Best Pickups for Metalcore/Posthardcore

[shaevTheBeaver]

Hi everyone


I plan to buy a PRS SVN guitar and i'll want to change pickups for more agressive ones.

I want to have the sound of bands like :
- Our Last Night
- Parkway drive
- Spirit Box
- BMTH

I tested an Ibanez 7 strings guitar with the Bare Knuckle Aftermath pickups and i was amazed. But i read it was not very versatile for clean tones i want to play.

I thought about Black Hawk, but maybe you have other propositions

Thanks for your future answers

 

[/wrists]

You can't really co wrong with Seymour Duncan 59, JB, or Jazz pickups.

 

[Tree]

If you’re dead set on BKPs then look at the Rags or Jugs since you like the Aftermath but want better clean tones.

Realistically just about anything you can think of that is somewhat modern will be able to pull this off. None of the bands you listed do anything super specific or niche with their guitar tones.

 

[Alex79]

Use the neck pickup for cleans.

 

[Mountainman]

If you really want the Aftermath and want better cleans perhaps look at having them installed with a coil split for cleans.

Also take what you read with a grain of salt always. Only you know what sounds good to you. If you tried the aftermath and it's what you want than get it regardless of what you read.

 

[budda]

Your amp will matter waaay more than if you even left it stock. And your cab will matter more than that.

 

[Legion]

Ok so here's the thing

If you're looking for a specific type of FEEL from your guitar (more/less bounce, more/less attack, juicier/more compressed feel etc.) pickups will likely solve your issue.
If you're looking for genre specific sound, you're better off experimenting with amps/cabs, like @budda says.

 

[Neon_Knight_]

Ok so here's the thing

If you're looking for a specific type of FEEL from your guitar (more/less bounce, more/less attack, juicier/more compressed feel etc.) pickups will likely solve your issue.
If you're looking for genre specific sound, you're better off experimenting with amps/cabs, like @budda says.

And this is why so many of us exclusively stick to passive pickups within a certain output range and with a specific magnet type - the feel.

 

[Neon_Knight_]

I tested an Ibanez 7 strings guitar with the Bare Knuckle Aftermath pickups and i was amazed. But i read it was not very versatile for clean tones i want to play.

If you were amazed (in a good way), you shouldn't worry about what you've read. If you were amazed by the high-gain tones but didn't try them for clean tones, maybe you should go back and test this out on the Ibby.

I haven't tried Aftermaths, but I believe they're really well-suited to tones in the ball-park of the bands you've mentioned. Plenty of other options out there though...

Personally, I always use neck pickups (or neck pickup combined with middle) for cleans, as I like my cleans to sound relatively smooth and mellow. I would definitely consider wiring your neck pickup for coil splitting - high output humbuckers are best for this, as their output when split is similar to that of a single-coil pickup (while a split medium or low output humbucker will sound weaker than a single-coil pickup). For example, I love the D Activator neck pickup split.

 

[SubsonicDoom99]

Honestly, I know this has been said before many many times but I'll reiterate it again.....I would highly suggest you give the pickups in the PRS SVN a chance first before you even think about changing them out. The BKP Aftermath are nice pickups but not cheap, and just because they sounded good in the Ibanez doesn't mean they'll respond the same in the PRS. Obviously you won't know unless and until you try them, but I wouldn't presume that the pickups in the PRS won't be able to give you the more aggressive tones you're hoping for. I've been shocked many times when using pickups that, on paper and according to what some have said online etc., shouldn't have worked for what I wanted but turned out to work perfectly after all. So at the very least give them a shot and don't hurry to pre-emptively buy another set of pickups before you've given them a shot.
With that, if you ultimately do decide you need something different, there's a bunch of different options out there. The aforementioned Aftermaths are quite good though I've never tried them in a PRS but they provided nice aggressive tones when I played them. I've used both the Pegasus/Sentient 7 string set as well as the Alpha/Omega set in the PRS before and found both of those worked really well for balancing out between good clean tones and heavy aggressive tones and seemed well suited for that particular guitar.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Honestly you can get those types of tones with just about anything. Parkway use EMG 81s, bmth uses p90s, mike from spiritbox uses lundgren M7s and bkp ragnaroks.

 

[cmpxchg]

fwiw, I had the 85/15 S pickups in my PRS baritone and I hated them. tried a few sets, but found a set of Impulses and oh my Lord those are great baritone pickups.

 

[shaevTheBeaver]

Thanks for all your answers.

Actually i will buy a Kiesel Arias instead of a PRS. But for the pickups i don't know if i choose Kiesel Lithium or Polority, or the 81/85 EMG combo