FatherAlabaster

There isn't really a norm. Actives and passives both have high profile users. Hetfield is an EMG guy, but Mustaine used a Duncan JB, Chuck from Death used a DiMarzio X2N, Dimebag used a Lawrence L500XL - all high output passives. Actives have an onboard preamp so they can avoid some of the tonal "compromises" that come from winding a passive pickup hotter and using a more powerful magnet, and they can handle long cable runs without losing tone. I've never liked the way EMGs felt to play, they always seemed really compressed and didn't have the balls that my favorite passive pickups do on palm mutes. They sound like plastic through my setup. So do the Fishmans. But it's all down to what sounds good for someone's amp and their playing style. I don't know what the proportion is but there are plenty of metal-oriented guitars made with passive pickups. If you want to convert a guitar to actives, you can buy a set with all the wiring for $200-300, cheaper used. The main issue is that most guitars made for passive pickups don't have space for the battery so you have to rout out a spot for the battery box.

The Duncan Designed stuff is pretty well thought of on the Seymour Duncan board. Those models would be similar to a Distortion or JB depending on what magnet is in there. It should have plenty of output. I'm kinda shooting from the hip since I haven't seen or heard your guitar at all, but I doubt the sustain issue is down to the pickups, unless they're so close to the strings that they're pulling on them. Is the wiring ok? Does it sustain well unplugged? Do you have another bridge pickup there that you could just put in and try to see if it opens things up, before you spend money on something that doesn't fix the problem?

Dødheimsgard - Black Medium Current Nyktalgia - s/t

Meanwhile, Vermont has finally remembered what fucking season it is! 4°F this morning. Tired of all this mucky "above freezing" nonsense. This album is always welcome here.

Abigor - Taphonomia Aeternitatis

All of this.

It's not impossible to mix actives and passives but it's tricky. They take different value pots so the volume and tone knobs would have to be completely separate for each. And they usually sound so different that they require different settings on the amp. I wouldn't go for a setup like that without a clear idea of exactly what I was doing. Also, playing BKPs in a guitar in the store isn't going to give you a great indication of how they would sound in your guitar through your amp. They make great pickups but not every model is going to match well to every guitar or give you the sound you're looking for. There's a lot of marketing fluff around pickups. If you don't have a specific goal in mind for your sound and an idea of what your guitar needs in order to sound that way, you can wind up tossing hundreds of dollars down a hole chasing tone. As much as I'm not an "active pickup" guy, you might actually like a set of Fishman Fluences if you want versatility. The moderns or one of the signature sets. They all have switchable voicings so it's like having two or three pickups in one. You may also like the sound of running the EMGs at 18 volts. In any case you'd have to get a knowledgeable tech to set this up for you and it sounds like the people you've been going to aren't that great.

Just to follow up since I replied to an earlier version of the post - what does your Jackson sound like? What do you think it needs? The Warpigs will sound different in different guitars and through different pot values, but they're not inherently bright like my other two favorites so they might work for you if your Jackson is a bright guitar. BKPs are pricey but you can sometimes find a good deal on a used set if you wait around.

I have to say I'm not a huge fan of Duncans in my guitars. They just don't have the feel I'm looking for and I wind up fighting with them. They come across as kind of stuffy with my riffs through my amp and I dig in too hard looking for note attack that isn't there. I know a few people on another forum who love the Black Winter. If I was going to try another production Duncan it would probably be that or the Custom/59 hybrid. Since you're up in Canada you might want to check out Peg City pickups, from Winnipeg. A guy I know recently got their Angry Widow bridge pickup and was raving about it.

The speakers in their cabs had a bad reputation. I've never heard them. You can still get the old heads pretty cheap. Especially since they're a Canadian brand, you could probably find a good deal up there. There are way better standalone options for metal tones. I had to do a lot of tweaking and messing around with gear to get a guitar sound I really like. But I would replace this one if it died, it's a great pedal platform and I love it on bass.

Dime's guitar tone by itself is kind of annoying to my ears, but it sounds great in the mix. Those buzzy solid state tones fit in really well with the clear bass and the sharp punchy drum sound. Not fun for me to play a sound like that in isolation, but I also don't play riffs like that. He made gold out of it. I think when people try to get "Dime's guitar tone" what they're usually trying to capture is the impact of the mix. Terry Date was (is?) awesome at capturing what a band sounded like at their best. Way cooler for me to listen to his mixes than some cookie cutter stuff like Sneap and Kernon, it always seemed to me like they went into a job with an ideal "metal band" sound in mind and tried to make every band fit into that box. Far Beyond Driven is my favorite mix of theirs, although the bone dry sound on Trendkill really hits home for me lately. Musically it's probably between Driven and Vulgar. Cowboys and Trendkill are on the second tier. But they've gone the way of nearly all my favorites from back then, I'll enjoy it if I hear it on in the background but I have almost no interest in putting it on myself.

My very first amp was a Crate practice amp combo. Nothing good to say about the sound but it was fine to get started on. It had distortion and it might have had reverb. I don't miss it. Those old Traynors can be great with decent cabinets and the right pedals. I had a 40 or 50 watt head for ten or fifteen years and I really enjoyed it. I wound up trading it in for the 100 watt Traynor head I still use. Mostly in my bass rig but lately I've been using it alongside my main amp and getting pretty good metal guitar sounds out of it. It really does need the right distortion pedal though, or a couple that stack well. Fantastic clean tones. The Peavey Vypyr amps are terrible. There's much better modeling stuff available now. I'm happy with my tube amps though.

It's worth doing if there's a problem with the tone or feel of your guitar and you think a different magnet will make it right, or if you're just interested in tinkering for the sake of it and hearing the difference for yourself. If you're happy with the sound you already have, there are definitely more fun and productive ways to spend an afternoon.

New Selbst album "Despondency Chord Progressions" will be coming out through Debemur Morti on April 19th.

That was my philosophy about it too. I only got interested in trying different pickups because my Explorer wasn't clear enough. I am glad I did, though. I've gone down the rabbit hole a little bit and learned a lot about what makes different pickups sound the way they do. It eventually brought me back to where I started, though; I like the sound and feel of a bright pickup in a darker guitar better than a thick pickup in a bright guitar, I like hot-ish scatterwound pickups with a bit of asymmetry between the coils, and I like a Gibson 24.75" scale length with thicker strings better than a 25.5" or longer scale with thinner strings. Because of all that, there are some guitars that'll never sound the way I want, no matter how I tweak them. I kind of envy people who play with the higher output metal-oriented active pickups because it seems like their sound is a lot less dependent on what guitars they're in. And since those pickups aren't as dynamic and responsive to pick attack, you don't have to play as hard, which means you can play faster with less energy. I found myself relaxing and playing a bit more "easily" when I was using the Fluence pickups just because of the way the guitar responded. But then I went to dig in for certain things and the tone and feel just wasn't there. Ceramic in the Warpig will give you a bit of a firmer feel, more aggression in pick attack, and more bite in the highs than alnico 5. A bit more output too. I wanted that for my rig but the change might not do anything beneficial for you... maybe fun to try anyway though?

This all comes down to your guitar and your rig and personal preferences. I hate actives. I had three guitars with the Fluence Moderns in, and I wanted to like them, but they just didn't have teeth through my setup. If you're an EMG 81 player, the Fluence Moderns have a lot to offer, I just don't find them dynamic enough or strong enough on the attack, and somehow their EQ profile gets on my nerves. I'm a Bare Knuckle fan. My two main guitars are Gibsons - a 6 string Explorer and a 7 string Les Paul. They're both warmer-sounding guitars that benefit from brighter pickups. I have a Rebel Yell in the Explorer and a ceramic Warpig in the LP. The Warpig had an alnico magnet when I got it, but I swapped the magnet and it really brought the pickup to life for aggressive stuff. I also love their Cold Sweat bridge pickup. But again, these guitars are heavy in the low mids and they're going into an amp (Fryette Pittbull 100CL) that loves being hit with a high mid spike, so the pickups balance them out and add some sparkle and make the amp break up in a pleasing way. I wouldn't recommend a Rebel Yell in a bright guitar, but maybe it could be a good fit with the right pot values. Worth mentioning that both guitars have the bridge pickup wired to the jack, again not something that works on every guitar or for every pickup. I just happen to like it this way. Bypassing all the pots can make pickups sound harsh and unnatural. That's been the case with all the Duncans I use and in all of my brighter guitars. The 7 string LP came with a JB and it was almost great. I have another 7 string with a Distortion in the bridge and a Schecter 6 string with a set of Invaders. They're all ok. If I played simpler stuff I'd probably love them, but for what I do they feel a bit muddy.

Too much Sparagmos, that's the problem. It'll turn your piss green.

Schilling Brücius doppelbock these guys do not fuck around

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab ...the cure for what ails me

I had managed to avoid most of it until today. I had to listen to a second album on the way back home. I now feel as though my brain has been scraped out of my ears. I didn't hate most of it but it's a bit much in aggregate. It turns out my wife is a massive Swiftie.

Cheers dude. There is some weirdness in spots, but nary a prog riff to be found. No plans for any shows, we all live too far apart for it to be feasible.

I haven't listened to any of this stuff before. It's a few cuts above the vapid dancey bubblegum bullshit I hear at the grocery store. So, no, not bad as these things go. Not how I would choose to spend a morning but it doesn't offend my delicate sensibilities. I love Rush, but I understand that other people don't, so I only inflict them on traveling or living companions when necessary. Maybe we'll listen to some Rush later to compensate for the Taytay marathon.

It's in the upper 30s (F) here in Vermont, and even though it feels a little like t-shirt weather, I'm annoyed. When it gets above freezing the ground turns to muck. False spring, I guess. We are in my wife's car, so we are listening to Taylor Swift. Nuff said.

I joined Construct Of Lethe as the vocalist for their new album, "A Kindness Dealt In Venom". We worked on this for a long time and had to keep it under wraps for a while. Transcending Obscurity will be releasing it later this year. I'm happy I can finally share part of it: This section is taken from the middle of the album. It's a concept album and it's meant to be heard as a single piece. It's a dynamic, immersive head trip, with more variety than this snippet suggests - spoken parts, found sounds, noise and soundscape elements - but it stays rooted in death metal. The lyrics deal with suicidal depression and self-loathing; despite (or because of?) the heavy themes I found it really enjoyable to work on. Lineup is: Tony Petrocelly - guitars, bass, synth Patrick Bonvin - lead guitar Kishor Haulenbeek - vocals Kevin Paradis - drums Concept, music, and lyrics by Tony Petrocelly; mixed and mastered by Tony; artwork by Kishor Hope you enjoy.