Ken armstrong pickups

[Ally G]

Any guitarists know anything about these? had them recommended to me as a cheaper alternative to seymour duncan etc (about £35 instead of £65 each) but I have no idea whether they'll do a good metal/rock sound. Anyone got any experience with these?

[sweepthelegsjohnny]

ken armstrong pickups are quite good man
especially for the price but they lack the punchiness and
sharp tone that seymour duncan have.
but yeah id consider them among my list!

[Jon]

all my guitars have jeff beck seymour duncans... id recommend that you save your money and get a SD cause they are well worth the money

[Ally G]

cheers guys.
Yeah i was initially thinking about duncans or dimarzios, but the price is putting me off......
Any other advice?

[macsabbath]

Personally I wouldn't bother with the Kent Armstrongs you've got to be thinking "skoda" when you buy them. They don't cost £35 becuase they are really wonderful, they are engineered to a price.

I've got Seymour Duncans SSL7's "QuarterPounders" on a Strat and they are very powerful, with good definition and clarity yet with quite a dark tone. THe SSL4 ( or SSL7, I get confused!) has staggered raised poles and the SSL7 is flat. The staggered give sharper definition, but it's marginal. Again played straight in the front of the amp, not pedals.

I've tried the Dimarzio's YJM I beleive again on a strat and they are very weak indeed the Seymours bury them. I've got an Iommi SG with Iommi pickups and the Seymours, although single coils will give these a serious fright as well!!

Depending on what sound you after you might try Gold or Silver Lace Sensors I have them on a strat and they sound really good, very high definition and high quality sound.

If you want something cheap and cheerful but not too bad have a go at these on ebay http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tegory=22 670 This is a set of 3 brand new Entwhistle-White single coil pick-ups for a Strat or Strat style guitar. I bought a set of these to try and they are not bad, very powerful, but not as well defined as the seymours,you'll get them for about £30 ( 3x £10 ) for the full set.

IF you read this in the next 40 minutes you could get this Seymour Duncan SSL7 for £22 quid http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...ategory=23 84 maybe £30

[Ryan_Equilibrium]

i dont have a clue about this sort of thing so can some1 help me out...is these single coils that you are all speakin about the spring type things attached to your bridge inside your guitar?. how much are the best pick-ups you can get? obviously there is no right or wrong answer for that but i like to play with a real crunch soundin distortion. if i made any sense, please reply if you can help. cheers

[njw]

single coils are a type of pickup, like you'd usually find in a stratocaster, usually with only one line of the wee metal pickup pieces...

the humbucker is a different type of pickup, which is the one that is usually twice as fat as a single coil, with two rows of yer wee metal pole pieces/dots... lol. Although you can get humbuckers in a single coil size housing (i think Seymore Duncan makes these).

best way i can think of explaining it? Humbuckers are most commonly found on Les Pauls/SG's and usually sound much beefier.

Good pickups is really up to taste like you said... EMG active pickups (81's and 85's) are often combined to give a really high gain distorted sound (as used by Zakk Wylde)... Seymore Duncan pickups are good, as are a lot of others... just need to try out different guitars fitted with different pickups to see how they sound... of course the guitar theyre attached to also makes a difference.

[macsabbath]

KneeCow: for what it's worth I reckon you can fit some, or maybe all, of the EMG range to any guitar you like, the cheapest or the most expensive, Gibson, Fender, anything you care to mention and they'll all sound almost identical. Every time I've tried EMG's I found this, they all sound the same to me, regardless of the instrument they are in! I think it's becuase they have a built in pre-amp which is what is really give them the same sound, hence the actual guitar doesn't seem to matter much. Zak sounds like a lot of other people, or they sound like him! and it has to be because of the EMG's and all the pedals he uses, good sound but not very different.

[njw]

true... because like you said, EMG are active pickups... however, i'm pretty sure that Seymore Duncans or other passive pickups sound different on different guitars... ?

[macsabbath]

Originally Posted by Knee-Cow

true... because like you said, EMG are active pickups... however, i'm pretty sure that Seymore Duncans or other passive pickups sound different on different guitars... ?

Kneecow: Passive pickups can sound different across different guitars, but, and this is probably going to be considered highly contentious and no doubt some knowall will jump in here with both feet, however I don't think they always sound all that different. In my view there is a right load of utter bollocks talked about the virtues of this wood or that wood in relation to electric guitars, so long as the body isn't made of MDF or balsa wood ,the bulk of the actual sound comes from the pickups which is why if you change your pickups you can alter your sound radically. I've done some experiments with a cheap Strat copy and a Custom Shop strat, swapping scratch plates and asking people to listen to the difference without seeing what instrument was being played. I've even taken the humbuckers of the Iommi SG put them on a strat body and people could tell it was humbuckers but they thought the sound was the same on either guitar. It was like Frankensteins lab I can tell you, but it proved a point I thought.

I think the great debate about so called 'tone woods' is very relevant for acoustic instruments, but not actually so relevant for electric ones. Pickups are very important, crap pickups = crap sound on any guitar!

[njw]

i wouldnt know, i havent played so many guitars!

i was just making an 'educated' guess... lol