EMG's Anyone?

[Dakster]

What is everyones feelings on EMG's? Particularly the 85 and the SL single coils?
I have heard vicious rumor that with the right eq and processing you can make them sound like anything you need...but that is where they work best, with rack gear and stuff. Opinions?

[Flanagan]

I've got the TC set in my Warmoth Tele w/the mid boost...love it,but I'm not big on their 'buckers,personally...lil' too sterlie for my tastes.I think they're a great idea if you're playing somewhere with a lot of neon and RF interference.

[Dakster]

This is what I love about the Ax2...now I gotta go find Luke's rig for the old stuff....so you have them in a tele? I heard Reggie Young had them in his too, out in Nashville...do they twang?

[Valtiel]

The single coils are alright, I cant stand the humbuckers though. Buckers' seem to really only be good for modern high gain. Extremely lacking in the dynamics department as well.

[VHTStark]

PROS: both the 81, and 85 to my ears are very articulate, clear and punchy. they drive the front end of an amp well, provide a very tight crunch and lose little to no signal in various processing situations.

CONS: the knock on them is they sound sterile.......and i agree. They lack the charachter of a good passive and tend to give most guitars they're put into a similar sound.

Oh yeah, I've found EMG equipped guitars require far more eq'ing in the studio.

[Flanagan]

This is what I love about the Ax2...now I gotta go find Luke's rig for the old stuff....so you have them in a tele? I heard Reggie Young had them in his too, out in Nashville...do they twang?


Yup...the ceramic ones I use are a bit hotter,but they twang right up.The mid boost replaced the tone knob,and it gets a pretty decent pseudo LP tone.

[Jmilliondead]

i've got a pair of HZ4s sitting in one of my guitars, and i adore them, such a sweet clear tone, i've done a lot of session work using the guitar because of the range of tone i can get from it

[Aldwyn]

All I can say is that I have had a love/ate relationship with EMGs for years. Sometimes I really REALLY dig their tone. Other times, man, they just sound sterile.

[500x]

Hi There,

I had an Ibanez S Series, with an EMG 81/85 combo.

The 81 is a good shredding pickup (why not, it is ridiculously powerful), but sounds quite shrill to my ears. It overdrives anything, has great punch.. and as another poster said, it's an EQing nightmare in the studio. The 81 is fun, because it's so ridiculously gainy... if you know what I mean.

The 85 in my humble opinion is not so impressive. It is huge on the low end; I couldn't find a decent sound from it at all.

Overdriven, it is muddy in my rig (rack stuff), and is far too bassy to carry out any lead/rhythm work at all. I had it at an angle in the body, low on the bass side, high on the treb, but it still turned to mush with my settings.

Clean, I found both pickups very very uninspiring. They did nothing for me.

I love to back off on the guitar's volume control, for doing bluesier licks or cleaning up my overdrive... Not really an option with the EMG set. Backing off just sort of kills them when you reach a certain point. The tone control was nonexistent.

Can't comment on the single coils unfortunately.

I sold the Ibanez for some reason or other, kind of regret it. It was fun playing with EMGs, but that's about it. I'm thinking many PRS owners are in to their sweet tones... I just would not put a set of EMG humbuckers in to a PRS guitar. You could drop them in to a plank of wood, and they'd scream and roar in the same way as they would on any high end instrument.

So to sum up, they make lots of noise, overdrive an amp to insane-gain levels, but lack any sweetness or 'nice tones' associated with a lot of guitar music. The EMG 85 is far too heavy on the low-end to be any good in my hands.

Cheers,

Tony

[cvansickle]

I had an 85 bridge and a 60 neck in my Les Paul Custom for a while back in the 80s. I thought the 60 in the neck position really sounded good, but I was never fully satisfied with the 85 bridge. I never tried an 81, and eventually dumped the whole set for some Duncans.

[GaryNattrass]

Personally I love them, I use SA's on my squire JV and JGNguitars strats and have the 89/SA set on another guitar and two 89's on a thinline tele.

They can sound sterrile but what you need to do is keep the tone control turned halfway down to 5 so that they arent too clinical.

Of course I am biased as being a big Dave Gilmour fan that is the type of strat tone I am after.