metal at all.

https://www.seymourduncan.com/single-product/mark-holcomb?pa_strings=6
 
For my old RG570, I plan to swap to a PATB-2b Parallel Axis Distortion for all-out gonzo metal tones, but with some interesting dynamic behaviors (it tends to be compressed from the extreme output, but weirdly expressive with interesting harmonics and low magnetic pull for insane sustain).

But for the sounds you are looking for, I'd probably go with a Black Winter bridge.

Could do Black Winter or Sentient neck pickups with either. Black Winter is a surprisingly flexible ceramic neck pickup tone, Sentient is somewhere between a '59 and Jazz neck model, but fatter without being dark. Great for neck leads, riffs, and cleans, and matches better with hot pickups than older standard PAFish neck humbuckers.

I'm not a huge fan of the Nazgul as a bridge pickup, it does a particular metal rhythm sound without having to resort to EQ, but getting it to not do that isn't so easy. It sounds like you want more flexibility in tones than that out of your bridge pickup.

My RG570 didn't work at all well with a JB, but that may have been a quirk of the particular basswood, it managed to be both honky and loose at the same time, with no real bass. PATB-1b is immensely better, has more bass but no mud. JB is pretty easy to try, and when it works, it's a great sound, it's been insanely popular for rock, metal, and even other genres for over 40 years.

Custom is very underrated, even without a swap to A8, though the Custom with A8 is a favorite sound of mine, sort of a retro pickup that never was, somewhere between the ceramic Custom's ceramic overwound PAF and a Super 70 (the pickup in Eddie Van Halen's Destroyer, which was used all over VH1 for parts with no whammy use).

The Custom is a great pickup for metal rhythms, and good for leads, though it doesn't have the baked in upper-mid scream of a lot of hot metal pickups (or the JB). Which can be an advantage for cleaner bridge tones in many guitars.

There's a lot of good choices!
 
This is no slam against Duncan pickups. I have them in a half-dozen guitars and love them, but I have never found a humbucker set from Duncan that I completely liked in my basswood Ibanez RG's. I have Dimarzio pickups in my RG's. That being said, the best combo I found from Duncan was the Full Shred set. Should do what you want.
 
I think a lot of the end result depends on the signal chain as a whole, amp, pedals & such and such. Found even a Mesa recto or a JVM can sound boomy and loose in the bass, but chuck a tube screamer or an SD-1 as clean boost in front of it and suddenly I get tight bass and improved clarity. Custom Custom is notoriously loose but into a TS and using a 10 band EQ in the amp's loop to boost / cut frequencies to taste it actually sounds great for metal. Uber high output pickups are overrated imho.
 
GuitarStv said:
Are you adverse to trying Dimarzios? I mean, that's what Vai uses . . . so if you want to sound like him . . .
Click to expand...

Ha! Mark my words: I am no Vai. Any DiMarzios ain't gonna change that, unfortunately :) I just used Vai as a reference. I'm in the ball park but he's playing is way way out of league.
 
ArtieToo said:
Take what I say with a big 'ole grain 'o salt, because I'm neither a performing musician, or have owned these. Going strictly by the vid's, you may want to also consider the Mark Holcomb Alpha & Omega set. Check out the video's on the webpage. Especially the "Half Moon" vid. These pups look like they'll chug and still do cleans very well.

These might be my next Duncan set, and I don't do metal at all.

https://www.seymourduncan.com/single-product/mark-holcomb?pa_strings=6
Click to expand...

Yeah! They sound good! Thanks for the tip!
 
Despair said:
For my old RG570, I plan to swap to a PATB-2b Parallel Axis Distortion for all-out gonzo metal tones, but with some interesting dynamic behaviors (it tends to be compressed from the extreme output, but weirdly expressive with interesting harmonics and low magnetic pull for insane sustain).

But for the sounds you are looking for, I'd probably go with a Black Winter bridge.

Could do Black Winter or Sentient neck pickups with either. Black Winter is a surprisingly flexible ceramic neck pickup tone, Sentient is somewhere between a '59 and Jazz neck model, but fatter without being dark. Great for neck leads, riffs, and cleans, and matches better with hot pickups than older standard PAFish neck humbuckers.

I'm not a huge fan of the Nazgul as a bridge pickup, it does a particular metal rhythm sound without having to resort to EQ, but getting it to not do that isn't so easy. It sounds like you want more flexibility in tones than that out of your bridge pickup.

My RG570 didn't work at all well with a JB, but that may have been a quirk of the particular basswood, it managed to be both honky and loose at the same time, with no real bass. PATB-1b is immensely better, has more bass but no mud. JB is pretty easy to try, and when it works, it's a great sound, it's been insanely popular for rock, metal, and even other genres for over 40 years.

Custom is very underrated, even without a swap to A8, though the Custom with A8 is a favorite sound of mine, sort of a retro pickup that never was, somewhere between the ceramic Custom's ceramic overwound PAF and a Super 70 (the pickup in Eddie Van Halen's Destroyer, which was used all over VH1 for parts with no whammy use).

The Custom is a great pickup for metal rhythms, and good for leads, though it doesn't have the baked in upper-mid scream of a lot of hot metal pickups (or the JB). Which can be an advantage for cleaner bridge tones in many guitars.

There's a lot of good choices!
Click to expand...

Thanks! I've sort of ruled out Black Winter without even trying. Nazgul is not my thing I know for sure. But I just thought (guessing) that Black Winter was the pickup for that Norwegian lofi black metal howl. And that's not my thing at all. But you say they work well for chugging and more melodic lead lines? I'll have to look in to this a bit further.
 
Mr. B said:
This is no slam against Duncan pickups. I have them in a half-dozen guitars and love them, but I have never found a humbucker set from Duncan that I completely liked in my basswood Ibanez RG's. I have Dimarzio pickups in my RG's. That being said, the best combo I found from Duncan was the Full Shred set. Should do what you want.
Click to expand...

Dimarzios are great pickups. But I've decided long ago to stick with Duncan. Not because they're any better, but because I have to narrow it down a bit. There are sooo many great pickups out there. Just Duncan has hundreds. That's enough for me. Otherways finding new pickups will be a full time job.

Yeah the Full Shred sounds like a good candidate, I have them on my shortlist!
 
AdrianSD said:
I think a lot of the end result depends on the signal chain as a whole, amp, pedals & such and such. Found even a Mesa recto or a JVM can sound boomy and loose in the bass, but chuck a tube screamer or an SD-1 as clean boost in front of it and suddenly I get tight bass and improved clarity. Custom Custom is notoriously loose but into a TS and using a 10 band EQ in the amp's loop to boost / cut frequencies to taste it actually sounds great for metal. Uber high output pickups are overrated imho.
Click to expand...

Yeah, from my metal days in the past I played a Ibanez with an original V2 pickup (their take on a DiMarzio Super Distortion) straight into a Marshall Valvestate 8100. Sometimes with a SD-1 in front of it. I know exactly what you're talking about. I love how it chugged, but the lead sound was suffering – too sharp and unmelodic with bad string separation.
 
Anyone mention the Mayhem set yet? I had them in an RG-120 and loved them.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk
 
Then go for either the Distortion set for older metal, or the Sentient/Pegasus for modern metal.
 
Mincer said:
Then go for either the Distortion set for older metal, or the Sentient/Pegasus for modern metal.
Click to expand...

Why not Black Winter? It's supposed to be cleaner/more flexible than the Distortion set, though in same ballpark.

Pegasus hadn't occurred to me, I haven't loved it in some of the brighter guitars I've heard it in. But in an RG with possibly tubby basswood (unless it's just the pickups being murky that is the problem), that could be an excellent choice. Though a lot less metal-focused than a bunch of the other options already discussed.
 
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