[Jeff]

Originally Posted by 7 Strings of Hate

yea, lots of people on here say blackouts are better than emg's, its all hype, i'v played through some blackouts, and they are just emg rip offs man

hey everyone, look, its a revolutionary new product thats be out for only like, 30 years

Er, no. No offense man, but they're definitely better than EMG's, in the opinion of a lot of people. I for one don't like EMG's, but yet love the BO's in my ATX. Just a better sounding pickup. All the benefits of EMG's without the sterile sound and feeling.

[frank falbo]

Let's forget about "better" or "how much better" for a minute. The main contributor here is that these Blackouts would be built by the same engineer(s) who designed them in the first place, and they break from their day to accomodate these requests. They are also the same guys who made Dino Cazares' 8-string Blackouts. So it's pretty cool when you think of it that way. The blades have to be machined by hand, and when you include the circuit board and the like, it's easily double the effort of a Custom Shop passive pickup.

That being said, would I pay that price for 8-string pickups? Probably not. I would be so excited to have an 8-string that I would spend most of my time just glad that any sound was coming out of it at all. Then, I would probably want to make my own passive pickups for it, possibly feeding an internal preamp in the electronics cavity.

Another possibility is a passive 8-string humbucker epoxied into one of those covers. But then your sonic options are different. I would probably go for an 8-string Full Shred neck and bridge set, epoxied into those covers. Also one of my favorite Custom Shop 7-stringers are the PATB's. An 8-string PATB set under those covers would probably be cool too. But with any passive, like the Lundgrens, you'd have to do a full install. The Blackouts would offer the quick swap.

The other thing to think about is, keep the EMG's around, and if you ever got tired of the 8-string game, sell the guitar with EMG's and you'd probably get a pretty penny for the Custom Shop Blackout 8's.

[jacksonplayer]

1. Blackouts are better than EMGs. Period.

2. They are not $425 better. But I can certainly see Frank's point about the cost in getting them made.

I played an RG2228 the other day in the store, and I was actually pretty impressed with the 808s. I like them better than the 707s, for some reason.

[Zoltta]

Dont get me wrong, i do like the EMGs but im really not TOO impressed. Im thinking of getting some BKP's later on

[jacksonplayer]

It's not a perfect solution, but you could get some custom-made pickup rings that would allow you to use passives in those EMG routs. Noodles did that on his old Jackson Stars and it came out very nice. Much cheaper than getting custom-made Blackouts or passives hidden in an EMG-sized box.

[Kronpox]

This price is for both pickups, right? Not just one?

God have mercy if a set of Blackout 8s is $850

[7 Strings of Hate]

hey, i'm not crazy, they might be a little different sounding, but its so insignificant its not even worth wasting time IMO,
i mean, why get active pickups that are designed to sound like passives? it just doesnt make sense, if your wanting a passive sound, just go with a good set of passives

[TomAwesome]

I'd rather just wait for Blackout 8s to go into production. I'm fairly sure I heard somewhere that they were planning on it.

[Naren]

That's way way too much money. I think Blackouts sound good. Better than EMGs? Eh. I like the way they sound, but they sound so similar to EMGs.

If you preferred the sound of Blackouts over EMGs, $100-200 (probably even more, considering it's an eight-string pickup) could be reasonable, but $425 is too much for any pickup, especially for one that sounds almost the same as the one you're replacing.