Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
They are compressed (and yes, it's the preamp Arjun). But so is any high output humbucker.
Cool, see that makes sense to me.
Most obvious with dynamic clean/edge of drive playing. I think they lasted two days in my guitar for exactly that reason (I stayed with actives for a while, just moving from EMGs).
Perfect sense too. That's the place in the sonic spectrum I never venture. Either clean or balls to the wall, nothing inbetween. So when METAL players complain about EMGs sounding too compressed compared to high output passives... well it's down to individual taste but I'm going to start taking that with a pinch of salt.
Thanks for the history lesson, interesting! EMGs are a bit more quiet indeed. Hence I find them a bit more forgiving of sloppiness, I think my shred comparison recording shows that to an extent. A bit less unwanted noise from the 2nd take with the EMGs haha. (But ok by then I also had the piece down a little bit more...)
It's down to the player, very true. Small perceptions etc. And those perceptions change in weird ways too... after I played the EMG guitar exclusively for a month and picked up the Dimarzio, I thought it sounded sloppy and uncontrolled. That was 3 months ago, that's what made me decide to swop the pickups. Now I can't reproduce what I think I heard then.... they both sound great. Really strange.
