trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

[koshikas]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

i've got a pegasus coming my way. i think pegasus is mostly downplayed in all demos because it is mostly compared with nazgul which is meant to be as aggressive as it can be. direct comparisons between the two under same rig setups would render pegasus as being a weaker sibling to the nazgul. i think (hope) that pegasus, despite being a warmer more articulate pickup with moderate output is still very much a-la distortion pickup.

 

[Proko]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

I just installed the Pegasus and Sentient in my Carvin CT6. Maple top, Mahogany body and neck, ebony FB. I run it through a Marshall DSL 40c. Only pedal required is my delay. The Pegasus is a freak of nature, but be careful what you run trough it, don't defeat the PUPs purpose, which is to deliver a crazy crisp sound that gives you insane pick attack and string articulation. If you want one big distorted mush, get a high output PUP. If you want to clearly hear the harmony of a chord, or add in articulation and lead riffs, then the Pegasus is for you. What I love about this PUP is it can take anything you give it. No matter where I put my tone controls (amp or guitar), it handles it with ease (Even heavy bass just makes it heavier and not mushier. the dynamic range is incredible, and the louder it gets, the clearer it gets. I spent hours just creating new sounds my Carvin only dreamed of days ago. I dialed in super buttery sounds, to crushing chords from low gain to full gain. Only at about gain on 8 and hot lead button selected, did this PUP start to get overtaken, which many metal heads would probably love anyways. What's amazing with this PUP is the split coil. I usually disregard split coil HBs, since it defeats the purpose of the HB. However, the Pegasus is fantastic. Thinned out and on crunch/clean, it actually sounds like a Tele. Turn down the treble up the mid and bass, and it fattens really nice The Sentient is an excellent compliment, and a very nice jazzy sound, it also splits extremely well. Do not hesitate throwing this in the bridge of an HSS guitar or single HB.

I also want to add that this PUP is not forgiving, and I actually installed it 1/4" below, and not the 1/8 per the manual. This allowed me to throw more at it at higher volumes, and increased an already exceptional tonal range.

If you love ripping arpeggio's, playing lead for hours, adding octaves, crushing multi string chords, and chugging out a base line with riffs (that never get lost), then you will not be disappointed. If you want to play blues, it does just fine, just role your tone down, and everything smooths out to a really nice vintage sound, but not like a true PAF. Just note that getting this PUP muddy is not easy.

 

[Proko]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

I just installed the Pegasus and Sentient in my Carvin CT6. Maple top, Mahogany body and neck, ebony FB. I run it through a Marshall DSL 40c. Only pedal required is my delay. The Pegasus is a freak of nature, but be careful what you run trough it, don't defeat the PUPs purpose, which is to deliver a crazy crisp sound that gives you insane pick attack and string articulation. If you want one big distorted mush, get a high output PUP. If you want to clearly hear the harmony of a chord, or add in articulation and lead riffs, then the Pegasus is for you. What I love about this PUP is it can take anything you give it. No matter where I put my tone controls (amp or guitar), it handles it with ease (Even heavy bass just makes it heavier and not mushier. the dynamic range is incredible, and the louder it gets, the clearer it gets. I spent hours just creating new sounds my Carvin only dreamed of days ago. I dialed in super buttery sounds, to crushing chords from low gain to full gain. Only at about gain on 8 and hot lead button selected, did this PUP start to get overtaken, which many metal heads would probably love anyways. What's amazing with this PUP is the split coil. I usually disregard split coil HBs, since it defeats the purpose of the HB. However, the Pegasus is fantastic. Thinned out and on crunch/clean, it actually sounds like a Tele. Turn down the treble up the mid and bass, and it fattens really nice The Sentient is an excellent compliment, and a very nice jazzy sound, it also splits extremely well. Do not hesitate throwing this in the bridge of an HSS guitar or single HB.

I also want to add that this PUP is not forgiving, and I actually installed it 1/4" below, and not the 1/8 per the manual. This allowed me to throw more at it at higher volumes, and increased an already exceptional tonal range.

If you love ripping arpeggio's, playing lead for hours, adding octaves, crushing multi string chords, and chugging out a base line with riffs (that never get lost), then you will not be disappointed. If you want to play blues, it does just fine, just role your tone down, and everything smooths out to a really nice vintage sound, but not like a true PAF. Just note that getting this PUP muddy is not easy.

Clarification. Do not hesitate to put the Pegasus in the bridge of an HSS guitar. The sentient can compliment a host of bridge pick ups, To me, it is about the equivalent to the stacked noiseless neck humbucker on my Beck Strat. Maybe a little wider.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

It's also been my experience that a TB-6 is more articulate than the SH-6, even with full and 3-finger power chords. It just doesn't have the "hair" that I get from the SH-6, and sounds to me like there's an underlying clean tone running parallel to the distorted tone.

Solos are also crisp and clear without the level of "running together" I get with the SH-6.

That said, I don't like the TB-6 for those very reasons, but since that's the kind of thing you're going for, give it a shot.

 

[Hornsby_8175]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

Personally, I can't get a fully clean sound out of my Nazgul or Black Winter without rolling back the volume pot a little; much like my EMG 81s.

I find that if you back the tone of all the way then bring it back in slightly until you hit that point were the clarity comes back in, and then back the volume off if there's still some gain then you should get a fully clean sound.

 

[Mincer]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

I find that if you back the tone of all the way then bring it back in slightly until you hit that point were the clarity comes back in, and then back the volume off if there's still some gain then you should get a fully clean sound.

This is easier to do on the Pegasus than the Nazgul. The tone, (I know this is subjective) when played clean is also better on the Pegasus.

 

[Johnny the Kid]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

what amp are you using? I'm assuming something with high headroom? Otherwise, wouldn't the Distortion (and probably the Nazgul too) distort a clean channel? I can see clean-ish tones from a high output pickup, but not pristine cleans.

The Duncan Distortion has never really been out of the running, but it's more of a fallback as I'd really like to try a modern pickup if possible. I feel like I'm so old school on most of my stuff (music preferences, guitars, pedals, pickups, hell even music player devices-- I still favor my CD walkman and my Minidiscman to an MP3 player), that I figured I need to get a least a new design pickup rather than an "oldie but goodie".

When I posted this, I was using a Vox Valvetronix almost completely. I've since switched to the Line 6 Helix and I've added several other pickups to my arsenal (EMG's and Bareknuckles). The Vox couldn't do cleans with the EMG, I didn't get the BKP until a few months ago.

 

[PipeRain]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

My wife, who is not a musiciana and hates anything more aggressive than Aerosmith and loves Boston with a passion (Shudder), says that the best sounding guitar I own is a Jackson JS-7 with a Nazgul Sentient combo in it played clean thru a Marshall AVT 150 combo with tone and volume wide open. She says it sounds "Warm and friendly". nder:

 

[Mincer]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

My wife, who is not a musiciana and hates anything more aggressive than Aerosmith and loves Boston with a passion (Shudder), says that the best sounding guitar I own is a Jackson JS-7 with a Nazgul Sentient combo in it played clean thru a Marshall AVT 150 combo with tone and volume wide open. She says it sounds "Warm and friendly". nder:

All perspective, I guess. I can't stand Boston's guitar sound- it has this EQ that sounds good at first, then you realize it is on everything and like too much salt, you want to spit it out.

 

[Demanic]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

Boston's got the Budweiser of guitar sounds.

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk

 

[gregory]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

How does the Pegasus sound as an aggressive rock pickup?

All the demos I've heard are focused on metal and not even of the progressive variety which seems to be one of the marketing bullet points.

Does it have any overwound PAF-like qualities like the Perpetual Burn or an A5 Seymourizer II?

How does it sound split or in parallel either clean, edge or mid-gain?

 

[PipeRain]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

All perspective, I guess. I can't stand Boston's guitar sound- it has this EQ that sounds good at first, then you realize it is on everything and like too much salt, you want to spit it out.

Exactly. When anyone describes anything as "Nasally" I instantly think of "More Than A Feeling".

Boston's got the Budweiser of guitar sounds.

Feeling extraordinarily complimentary today eh?

 

[Demanic]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

Budweiser is despised by many not because it is a bad tasting beer. There are far far worse. It's because it is the quintisential American lager. The same goes for Boston's guitar sound.

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk

 

[bldrst]

Re: trying to understand pickups like Nazgul and Pegasus

Yeah, it's going to be hard to hear a difference between any pickup running through what most of the guys doing those demos are using. That put me off for a good while on trying the Nazgul and Pegasus because I didn't think there was much of a difference between the two. I decided I was wrong when I happened across a guitar in my local shop that had a Pegasus in it. It's a good pup and I liked it so much I went home and ordered the Pegauss/Sentient set for myself. I also found a used Nazgul on ebay, so I scooped that up as well.

Running both straight into an amp, you can definitely tell a difference in tone and feel. The Nazgul is the most aggressive humbucker I've ever used, in my opinion. It's not even all that high output, there was just something about it that made it gnarly. I couldn't control it, so I swapped in the Pegaus and I liked it much better. Not as aggressive, and I found the marketing to be correct when they said you could hear all the notes in a chord ring out across the fretboard.

Now, in my opinion, if you were going for old school thrash and heavy metal, the Nazgul would be my choice out of the two. It lends itself to angry riffing ala Metallica and Testament. If you want what I would personally choose for those bands you listed, I'd go with a Duncan Distortion. Has a more old school feel, but flawlessly pulls off modern tones as well.

Ever compared the Nazgal to a Black Winter, IN THE SAME GUITAR?