You can play literally anything on active pickups. The pickup selector, volume, and tone knobs are there for a reason. The majority of your tone is the amp tone circuit, speakers, and cabinet.

Buddy Guy used EMG’s for blues for a while. Also, David Gilmour used them in the 90’s and 2000’s with Pink Floyd. Seen a lot of co7ntry guys use them too.

I put EMG single coil style in my strat for high gain, and they are actually way better for clean or lower gain sounds.

Lukather plays emg, that should tell you everything you need to know

It's cool you're doing an EMG video. I used to play a semi-hollow guitar with an EMG active 81 or 85. I loved it. That sucker cut through for leads like a laser. That was my most favorite lead tone I've ever had. Btw, not once did I have a feedback issue on stage. I was playing rockabilly, classic rock, Johnny Cash, Waylon, etc...Here's another cool part about the story. After ordering the pickup, one of the top guys at EMG calls me 2x to make sure I'm making the right pickup decision. He wanted to know what type of guitar it was going in, do I play lead (mostly rhythm then), etc... He actually thought I should try a different pickup or two based on what I was really looking for. I was a bit stubborn instead listening to a man that knows his product. So I got my pickup and he actually called me (the 3x) months later to see how it worked out. I played it for a few years and then sold it. Due to an injury, the guitar was just to heavy for me. The pickup didn't remind me of heavy metal. I used a Fender Super Champ XD amp at the time. Oh and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead was using them in the '80s.

You're right Dyl, the AMP makes the most difference to the sound of an electric guitar than the actual pick up (apart from sound foot print) It is better to have a reasonably good amp and speakers than a good guitar. A GOOD amp will make even the cheapest guitar sound half decent, but a crappy sounding amp will make ANY guitar, even a $XXXXK's guitar sound like cheap crap!

Keep preaching the truth and debunking those myths. Letting people believe lies when the truth is right there has never made sense to me.

I personally don't like EMGs but not for the typical reasons. I prefer the Seymour Duncan Blackouts for actives. They have more low end presence.

I'm blown away by how you avoid mentioning the biggest tone change of them all,... the SPEAKERS !!!! Same guitar, same pickups, same amp, even same settings. Change the speakers 20 times, it will sound like 20 different rigs !!!!

I was thinking about what you said like 2 days ago! I said to myself like «tone people are so stupid. Its not only the guitar that makes the tone. They get so caught up in the guitar that they forget amp, pedals, etc.» and here you come and say it out loud! Thanks!

The speaker and cabinet design have as much impact as the amplifier or the pickups. Also whatever pedals you go through of course!

I have gone on a major guitar buying spree lately, mostly because I want them, but I have bought several types that I never had interest in simply for the pickup style. I want to make pedals and pickups and I wanted to be able to just pick up a certain style and see what it sounds like. The amp and cab are the final and loudest voice but the flavors added along the way are what help us define ourselves.

I have been saying for years that guitar pick-ups "shine" through their flaws, through the way they alter the frequency range of what the strings generate. People mistake personality for quality (unless they use the word in its original descriptive meaning , which no one does) and like holes in the frequency response the same way they like scratches on a relic'd guitar. A pick-up without such holes, with a flatter, broader frequency response, removes that personality to let you hear the strings more. It removes the guitar from the sound shaping system, making them "sound all the same" because they no longer "sound" at all. It doesn't have charm, it's just a better tool.

I have an Ibanez RG with emg 81/85 and I dont play metal but i love metal. I find these pickups to have a beautiful range of tones and I use them to record a variety of different music styles. On another note, I enjoy your videos and I appreciate your open-mindedness and chill approach.

I agree with you. With pedals and amps and playing style, strings ect. ect. You can find many styles, just have fun.

Now. Take that exact same set of EMGs and put them in a guitar made of different wood. It will answer the tonewood debate!

It drives me crazy when players determine that a genre is a tone or a guitar model. Example: Country = Telecaster. Or Strat = "blues" tone. When asks me what single coils should I get to get a good "blues" tone. Or that a Gibson Hollowbody is the only style to play jazz.

Some great points here. And I really liked the sound samples. Reminds me of a clip of something Mikio Fujioka did once. He had this ESP 7-string, his signature model. Some thing, a Kemper. But he was running them with a slight breakup. Sounded great. Between that and your clips here, I’ll never have to wonder of EMGs do cleans well. Lol Since pickups tend to emphasis some frequencies, wouldn’t that be why some people think of actives as being “sterile”? Like, they just haven’t heard pickups with that full a range if that makes any sense? Sorry for the lack of articulation. I’m still waiting for the caffeine to kick in. Lol

I Love my EMGs. I have quite a few guitars and a couple have EMGs. They are different than passives. They aren't tremendously versatile, but what they do, they do phenomenally well. I don't grab those guitars to play blues stuff, but they are pure thrash goodness. Any Testament album in the last 10-15 years or so, the guitar sounds killer.

People who think emg pick ups sound bad probably never turned the tone knob a bit down. I love toto and steve lukather and i have a musicman luke 2, wich is plain simple a strat. EMGs sound amazing with that guitar, even a bit dark for my taste, and that's because the guitar sounds fenomenal by itself and those pickup reflect that. Put emg on a bad guitar they will reflect that as well

EMG81 is my personal favorite, don't know why... Its so much fun playing this 😎🔥

While following through on future fascination with emg pickups swap the 81 to the neck and the 85 to the bridge. It's really killer in Les Pauls

A compromise between active and passive pickups would be a passive pickup circuit with an external preamp (like the Kemo MO40N) that you can just bypass if it's not needed. This costs almost nothing and preserves the original tone circuit.

Before I knew anything about guitars I bought a strat with EMGs in it and still love the tone to this day. It definitely does something different than a vintage strat pickup, but I think they're very versatile.

It wasn’t just metal of course. Mark Knopfler, Yes Mr K himself used EMG’s from the late 80’s ‘till the mid 90’s!! His famous Pensa is EMG loaded.

I think that the biggest difference between active pickups and passive pickups is the fact that there are a buffer between the pickup and the volume/tone circuit. I think that if you take any passive pickup and place a buffer circuit (just op-amp with gain 1.0) right after the pickup (using only one pickup and no volume / tone circuit, just the pickup) you get a guitar that acts more like a guitar with active pickups than a guitar with passive pickup. That would be a cool experiment to do. You will of course get different tones depending on the pickups resonance peak but will react like a active pickup otherwise. The thing with passive pickups sounds / acts different in different guitars is probable to a high degree depending on the passive volume/tone circuit and on the component tolerances. If you have an active pickup those differences affects the tone much less. That is my thoughts, it would be cool to test that. I have not made any calculations but my intuition tells me that I'm on the right track.

“Mojo in a can”. Brilliant. Wm. Shakespeare couldn’t have said it better

BTW. People that say you can’t play classic rock with EMG’s are more of the internet mob brainwashed people. One of my favorite guitarists (Steve Lukather) used EMG’s to record some of the biggest classic rock songs ever recorded. LONG before any of the wimpy new metallers you mentioned. And EMG’s were actually developed for their neutral clean tone. That was what they were really designed for....clean tones.

Dave Gilmore from pink Floyd uses EMG's. I easily fall into static thinking. So I do try to question my prejudices at times! Lol

I’ve played on EMGs before and I loved the sustain. I got comfortable with them from the start. I never understood why people say you can’t do this or that on this or that. I play everything on my Telecaster because that’s the only electric guitar I have. I know it’s known for Country but didn’t find that out until recently. First song I ever learned on it was “Smoke On The Water” and what I got into afterwards was Pop Punk. Metal came later. Thing is…I had to use what I had. 20 years after first picking up a guitar, I now have the money to buy something that I’m gonna have for the rest of my life so I picked a 6 string loaded with a single EMG complete with a Floyd Rose instead of that 8 string multiscale guitar with 2 pickups because at this point, it doesn’t need to be super versatile. It’s me that makes it versatile. Actives all the way 🤘

Your relentless honesty is rare (nowadays) and highly admirable. I have a Warmoth strat that I built with an EMG Vince Gill signature model loaded pickguard (and I don’t even like country), and one of the two tone knobs shapes the sound from single coil “flavor” to humbucker, and I’m really happy with the pickups and tonal variety I can get out of this strat. It’s way more tonally diverse than the American Standard Strat I sold in order to buy parts for the Warmoth build. One annoying thing about active pickups is you always have to remember to unplug the cord from the guitar or else the battery will drain until it runs out of juice. All that said, genuine single coils are great too and should never disappear.

You can play anything on EMGs. Blues, jazz, classical, impressionism, baroque, samba... Just roll back volume and tone then hit the bridge for non harsh highs. Roll up tone with volume still rolled back, then go to neck for definitive lows.

My bass’s Blackouts work with all styles of music I love. They kill it playing metal and smooth down to pop with the onboard EQ.

EMGs are perfectly fine for whatever- a wide open blank canvas, the player dials in what they want.

I was never really a big fan of classic EMGs except for extreme heavy music personally, but I find the EMG single coils are great and very versatile.

Such great advice here 👍🏻 So many things impact tone. A player’s fingers have more impact than anything and this pickup argument has always cracked me up. If Billy Gibbons hands you his guitar you won’t sound anything like him. However, I guarantee you that Billy could pluck anything with a string on it and it’s gonna sound like Billy Gibbons. I’m a metal and jazz guy and I use the tried and true EMG 81 in an ESP M1 and it works for both. Even my LP has EMGs in it and I love it. Part of the problem in my world (metalhead world), is that everyone wants to grab an edge but most, not all seek the same few heads, guitars, and pickups, wonder why brutal metal magic isn’t happening, and then still need affirmation that what they have is the ultimate in metal tone. The reality is that a guitar only puts out what you give it, every single time but all the “best” gear won’t do anything for you that your playing won’t do first.

I even have a floating Jazz EMG on a Jazzbox. Fantastic.

Only issue I had with active pups was the battery issue. Didn't want to have to constantly change batteries. Solved that problem when I installed Fishman fluence classics. Also installed their battery pack which can last up to 250 to 300 hours. Absolutely loving these pups. Fishman also makes more universal battery packs.

I just don’t like guitars with batteries in them. I’ve used active pickups in the past they tend to hit the amp harder making a clean amp start to drive or send it over the edge if it’s on the edge of breakup. Actives not for me although if I decide to buy a Metallica inspired guitar then yes I will get some EMGs but probably passive ones.

A Duncan nazgûl makes every guitar sound the same as well, and I never hear anyone talk about that. I hated active pups until I bought a guitar with ahb-1’s in it with the intention of changing them…. Then loved them. Play and respond wayyyy different than expected. I may not want a set of 81’s now, but I am way more willing to have more blackouts or 57/66’s. Great video

To paraphrase a great man, THINK FOR YOURSELF QUESTION AUTHORITY

Good reference to all purists and tone experts; David Gilmour and Mark Knopfler played EMGs in the 80' and 90'. Others like Jeff Beck - used to play on noiseless pickups, Andy Timmons is playing on ceramic minihumbuckers. All ot them chose those pickups by some reason... at the end all of them still sound incredible.

Amen Brother ✌ Only reason I don't use EMG's is I can't be stuffed replacing Batteries 😉 As an Audio engineer I love them. That V is looking real good. Got an old LTD v200 here that I'm going to re-work soon, will be interesting to see what the timber under the Black finish looks like. LOL, the "Sometimes" comment, man, that's why I've got a "Load" of guitars, what I tell myself anyway 😉 Take care bud ✌

Although I have never played a guitar with EMGs I played with a couple of guitar players in the 1990s for a number of years and they both played guitars with EMGs to begin with. They both eventually switched to Strats, one with Lace Sensors, the other with stock American Standard single coils. I can only speak from my own experience, but the difference was like night and day, and for the better. To my ears now their playing sounded way more dynamic and sweet and clear, when before it was compressed with too many highs and lows constantly mixed together. That being said, we were playing basically classic rock and I think EMGs would be a good choice for a high gain sound for metal.

It's not just about tone. It's about feel, dynamics, headroom the pickup translates to the amp. The 81 is compressed to hell. Give me the tone of an 81 and feel of a passive and I'm good.

Most of people that hates EMGS never played an EMG through 18 or 24v. All of the weirdness and compression goes away. Dylan, throw a pair of 12v A23 batteries there and test it , you won´t regret. Another BIG tip that took me years to figure. 85s in the bridge position, specially in guitars equipped with floyd rose sounds fat, organic and beutiful. just try it too.

I agree with most of what you say but I don't really get these contradicting statements: you say actives have a more flat or linear frequency response and no spikes, but also that they make every guitar sound the same. But a flat response would mean that they will more accurately follow the influence of the guitar materials and construction than a passive pickup which would impose more of it's 'own' tone on the signal. I have only one EMG equipped guitar and for me the main difference is less noise and more annoying battery hassles.

Funny you mentioned discovering Rammstein in the Vin Diesel xXx movie. That's how myself and my buddies discovered them as kids and since then we've traveled to see them 3-4x whenever they come to North America hahha.

A good singer will sound like a good singer in any microphone. A good guitar player will sound like a good guitar player with any pickups. Pickups are just the microphone. You got to understand your entire signal chain

I agree. EMG's are just a flavor. I've replaced EMG's with passive pickups in three guitars, and they're all better sounding guitars for it, but I recently bought a Fender Jim Root Tele with EMG's in it (why do all the cool metal guitars come stock with EMG's?!), and I haven't had the will to replace them yet, 'cause just amazing for the kind of music a Jim Root Tele is made for playing. Super tight, aggressive and cutting. I might just end up leaving them in there this time. Cleans are kind of bland, but still very usable. With high gain they're amazing.

I like active pickups I use seymour duncan blackouts ahb-2b/ahb-1n with cts's 25k pot's and pure tone full contact output jack

The newer X series offerings (alnico) sound more like traditional passive pickups and still do the high gain thing very well. I think they sound great and I love not hearing the buzz.

Playing high gain the amp and speakers pretty much set the tone. Example: I recently recorded a track with the lead guitar on one side and a harmony line on the other side played on a Minimoog through a high gain amp. Nobody could tell they weren't both guitars

I think there are three main reasons people don’t like EMG actives, and one main reason people don’t like their passives. 1. EMG is responsible for all three, but the first is 81 as the de facto bridge pickup. None of the other pickups even seem to matter, or didn’t for a long time. 57/66, Het Set, RetroActives, etc have changed this to some regard. However, EMG basically told people, “no matter what it is, 81 in the bridge.” Therefore, everyone got 81 pickups, and disliked them because “they make the guitar all sound the same,” when that’s not entirely true at all, though 2 and 3 do not help. 2. 9v has a major issue for most people. Some like the compression, so they do not care, as it reduces their pedalboard footprint by one, or, gives them space for something else. I feel that EMG should’ve pushed 18v and 24v (the original 24v mod you can find on eBay, not the copycats), as this gives a more dynamic response. People who are used to those dynamics would prefer higher voltages. If you can’t fit them in the guitar, then get the EMG ES-918. It’s an external power supply, requiring a stereo cable, and you can run the guitar at 9 or 18 volts for all of your EMG pickups. 3. The literature they gave you with the pickups basically gave people the impression you can and should crank them as close to the string without the string banging around on the pickup. This also adds to the over compressed, sterile, “every guitar sounds the same” thing people complain about with EMGs. Instead, I suggest starting out with the pickups around where you’d set up normal humbuckers and single coils. Then, adjust from there. With EMGs, a quarter to full turn of the screwdriver up or down can move the tone from okay to great, so experiment. Personally, I have a slew of their active and passive pickups. Two guitars have EMG 85/60A sets, two have EMG SLV/SA/SLV sets with EXG and SPC controls, and one has 58/SA/58 (not a typo) set. I have in a parts drawer, that I swap in the first two guitars from time to time, are a slew of their passives. Mostly, people shit on these pickups. Why? 1. The HZ pickups (H1, H2, H3, and H4, as well as the alnico variants) end up stock in mid tier guitars, typically - though not always - through mid tier or lower amps. Of course they’ll sound like ass. You also need to adjust the pickups like any typical pickup height wise to get the best tone. I think they are good, but people already have bad experiences, so they must be bad, and never question the other pieces of gear as the issue. So yes, I use EMGs in all of my guitars.

What people should look at is if it sounds good across multiple genres

"EMG's sound compressed" says guitaists that have a compression/ sustain pedal on their board. I love EMG's 81/60 are some of my all time favorite but i do avoid them on guitars I think I'm not keeping forever as they suck for resale. If I'm keeping it forever, I love them.

Prince ...EMGs

I switched to bass from guitar a year ago and I can say I like passive pickups better on bass. Of 25 years of playing guitar I never owned a guitar with active pickups. With my basses, I own a sr300 which is passive pickups with a preamp, but I own a Rogue with a pj setup all passive and it is more powerful sounding than the sr300 with a preamp. I don't know if anyone has had a similar experience, but this has been mine.

Never played metal in my life. I've been using EMGs since the mid '80s. I've two guitars with them. I also use a Mesa Triaxis. :) I don't use the EMGs all the time, but... they were good enough for Gilmour to use from the mid '80s until only a few years ago. Love the name, by the way. I had an Audi Quattro about 25 years back.

It definitely looks so cool! Congrats Robin!! Enjoy the pickups.

You are spot on. The amp shapes the sound. That is why I tell people when buying an electric guitar, match it with an amp that brings out its character.

I have EMG DG-20 and love them. I’m probably going to get the Retroactive Fat 55 set next.

I just got a 81 for my Kramer I’m so fucking pumped to throw it in and play some 80s thrash with it

Never figured you as a Rammstein fan. Pretty cool you listen to different music. I think everyone should.

True - More bands I like play active than passive. Personally, I had my anti emg era- actually more of a snob era-where I only owned Gibsons, PRS, USA fender. It's all in the past now, though. Currently I only have 2 ltd's w actives.

GRATS Robin! I'm sure these will be awesome!

I have got emg 81/85 for 15 years in my les Paul and for 10 years, they were my favorites. Now I'm getting older my taste has changed and I like the seymour duncan jazz + jb combined or dimarzio tone zone + air hb. The passive pickups are working better with tube amps and get more character out of it. The advantage of the emgs is, that they sound good in every guitar. I ve got 3 guitars with emg 81/85 and sold 2 of them, because they sound like my les paul but had a worse playability. If I really want to change my sound, I would buy another speaker. Price is nearly the same for one speaker and one good pickup but the difference is more noticeable than with another pickup. I think in supervision every part in the signal chain has to be good quality to get a nice tone out of the material. Correct wiring is really important too and not as easy as it sounds at first.

I have the 81 60 set installed in my Ibanez. I went with that because I prefer the flavour of the 60 over the 85.

All of my guitars are EMG equipped. I think I'll never go back.

Don’t bother with EMG’s. Their support sucks. I had horrible buzz from. my output jack and was asked to send in pics of my wiring. I did and heard crickets, nada.

Dude, love me that Prong album. I like “Test” too!

Given that nowadays there’s a whole universe of gear, pedals, and pickups to modify one’s instrument with, my motto has been the same for the 21 years I have been playing the guitar in earnest, and that is: buy the thing that was used on the song you like.

Try an emg 60 neck pickup. Try hz passives run the Gambit of emg pickups. You will see their versatility!

I have 10 guitars, and they all have emgs and fishmans. Emgs DO sound different in different guitars. My neck through guitars with a bone nut and alder body is way brighter than my bolt on, plastic nut, mahogany body guitar. Both with only a bridge pickup and only 1 volume knob.

Quattro is a great name. Anyone who things they hate rum, try a "Rom e Perra" A shot of straight (and not "spiced", fite me) rum with a chaser of unfiltered pear juice. Get a rum like Flor de Cana Anejo or a mid-tier Pampero. In a pinch, go with Cruzan -- it's the Cazadores of the rum world. Cheap but good. Getting the right pear juice can be hard -- it should have a consistency like Guava nectar, not like thin like an apple juice. The little 8oz cans with a blue and yellow label are pretty good. Maybe it won't change your mind, but it just might. I've converted a lot of rum-haters with Rom e Perra.

Love my guitar with EMGs.

Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and Rothery (Marillion) use EMG live on Pulls and on All one Tonight. And on recordings too.

Nothing breeds more contempt for this world, than memories now formed.

From David Gilmour to Steve Lukather to Metallica to Devin Townsend EMG’s were good enough for them at one point. I love them too, I love Fishmans and PAFs and JBs and P90’s and whatever. If you call yourself a player and can’t make even a microphonic pawn shop pickup sound good you should quit playing because your focus is all off. You’re being a sound technician at that point.

I own three EMG equipped guitars. One of them is a Godin Redline One. It has one EMG 81, one volume knob and a 9 volt battery. For some reason it sounds downright twangy with the volume rolled off.

EMGs are a bit more than wire wrapped around magnets, there's an op-amp in differential mode, so instead of a low-pass behaviour like a conventional pickup, in something like an EMG 81, you get a massive mid hump peaking at about 750Hz. Looks a lot like running through a tube screamer with the volume up and the drive down. They work, because the massive mid hump sounds almost jazzy clean and into a lot of distortion you have the midrange grind without the bass going flubby or the highs going too shrill. It's going to sound a lot like you have a tubescreamer other mid boost in there. And it does a specific thing. It's very hard to get a crunch tone that plays well with other guitars as you need all the gain to smash that mid hump into the EQ shape of the amp (or a distortion pedal). If you have a lot of EQ to hand you can make EMGs do other sounds, but it's easier to take something with a flat response out to a sane cutoff and add a a tubescreamer or a klon clone when you want that kind of grind than it is to take that mid hump out with a graphic EQ. I do keep a cheap LP copy around with an EMG 81 in the bridge for moments of stupidity though.

Apply this same logic to 'tone wood' for electric guitars.

Active pickups at least the original designs give you a flat response. Your job is to eq the tone you want as nothing is lacking. Your tone is based on the system, eg the entire signal chain.

Lol, for just a moment I thought you were wearing an orange tie! 😁

This was a great vid. Thanks for the discussion on emgs

Tell these people in the forums to check out dave gilmour and they will see what you can get with emg pickups if you have the right hands

EMG instructions tell you NOT to ground the strings. I think they still should be grounded but they do say not to.

Hello Dylan ! Your take on flavors is spot on ! Some like it salty , some like it sweet ! And the cravings can be different at different times. ;)

More than the Amp, the speakers

I came in here with guns out all ready to let you have it about amps being way more important than pickups, and you went and said it first. Way to steal my thunder, dude 😆👍 Having said that, I prefer vintage voiced pickups (P90’s, If I’m forced to pick one) because that’s what works best for my preferred rigs and tone. I have a couple of EMG guitars, though. Nothing wrong with them.

EMG pickups do sound different in different guitars, or at least 85s 89s SA and S models do. I'm not an 81 fan but Love the others. Take an 85 in a LP with mahogany and then put it in an Ash bodied strat while leaving the amp settings the same. Huge difference. But you and adjust the amp and make them sound similar. Warning EMGs will make more mistakes more apparent. You will have to play cleaner in my experience. I never noticed my sloppy muting during bends until I installed EMGs. But then I cleaned up my playing and fell in love.

I had an Audi A6 Quattro

Dylan spits that hot fire.

So are your quattros your take on meg?

With EMG 81/85 pickups you lose all the richness of the valve amps/emulations can give you (growls, cries, moans), sound like if you are playing a "metal zone" pedal all the time. They're just good for very palm muted riffs (have very good attack), for riffs with a lot of bendings, vibrato, open chords and solos, suck big time.

Are EMG pickups noiseless? Does anybody know? My old charvel 1988 has active pickups and I love them because they are noiseless and sound great. I’m looking at an LTD with EMG pickups.

I felt like many about emg. Went to g.c. one day looked at a zakk wylde epi lp. I like big necks and maple necks figured I could get a few bucks for the emgs. But I liked them when I put familiar settings on the amp. I ended up buying a Dean with 808s instead. And the worst thing emg does is the buffer. But if you have one boss pedal on the floor you shouldn't say boo about emg. Now the 'one more thing to go wrong' argument about the batteries is still super valid. I want one of your vintage tele bridge pickups bad. I need a some alnico 2 in my life.

Sound is vibrating air. The part that makes the air move is the speaker. As a result the speaker is the most important part of tone. The best pick up with the best amp will still sound shitty with a crappy speaker.

Preach! Try a bunch of different stuff and trust your own ear and hands. Nobody knows your ear and your preferences better than you.

Again I'll say I'm glad these repeat.