EMG-active pickup review

[rico mando]

so i installed these pickups on my ryder 5 string http://www.emgpickups.com/products/index/81/7/1

i am completely happy with them very noticeable improvement in sound and sustain and of course string bending is much better.the improvement is most noticeable when i am jacked straight into my amp.

But it is a difficult install and if you put it through a effects processor then the tone gets lost . so i would not recommend installing these unless your axe all ready has guitar size pickups and room for a battery or you are willing to bend over backwards to improve your sound a bit .

[GD Armstrong]

I really like the EMG active Tele neck pickup for e-mando thingies & I often combine it with the EMG Afterburner.

[meow-n-dolin]

I have had similar experience. I use the passive EMG pup (the one which came stock with the Moongazer) but with the EMG pre-amp, which turns the passive pickups active (even if you don't use the boost). Better overall response, most noticeable in the high end. A little of the tone does go bye-bye. But you don't use a lot of effects, this works fine. I am using just reverb nowadays, with the occasional distortion pedal. Overall it was worth it. Dealing with the battery is easy, they last three or four months.

[mrmando]

so i installed these pickups on my ryder 5 string.

Remind me what was on it before? Your Ryder is a cool axe, but I wasn't in love with the sound of its original pickups.

[rico mando]

IT had a steve ryder single coil at the neck and a ryder humbucker at the bridge .

[mrmando]

Well, duh. Now Steve knows I don't like his pickups! Seriously, that particular pair of pickups on that particular instrument just sounded a little "dirty" to me ... I thought they'd be fine for heavy metal but not clean or warm enough for something like Western swing.

[Tom Wright]

My Ryder has stacked-single-coil humbuckers, but I imagine they behave like his others. I found they needed adjusting to some distance away for a clean tone, since the solitary pole piece magnets' small fields led to splatty clipping on the low strings. This allows balancing toward the top, also, to compensate for the weaker response of the plain E. Also makes for better response when bending the string away from the field center.

Other than that, the tone is both fat and clean but the output is a bit low. A boost would be useful for typical amp overdrive. Almuse' Pete Mallinson says Steve's design is Fender-style, but I know some Fender pickups have a broad magnet underneath. I much prefer that design, but Steve's pickups have excellent hum rejection on my axe, so I don't intend to replace them.

I am replacing the layout, though, with two straight-across, instead one slanted. I had him set mine up like a Strat, straight at the neck and slanted for treble, but the high strings are too pinched in tone on that bridge pickup. He is making me a new pickguard and a new treble pickup to match. I considered the side-by-side treble but would miss the rockabilly tone I can get.