During the last couple of years I have begun to hear some things that I do not like in my sound. Small things, but still annoying. And I think my newest pickups, 808, sound a little unclear. It is time to testdrive something else.
I have seen that there has been a lot of very good things said about the Swedish Lundgren pickups everywhere. I visited their web page, https://lundgren.se, and found out that they have many different pickups. I have read a lot about the different pickups they make and listened to a lot of audio clips. For me the audio clips did not tell me much of interest about the different aspects of the pickups. But I know one thing, I like EMG and EMG sounds modern metal. The most modern metal pickup they make is the M-series. But I also like things a little more classic sounding, so something like the new Black Heaven seemed like the perfects choice for me. At least according to the description of the pickup: "The Black Heaven combines the power, aggression and tight response of the legendary M6, but with more refined, organic character that lends itself to more diverse tonal applications".
For the testdrive I got hold of a used M6. Now I needed to select a guitar. I decided to use my old trusted workhorse, my Charvel Model 6. The pickup combination in this guitar is H-S-S. Since I never use the middle pickup I decided to leave that empty and try to find a single coil for the neck position. So what model to choose? The problem with the EMG 81 and SA combination is that the output from the 81 is much higher that from the SA. Since the M6 is a high output metal pickup I wanted to have a really high output single coil pickup as the neck pickup. I emailed Lundgren pickups and got a suggestion from Johan Lundgren himself to go for the Strat-90. Luckily I ended up finding a used Strat-90 neck pickup. So time for testing :-D
To be able to compare the pickups I did some recordings with the old and the new setup. Excuse me for the casual dressing and sloppy playing :-P
Charvel mod 6 with EMGs:
Charvel mod 6 with EMGs, solo:
Unfortunately the Strat-90 did not fit into the whole of the Charvel. So I skipped mounting that.
Charvel mod 6 with Lundgren M6 in brigde.
Charvel mod 6 with Lundgren M6 in bridge, solo:
As I mentioned before I like the power in the EMGs. This is the first time I have tried something else that gives me the same power. The M6 has more bottom end. Normally I would have rolled it back on the amp a bit, but now I wanted everything to be the same to show off the differences of the pickups. The bottom end is nice a tight though, so it does not disturb me. The high end of the M6 is warmer and it is a much warmer sounding the the EMG 81 when used clean.
Verdict:
I really like the sound of the Lundgren M6. It has a much warmer and nicer tone than the EMG 81 with almost the same power. I can't wait to have the Strat-90 put in so I can do the full comparison. There will be more Lundgren pickups in my guitars, that's for sure!!
Rock on!
