I play a lot of metallica and guns n roses and I have been thinking of changing the stock pickups in my art100 to am emg81 in the bridge and an emg60a in the neck and I also have a metal muff pedal and a peavey valveking 212 will changin the pickups make much of a difference in toneWill changing my stock pickups to emgs make a big difference?From my experience, if you're using pedals... your tone will always be dominated by the pedal and effects. My suggestion would be to perfect your tone using only a good amp and it's distortion channel. This will be the best way to judge what tone is produced from the guitar itself rather than the pedals. Then, if you decide to change pickups, you will have a better base to judge the true effect of the tone change.Will changing my stock pickups to emgs make a big difference?In general, yes. The distortion will be more saturated, and probably a little tighter overall. Stock pickups tend to suck, quite simply, and putting in some decent pickups almost always proves to be a huge benefit.
You will definitely hear a difference in the cleans, but I think that even though the Metal Muff is a very high gain pedal, you should hear a significant improvement. I used to play through a Mesa Boogie Tremoverb, had a nice hard rock tone a la Tool, System of a Down, etc, and even switching between two similar pickups (from a Seymour Duncan JB to an Alternative 8) gave me a significant tonal difference - less %26quot;icepick%26quot; treble and a tighter low end, even with lots of distortion.
Your amp and pedals are going to significantly color your tone, don't get me wrong, but good pickups give them a better place to *start* coloring your tone from. =)
SaulWill changing my stock pickups to emgs make a big difference?I don't think you'll hear a big change unless you're playing pure on some more subtle acoustic Metallica or G%26amp;R parts....the metal muff is gonna over rule the pick-up changes....a real cool(and cheaper) way to mess with tone for metal/rock is to grab a used Wah pedal somewhere and just set it in a %26quot;sweet spot%26quot; of tone that you really dig on...don't really use it for the Wah(unless U want to)..just use it for some cool tones and leave it set...a lot of greats do this....I play an Ibanez Artcore with a bigsby and a Dean Michael Schenker Flying V...both guitars are completely different/especially pick-ups but I gotta say that most of my sound comes through effects,amp(a VOX)and pick control/intensity....I've spent $350 on pick-up changes before and bummed out..laters!
