Your pickup preference with Rectifiers?

[xbolt]

I like a pearly gates in my LP custom and the full shred in my nightswan

 

[Chris McKinley]

See, this is why it's such a pleasant surprise to find that some of your favorite "tone"-oriented pickups still sound fantastic through a high-gain amp like a Recto. If you decide you need some extra power to drive the preamp tubes up front, you can add in a boutique-quality clean boost and get a hotter signal than any active pickup can provide, but you also retain the sweet tone of the pickups.

Doing it this way gives you the best of both worlds as well as greater versatility. If you need the power, the clean boost provides it, yet you still have powerful signal with good tone, not just a powerful signal that needs further tweaking tone-wise. Yet, if you occasionally have lower-gain applications such as blues and jazz, you've got a pickup that already has a sweet tone for those contexts. Even with EQ tweaking, actives just don't sound as good for blues and jazz as a good low-to-medium passive pickup does without any alteration. Yet that same Pearly Gates that sounds so sweet for light breakup blues jobs will still rock the house when run through a Recto for metal.

 

[Hellaboogie]

EMGs do a good job for me.

 

[vitor gracie]

I truly dig Duncan Invaders. I have used them on several guitars over the past few years and I think that it's slight lack of the upper highs you find prevalent in a pick-up like a Pearly Gates or even a '59 rounds out the cutting edge of the Rectos on the red channel. I also find it (the Invader) a really utilitarian pick-up in that when your amp is at a low volume. Your pick-ups are extremely high out put so you can get more of that saturated sound for the high gain thing. At high volumes you can REALLY lower your gain a lot (even down to 12 o'clock) and get awesome chunky/gainy sounds that are tight and percussive.

Lastly, when you coil tap an Invader they are, again, so high out put that they actually make a fine sounding single coil tone. All of my guitars are custom wired to have 1 if not both pick-ups (humbuckers) tapped so that is a great benefit.

I know the Invader is marketed as a purely metal pick-up, but I see tones of guys using a pick-up like a JB (Jeff Beck) for metal (including myself) or a '59 (PAF) for metal and those two are CLEARLY not intended to be considered made for metal. So my point is that you don't have to do the high gain metal stuff to have an Invader in your guitar. As an example, I once played with an old JCM 800 through a Recto 2X12 cab because I didn't have my amp with me at the time. I got passable tones out of the Marshall because I had the Invader in my PRS and could get a little more juice out of that amp. It certainly wasn't anything like my Roadster at all, but I actually enjoyed (for once) the Marshall for what it was. :wink: