EMG PICKUPS
Why did so many people use EMG pickups in the 80s? The answer is pretty simple. Much like the tube screamer, the active (battery powered) preamp in the original EMG pups acted as a high pass filter, E.G. It trimmed out some bass and helped the tube amps of the day sound a bit more tight at high volume/gain much the same way the tube screamer did much the same thing. Both were often used at the same time even. The classic EMG 81 has a high pass cutoff of about 250hz. This prevents the bass frequencies from bunching up inside the pickup preamp and prevents the same thing in the amp it’s connected to. Since this is an active pickup (with an internal preamp), it’s great for driving high gain amps. It’s got the high pass filter and a clean boost preamp already built in. Add a tube screamer to that and you have two boost preamps for serious boost in gain on a high gain amp. This is why the pairing was so common in the 80s. It was a time before processing with rack units was cheap. But, for a few hundred bucks, a metal player could add EMGs and a tube screamer and have wads of gain. Slayer are a good example of this approach. Classic EMG 81/85 pups and tube screamers and Marshall amps. Kerry started with passive pups then switched.
Also, one of the handy things about EMG pups is that they are not prone to hum and can be split for single coil tones. Kerry king has his own signature set which comes with an additional boost switch on a separate preamp resulting in massive gain that helps with all his dive bombs.
EMG is a company that has been around for a LONG time. The first production was back in 1976. At the time, this was a product way ahead of it’s time. Putting a preamp inside of a pickup was a pretty new thing. Preamps had been added on to guitars, like the original electronics sets in Early B.C. Rich models, but rarely inside of an actual pickup. A little company called STEINBERGER who were making very modern guitars that didn’t have headstocks and barely had bodies, were very interested in the EMG line. EMG pickups became standard on their entire line. Eventually, to add a low cost option, the EMG “HZ” was born which was an EMG without the preamp, which made the pickup much cheaper to produce. So why is the product called EMG in the first place? Well. It’s simple. It stands for “ELECTRO MAGNETIC GENERATOR” which is sorta what it is. The original pups used bar magnets which made them ideal for dive bombs (diving the whammy bar) since the pickup didn’t lose tracking when the string went slack. With pole pieces, found in standard pickups, some tracking can be lost during intense dive bombing. Yet another reason Metal Heads embraced the EMG. Throughout the Eighties, big acts like METALLICA started using EMG pups and as a result, kids learning guitar started wanting them too. This caused a HUGE surge in sales and made EMG one of the biggest pickup companies around. They started to lose ground in the early 2000’s due to the massive amount of “Boutique” shops popping up and providing massive competition. After all the original product had not changed much in several decades. To wit, EMG decided to start offering colors other than black, and started offering other magnet configurations and even started doing pretty decent passive pickups as well. They have adapted over the years, as they have had to, in order to survive and they are still with us today.
I added the Kerry king set with boost switch to a less Paul and it nearly ate my face. The gain was almost hard to control. It just begged to feedback. I rarely used the boost switch. It seemed more of a novelty than a practical solution. Don’t get me wrong, I love gain. But even I have my limits. These days I prefer lower gain alnico magnet pickups. I find they are more articulate and pick up muted pick strikes better which is the key to my playing style. Using insane amounts of gain works well for Slayer. I found it didn’t work for me.
Do you guys use EMG pickups on any of your guitars?
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This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Mar 17 2020, 05:11 AM
After giving it a good setup, it became my main instrument for a while until I picked up my Prestige. 
