Frankenstein EMG System – Opinions?

[phnord]

I've been doing a bunch of research into the various tonal models of pickups that EMG offers, and after careful consideration I think I'm going to go with, for my Ibanez 5-String Soundgear:

Neck: 40P5
Bridge: 40TWX
EQ: BQS Control
Blend: ABCX

Some factors I was considering while exploring:

My initial draw to EMG was Victor Wooten's tone.

I love the crisp, sparkly highs... deep, punchy lows... clear and open, yet smooth and full tonal spectrum.

I really love having a bunch of controls I can use to create a number of different tones.

My bass is a 5-string (albeit strung EADGC), so as I understand it if I go with a P pickup I need something like the 40P, so that the coil doesn't split right under my D string

I play a lot of solo bass stuff. In bands, I tend to aim somewhere between funk-fusion and jazz-world territory, with a good amount of jamband-rock thrown in there and a number of session gigs on all sorts of projects.

With all of that said, as I explored here's what I found:

For the neck, I think the 40P5 is the right choice for me. It has that really punchy sound while still having super-sparkly highs. And while the added headroom of the 40PX-5 is nice, I think I really like the thick, punchy built-in-compression of the standard series better?

For the bridge, I think I want to try the 40TWX. It seems to me that while it's humbucking-mode is quite a while away from the sparkly highs of the 40P, it's single-coil is fairly close to the 40J, although lacking in compression, especially as an X pickup. I think that could be pretty nice, though – to have a natural, dynamically-nuanced, J-sounding bridge pickup that I could beef up into a thicker humbucker at the flip-of-a-switch, and then have that classic EMG sparkle and compression on the P neck.

For the EQ, I definitely want to go with the BQS as that will give me the stacked sweepable Mids along with my separate Bass and Treble, replacing the 3-control EQ I have in my soundgear currently

For the blend, when I spoke to an EMG tech he told me if I'm mixing an X with a standard pickup the ABCX is the one to go with

So, that's where I'm at. What do you guys think? Is this the system to go with? Are there flaws to my reasoning? Things I'll be missing out on?

Thanks!

- Andi

 

[rwkeating]

Have you looked at the 40TW (non x)? In "single-coil" mode, it has an even higher resonante frequency than the TWX so it would be even brighter. Another nice thing about the TW, is the volume difference between the coil modes is less than on the TWX. Both are really good so ... I am sure you will be happy with whatever you go with.

 

[phnord]

@rwkeating I have; I kinda wanted to go with an X pickup for the bridge, to give more headroom and balance out the regular 40P5 I'm going with at the bridge, so that way if I want to play with a more natural, uncompressed sound I could switch over to it in single coil mode and have at it?

 

[BruceWane]

For the blend, when I spoke to an EMG tech he told me if I'm mixing an X with a standard pickup the ABCX is the one to go with

I think by "mixing with a standard pickup" they mean mixing an active EMG pickup with something other than another active EMG pickup, i.e. if you wanted to use an EMG 40P5 with a Dimarzio J, etc.

Since you're using two active EMGs, you should be able to use a BQS System, which is a BQS Control packaged with a buffered blend control made for active EMG pickups.

 

[phnord]

@BruceWane I think you misunderstand.

The ABCX is the ABC buffered blend control (as is in the BQS System) but made to be able to support the X extended-headroom pickups, like the 40TWX that I'm using for the bridge.

I wasn't sure as to whether it would be possible to use either blend with a normal EMG (like the 40P5) along with an X EMG (like the 40TWX) with a blend control; I was informed that as long as I use the ABCX I'll have no problems.

 

[phnord]

So I ended up installing two 40TWX, and creating a bit of a crazy system for the electronics

The end result is I have 5 knobs:

1) Master Volume; Pull to phase-invert the neck pickup
2) Neck Volume; Pull to put it in humbucker mode
3) Bridge Volume; Pull to put it in humbucker mode
4) Bass / Treble Stack
5) Mid Volume / Frequency Stack

Full list of parts involved:

2 40TWX Pickups
1 BQC Control
1 Pi2
1 Extra PPP

I managed the Master Volume phase-inverter by grabbing a Pi2 from EMG, embedding it in the control cavity in an always on position, sending the neck volume to it, and then managing to reverse-engineer the EMG PPP to accept the signal from the Pi2 + the signal from the neck and switch between them when push-pulled

My final step with all of this is going to be to replace the BQC with a custom one from EMG that goes up to 3k instead of stopping at 1k; I would really like to have more control over the high-mids than I can with their current stock model. I noticed heir old VMC controls were 300 Hz -> 3kHz instead of 100 Hz -> 1kHz; when I called them and asked about that, they offered to make me a special BQC with a midrange that goes from 100 Hz -> 3kHz for the same price as a standard one! ^_^

Overall I'm very, very satisfied. I thought I wouldn't dig the ceramic-steel magnets, or the X-mode headroom, because I really liked the modern sound of the EMGs and the compressed sound. It turns out that although they're much warmer than the P pickups I tried out, for instance, that's actually a good thing; that sound was fun to play with for a bit, but very jarring overall. I can come pretty close to dialing in that P sound on these pickups, but they have a much more versatile basic set of tones and a much wider range of tonal possibility.