Lithium pickups or something else?

  • Need you help guys! Received my kiesel aries 7 with Lithium pickups. Trying to gel with the pickups but something is missing. I had an agile 727 with blackouts and descent sound with the Kemper but now with the lithium just can't find that tone. I know passive and active are two different animals but the Lithium are missing something. Should I try other pickups? Any recommendations?

  • Hey Paults thanks for the reply. Well I bought the agile used and having a tough time finding out what type of wood the agile has. The kiesel on the other hand has an alder body. Because the Kiesel was built for passive pickups I'm hesitant in carving a place for a battery. I haven't seen what the tone and volume compartment looks like.

  • Hi jcclaudio212, I own a Vader Multiscale 8 string as well with lithium pickups. Alder body with maple necks or maple tops tend to be brighter sounding instruments and with not so much low end.
    My Vader sounds great thru the Kemper. My only itch with the Lithiums is that I wish they were more dynamic and clear through out the strings, Im talking about string separation when playing low strings and high strings together or almost one after another.
    I've only being able to find this with Bare Knuckle pickups, that string separation and dynamics, clear articulation.
    I've been so tempted to get BKP pups for the Kiesel but, that would be another expense.


    The Kemper does a great job at keeping things clear.
    Lithiums are not bad, I just wish they were more articulated and clear.


    But the wood factor is important as well, the reason why I mentioned an Alder body guitar with some type or maple neck or maple top will be brighter and tighter sounding then per say, a black limba body with a walnut top.
    Good Luck.

  • Hey Javcab08 I agree, Lithiums aren't bad but thanks to the Kemper I've been able to tighten up the low end but still something about the lithiums. You mentioned the note separation, that could be. It could be me. Maybe I just need to spend more time with both the Kiesel and the Kemper. I've been reading up on the Dimarzio Illuminator 7, tight end response but not sure yet. I want to give these lithium a chance. Yesterday I raised the bridge pickups closer to the string...wrong answer! I thought my studio monitors were blown. Also could not get a pinch harmonic to save me. Once I lowered them better well rounded sound. I'll look into the Bare Knuckles. Which do you recommend?
    Dean R - I may be leaning towards the passive side for the fact that responsive and dynamic seems to be the main underline if you will when it comes to passive pickups.

  • Hey.
    I would stay away or keep my distance from Signature pickups or pickups that have someone elses name in them like the Illuminators (Petrucci). Because all of these pickups are made for the artist and they gear specifically. Alder is a brighter and tighter wood than mahogany that has more low mids and a sponginess to its sound. Just saying.


    Bareknuckles are great. It all depends in what you want and your Kiesel wood combo. The guys at bkp are great at giving up advice and guide you in the right direction.


    Even BKp signature (artist) pickups are well versatile and more "open minded" than other brands.


    There is another brand of pickups called Instrumental.


    Take care.

  • Well javcab08 for now I got myself a illuminator bridge. I didn't do a sound comparison with the Lithium and Illuminator but through my 2x12 cab with vintage 30's it sounds waaaay much better.The sound tightened up and harmonics were richer. I'm not a tech person but to the eye, the illuminator had much more winding. One would think just by looking at the lithium bridge it would've gone towards the neck. Anyway for now the illuminator works. I'll keep doing the research on the BK pickups.


    One thing on the Instrumental pickups, being that I don't have facebook my wife sent Ethan a message before I received the illuminator and never got a response. The instrumentals were my first choice but never got a response. I'm sure he's busy I guess. Is facebook the only way to get a hold of Ethan? I'm still interested in trying these pickups out for myself.

  • From my experience no matter what you do to active pickups, they won't have the dynamic that the worst passive pickups will have. If you really care about string interaction and dynamic, I'd try passive.


    I hate to generalize but the consensus is true, most if not all active pickups are well suited for extreme gain, and when clean they're good with lots of effects. You won't play the blues with active not that you can't. The only players that I can think of that didn't play metal with active pickups are Steve Lukather who also uses lots of gain and David Gilmour who used lots of effects on the cleans and also had tons of gain,


    It's definitely worth trying some passive pickups because the difference is going to be very significant in the feel, you might really prefer them if you're looking for responsive and dynamic raw not overly sculpted sound.

    Some have gotten very close. Very very close. But there’s still a difference that I think is generally caused by the difference in technologies. That said I don’t think it’s the active technology per se keeping them from being more dynamic than the ultra gainy examples. It’s the overall design. I’d say both actives I’ve been involved in making and something like fishman fluence classic have better dynamics than many Passives. But they still won’t give you the exact same feel as a similarly voiced passive. There is a difference, however small it is, that may or may not matter to people. Still Greg Koch uses actives as do more and more now that you’ve had this “active pickup resurgence” with manufacturers making more dynamic actives than what the technology was popularized for with metallica, ect, ect.


    To the OP: what tone exactly are you looking for? There are passive pickups voiced like what actives have been known for and the other way around. Blackouts have their own tone vs say an emg 81 too. I wouldn’t worry much about woods. What kind of bridges do the guitars have? If the guitars are similar in design, in my view, it is likely the difference you are experiencing is due to the pickups. But there’s only one way to find out for sure. You could swap pickups around. Or just try to find a passive pickup voiced closer to the particular blackouts.. if not just get an active. There will always be some differences, including variation between pickups of the same model (though very little with some actives that don’t even use winds), but the more compression/distortion you use the less they will be evident, generally speaking.

    Edited once, last by Dimi84 ().

  • Well javcab08 for now I got myself a illuminator bridge. I didn't do a sound comparison with the Lithium and Illuminator but through my 2x12 cab with vintage 30's it sounds waaaay much better.The sound tightened up and harmonics were richer. I'm not a tech person but to the eye, the illuminator had much more winding. One would think just by looking at the lithium bridge it would've gone towards the neck. Anyway for now the illuminator works. I'll keep doing the research on the BK pickups.


    One thing on the Instrumental pickups, being that I don't have facebook my wife sent Ethan a message before I received the illuminator and never got a response. The instrumentals were my first choice but never got a response. I'm sure he's busy I guess. Is facebook the only way to get a hold of Ethan? I'm still interested in trying these pickups out for myself.

    Lithiums are made out of Alnico V magnets, so not so tight nor compressed as Ceramic magnet made pickups like the Illuminators or Painkillers from BKP per say.
    Lithiums have a nice vocal singing top end growling mids and kind of still figuring out the bass as its not as tight as my BKP Nailbomb ( Alnico ) that I have in a different guitar made out of similar woods.


    Im sure Jeff Kiesel will come up with a new line of pickups. Im also looking to replace the Lithiums in the future, I think I'll go Bare Knuckle since Im familiar with their pickups and they have worked for me.

  • Need you help guys! Received my kiesel aries 7 with Lithium pickups. Trying to gel with the pickups but something is missing. I had an agile 727 with blackouts and descent sound with the Kemper but now with the lithium just can't find that tone. I know passive and active are two different animals but the Lithium are missing something. Should I try other pickups? Any recommendations?


    You could try Seymour Duncan pickups. For example the Nazgul/Sentient is really tight passive set.

  • i had the same issue with my vader 8. As well as my HH2 holdsy. Both have dimarzio D Activators now. They sound like organic EMGs. String separation is excellent. Clarity as well. The neck pickup is just as easy with harmonics as the bridge.

    Oh yeah. The thing with lithium is its kind of a copy of a juggernaut in that its alnico5 with ceramic booster magnets for each string. Thats where it gets harsh. The spacing of them iss strange too. Not standard and not F spaced. Kind of in the middle. Measure the spacing for the d acts. U get more control and clarity

  • I'll throw in my vote for the Fishman Fluence series of pickups. I stuck the Tosin Abasi set in my customized 7-string and I absolutely love them. They are active pickups in that they require a battery, but they each have multiple voices (up to 3) depending on how you wire them and which switches/push-pull pots you install. They really allow the tone of your guitar to shine through with minimal coloration. Check out any of the gazillion YouTube vids on them for reference. Typically all of them in the Humbucker size have a "Passive" voice and an "Active" voicing. The Abasi's also have a single coil voicing. It's really the best of all worlds, tone-wise... at least for me. I will be placing the 6-string Classic Open Core Zebra set into my LP clone when the funds free up.


    Also, if you follow Ben Eller on YouTube, he also can't say enough good things about them.


    HTH,

    Jeff

    Shred 'til yer dead,

    Jeff in Houston