yes.
try:
http://www.harmonicdesign.net/

best,
dt / spltrcl

While I am aware of a few players that can get useful stuff out of active pickups, my experience is that they generally provide a most sterile sound. By the time you run through a lot of boxes the tone of the guitar is nearly irrelevant. EMG's are among the worst offenders in the sterility race.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion...Everytime I heard Vince Gill play straight through a stereo pair of VHT combos it was far from sterile.. Also Larry Carlton was one of the first users of EMG pickups, are you telling me his sound is sterile???...to each his own. What do you consider sterile about active pickups? the fact that each string is at equal volume to the next, you can still play very dynamically... I'm not getting on the EMG soapbox here..my guitar have everything from original pickups to EMG to Duncans to Dimarzio...all usefull and playable in any situation.

I agree. Active pickups definitely have a place.

Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Vince Gill, Kirk Hammet and Larry Carlton sound NOTHING like each other - which may even make the case FOR active pickups - with little inherent tonal coloration, you have to put YOUR sound into the guitar with your hands. Not every guitar player (me included) finds this easy to do.

And then again, sometimes "sterile" is just the thing you want. Sometimes.

To my ears, Carlton sounds like Carlton with a vintage 335 or a Valley Arts EMG Strat. Check out the "Last Night" live album for great guitar tone...on the Valley Arts guitar.

The Gilmour EMG setup (treble boost and mid-boost ala Fender Clapton Strat) in my MIM Start gives me the Tim Pierce LA Strat thing better than anything else I own. Worth having for that sound, at least. If only I could play like that!

A lot of guys like EMG's, a lot of guys can't stand them. I'm in the later camp, as they mess with the dynamics of the sound too much for me. I can fully grant that they could work and sound excellent for some people, but I'm not one of them. The same might hold true for what I prefer for other guitarists.

(My preferences run towards more vintage-y low output pickups, generally single coil designs, and of the mass market makers I prefer Duncans over DiMarzios.)

Bear

I think what gets me is players miss the point of active and passive pickups. Both have their place in your collection of guitars. It's nice to have an array of tonal pallets rather than one sound. No set up is the end all be all. I love my passive pickups when I want a very natural tone with alot of expression and then I love having the active pickups when I'm tracking guitar parts in a studio that has a ton of radio interference and my passive pickups are humming like a crappy radio, you can't beat the silence of active pickups for recording...

The fact that I worked at EMG is irrelavent, I learned a ton about pickups of all kinds..they also make passive pickups..both electric and acoustic models..

If you don't have at least one guitar with active pickups your missing out rounding out your sonic selection...

Allright! Time to wag the dog!

In my collection:

'65 Jaguar
'66 Gibson ES335
Some cool strat like thing someone made. My guess is a a lutherior in training. Neck is Birdseye and goes through the body. I had some work done on the electronics and it sounds great. Very heavy.

Jax, lots of guys in San Fran do repair, if you want the best and have extra $$ and can wait a while, Gary Brower does a great job. There is also a guy who advertises on CL (you know what that is ) who is supposed to be very good. He is on 3rd St.

Oh man, when I used to play with my best friend (who also happens to be the best guitarist I know), he had a smokin' '65 Jag. That was about the coolest guitar I've had the pleasure of playing drums to. I will have one someday.

Jax, lots of guys in San Fran do repair, if you want the best and have extra $$ and can wait a while, Gary Brower does a great job. There is also a guy who advertises on CL (you know what that is ) who is supposed to be very good. He is on 3rd St.

The CL (wink) guy is Stan Bailey, the"amp mods and de-mods" guy. Speaking of CL, I think Jay Kahrs just managed to snatch the PV 5150 combo that was going for $225 the other day... right outta my local hands. I could be wrong, but it was a little too coincidental that he mentioned it to me on the same day. I ain't mad atcha... much. heh

Just today, I took my old, out of whack Gibson Epiphone and non-working Fender Musicmaster Bass amp (much better for guitar) for repair by Jim at Player Guitars in San Rafael. I'm very impressed with his shop. The rates were more reasonable than most of the local shops (Rocker Guitars: Go To Hell) , and I could tell by looking around and playing the shop goods that they do great work.

About 90% of the guitars there are something old, funky, and cool as hell. All of them oozing character. Someone there had to bring all those old beasts up to snuff, and I couldn't grab a guitar off the wall that didn't make me think "... no way I'm getting some sterile generic knockoff now." The jayturser guitars I mentioned earlier in this thread were put to the must solemn of shame. The place is about as big as my studio's tiny bathroom, times two, but it sure makes up for it (even if you can't pull down a guitar without knocking it on two or three neighboring guitars).

I highly recommend that shop the next time you're looking for something unique and ultra cool.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Kent
I find that, after reading several persons' posts over the course of time, there are some people that you can use as a rough barometer and whom share a similar slant or view about things.

Absolutely.

There are lots of active guitar systems that I haven't liked. Active EMGs don't tend to thrill me unless I'm doing my crap imitation of Zakk Wylde. The Clapton system is different. Very versatile and nicely voiced. Plus, you can always change out the pickups and use whichever ones you wish.

If I'm going to get a strat, I learned from my second visit to Player Guitars that I don't want something that'll sound like a generic strat. The Clapton electronics sound like a good start towards something at least more flexible if not more unique.

By all means, go to a Fender dealer and check one out. Try the Clapton Strat clean and dirty and then come to your own conclusion. Works for me... but then why do I keep buy more stuff?

Yeah, time to back off the intoxication of gearlust and take a sensible approach... but I'd better do it quick, before someone grabs the Clapton pickguard with its innards. I mean, what if I really like it, ya know?

You buy more stuff because.... you're a gearslut!

There's an easy solution to the studio with tons of RFI. Don't record there!

I've owned guitars with active pickups. I have a Guild Liberator that came stock with Bartolini's and I hated them, couldn't wait to get them out of the guitar. I've played EMG's many times on many guitars and I came to the conslusion every time that I don't like them. Why don't I like them? Because they remove the tone of the guitar. You can throw a set of EMG's into a crappy $99 Strat knock-off, a MIM Strat or a Custom Shop jobber and they sound pretty much identical. Yeah, there's some difference but it's kind of like playing through a Rockman. They're the great equalizer in that respect. They're consistant as ****, really good at driving lots of effects and have great definition and balance for soloists and metal heads. But, I haven't heard many soloists and metal heads that I can stand to listen to for more then 30 seconds before I want to gouge my eyes out with a fork. YMMV.

With passive pickups I hear the guitar come through what the pickup is doing. I get more of a sense of the wood. I'm also not a fan of DiMarzio pickups because they tend to remove the guitar. I hear too much of what the pickup is doing. If you have a guitar with a bad piece of wood that's a good thing. If you have a guitar that sounds great acousticly it'll sound even better when it's plugged in IF you have good pickups. Like I said, I've been a Duncan fan for years and I still don't like their active pickups so don't take it personally.

BTW, it was a 5150 head for $350 and it's in a store in NJ. And no, I don't have it.

If you read my post, or even the parts you quoted, again, you'll see that I acknowledge that there are players who seem to get decent sounds with a variety of active pickups, including EMG. I then go on to state my own experience playing guitars so equipped. As with anything else in audio your milage may vary, although I know others that agree with me.

Among the best Hendrix style sounds I ever heard was a guy in a music store, trying out an old Electric Mistress flanger. He had a ventures model Mosrite, and some sort of himade pignose type micro amp. I'd never have gotten that sound with that rig.

Are you sure they were active? I have a synth controller guitar that has passive Bartolini's in it. They also seem pretty toneless, until almpst any effects box is added to the chain, then they seem to work real well. I almost get the impression they were intended to function that way.

This has also been my experience.

They were active pickups. They had way too many wires coming and going to each one to be passive. I think the worst part was that the output was so high that it made a Twin distort. I ended up putting a '59 in the bridge and Quater Pounders in the middle and neck.

I like these ones.



"Gear interested" Very amusing.

Which MusicMan is this... a Sabre I? I've got a '78' Sabre II that I absolutely love!

SLUT! SLUT! SLUT! (good job BTW)

Theres a VOX kinda vibe in that room...I counted 6 tubey kinda Vox's....ahhhh....and at the rear in the corner...Plexi 45 w/6-10's??Coral sitar? Hagstrom 12 string...I had one of those and the matching 8-string bass...very cool stuff....
can i come over and play???

.... Here's my Sabre II....

Where are the Teles and Les Pauls in that pic? I can't make a record there.

What amp is that on top of the Orange head? It's the one with the red tolex, gold looking panel and the script logo.

Well....

and...

I personally think between the White Falcon, the G&L ASAT, the ES-295, the Duolian(? maybe ),the Strat(both), the double neck Ric,the Gretsch Jet and 12-string, theres maybe enough instruments to get things started...there is a lacking of 1960's vintage P-Basses(i could bring my own), and pre-war Martins.....(they're probably in another room with the pre-war Steinway)......

Did anyone notice that the Tele has a 24 fret neck on it?????

Sabre I modified.

Reu-O-Grande

Orange Matamp. Jimmy Page sound.

That Tele I believe is called "Baja Sexto"...it's a baritone guitar..

These are some very nice looking guitars made locally to the Oklahoma City area:

http://mayesguitars.com/frames.html

I am going to visit this gentleman soon.

Steve
www.mojopie.com

My own ´79 strat. Absolute favourite of my own,
allthough the Lag Hardline is probally the one that gets most gigs in the studio. ya know humbuckers and stuff....

I know you guy's are gonna' wanna' smack me .Not 'cause of my SRV (one of the first,a NAMM demo model),my sept."66 gtretsch corvette(signed by SRV) or my "59er Ibanez flame top les paul copy(lawsuit model)w/gibson humbucker,or my other's.
But because the one I grab is my hamony strat copy w/ humbuckers (JB,(not jr.)in bridge and a ( here's the wacky part)an old gibson humbucker bridge w/ hot hot hot output(14.99 I think I remember written on the back in sharpie) but in the neck spot, not a sparkly clean sound, but creamy dirt sound almost farty.(farty?).Took hammer and chisel and carved the headstock to look like a strat,put in L.E.D. indicator light's for each pick-up signed byYnwie, Bo Diddley,and Alvin Lee.

Here are my favorites; unfortunately, I don't yet own either one. But I will...

Dave,
This is VERY VERY slutty of you.Rather porno.

These would be a Super 400 w/Bigsby and Either a Super set up like a Johnny Smith or an ACTUAL Johnny Smith of which there just arent any...(few).....Both have the extended headstock that the Super was know for....jeeezz go a little easy on us will ya...