New EMG Pickups

for Hamer Custom Guitar

(September, 2006)

Last summer, I was asked by my brother Greg to change out the pickups in his very nice Hamer guitar. This guitar was custom made for him by Hamer in the 90s. Greg Conte is a very talented rock  and roll guitar player, composer and music producer. His guitar playing was heavily influenced by 70’s and 80’s classic-rock guitar heroes like Bryan May, David Gilmour, Tommy Shaw, and the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. In the 90s, the requirement for guitar in the rock and metal world was to be equipped with a high-gain amp, tons of effects, a whammy bar and a fast neck.

That said, Greg turned to Hamer Guitars who at the time was a small shop who catered to guitarists that wanted “the perfect guitar”. This particular guitar includes an Alder body with a set neck, Floyd Rose tremolo and Grover tuners. The original pickup configuration included a Dimarzio Super Distortion humbucker in the bridge and the neck position and a Brian May single coil in the middle. Controls included a volume knob for each pickup, no tone control, an on-board 10db boost preamp as well as a phase inverter for the bridge pickup to allow for that “crying” out-of-phase sound that can be so cool at times. The candy-apple red finish is absolutely stunning in person.

Because Greg loves that “singing sustain” guitar sound (i.e. Brian May) and because this is part of his particular playing style, I recommended EMG active pickups. With EMGs, you can achieve incredible high-gain tones with round mids, tight lows and of corse low noise. EMG pickups also clean up extremely well and have a tonality all to their own.

Greg’s current musical adventure is a blues band out of LA called Noth’in But Trouble. His guitar sound has been reined back somewhat from his 90’s metal years and he wanted more bluesy but  still sustain-oriented guitar tones. Knowing what he was after I decided to install an EMG-85 humbucker in the bridge position, a single coil EMG-SAV in the middle position and an EMG-89 “pseudo split coil” pickup in the neck position. This would allow him to switch between HSH to a HSS configuration allowing for several different pickup configuration sounds.

EMG-85 – Bridge Pickup. In today’s rock world, many guitarists choose the very popular EMG-81 for

the bridge position and place an 85 in the neck position. This is a classic setup which by the way is the same pickup combination used by Zakk Wylde. However, my personal preference is the 85 in the bridge position. To my ears, this pickup has more musical overtones with a rounder edge to it. It’s frequency response and string interface are different. The EMG-85 uses two Alnico magnet loaded coils with a wide aperture to maintain a beefy low end and a fatter top end. Because of a more natural tone, it works great as a rhythm and blues pickup but serves extremely well as a blues lead pickup. It has tons of output but isn't muddy.

EMG-SAV – Middle Pickup. The EMG-SAV is the Steve Lukather signature model pickup made by

EMG. Luke is one of my favorite players and was the primary reason why I started using EMG pickups in 1984. This particular pickup was developed for the "Luke" Guitar made by Ernie Ball. The windings were increased for a meatier tone and they used the original preamp from the SA pickup with flat Alnico 5 pole pieces hidden under the cover cap. Still achieving the classic EMG “SA” sound, the flat poles put the pickup closer to the strings for more output and a punchier attack. I also like these picks better than the standard SA because they can sound a bit more “glassy” and add a little “crystal” to your sound.

EMG-89 – Neck Pickup. Inside the EMG-89 pickup are both a single and dual-coil pickup, each

with its own output. The single-coil mode is an Alnico loaded stacked EMG-SA. The dual-coil mode consists of 2 Alnico loaded coils opposite one another creating a pickup similar to the EMG-85. A push/pull volume or tone enables you to switch from the clarity of a single-coil to the fatness of a humbucking. These pickups are extremely quiet and versatile. The 89 is actually one of my favorite EMG pickups. It’s got a great overall tone in both modes and is offers great flexibility. I use this pickup in the bridge position which offers a HSS and SSS configuration .

The Work

EMG makes it incredibly easy to install their pickups into any guitar. The pickups come pre-wired with all the parts you need for installation including mini connectors, jacks, pots, caps, wire and even heat shrink. Their schematic drawings are also some of the clearest I have seen. This entire modification only took me about 4 hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

In the early 90s,  I modified the original wiring in this guitar by adding a gain boost preamp and phase inverter. Each pickup had its own volume pot and there was no tone. This worked extremely well for Greg. The phase switch allowed him to “dial in” the out-of-phase tone which was very unique sounding. Also, you can see from the pictures to the left a custom made preamp wrapped in electrical tape (my early mod days were very experimental and sometimes funky). This was a simple Op Amp design allowing up to 10db gain boost on a mini-toggle switch.

I started with this modification first by stripping out all of the electronics and pickups. In this case, it was better to just start with a clean control cavity.

For the neck position, the EMG-89 had a slightly different shape than the old DiMarzio humbucker and it wouldn’t quite fit into the pickup cavity. Using a dremel tool, I carefully routed the corners of the cavity allowing more room for the new EMG-89. Once the routing was completed, the 89 slipped right in. The other two pickups dropped in easily with modifications to the cavities.

The new controls included with EMG systems are 25K Ohm, audio taper pots. These pot values are required for the system to work with the internal preamp. A 250K or 500K volume or tone pot will not work.

The passive tone capacitor must be .1mf for proper high-end roll off. However, different values will work fine but will modify the high-end roll off frequency.

Regarding grounding, EMG recommends that you do not reconnect the bridge ground wire. This wire is usually soldered to a volume or tone pot  casing and runs to the bridge. Normally, this wire grounds the strings to the body and acts as a shield to reduce hum. Since EMG pickups are internally shielded, they do not need additional shielding.

FYI, EMG pickups contain a preamp built into the pickup itself. According to EMG, It's the most efficient way to create an active pickup. All the coil connections are shielded, the pre-amp is shielded, and the output of the pickup cable is low-impedance, which makes it less susceptible to noise.

Active pickups require a battery which was easy to accommodate in the main controls cavity. One of the nice things about EMG pickups is that they are designed for very low current drain so batteries last a very long time.

Final Result

The sounds of these pickups are great for playing live. They are not “vintage” sounding but more modern and of course noiseless. There is just enough high-gain to drive hard but pulled back enough to achieve more woody blues tones. Also, this guitar resonates very well so the EMGs were perfect for this guitar. With these pickups, Greg can obtain clear Strat-like sounds as well as lead humbucking sounds. The clean sound is gorgeously pristine and has a lot of presence. The dirty sound grinds to the bone with that classic EMG sustain.

Greg currently plays through a small Fender combo tube amp and a Vox valve amp and it sounds awesome with the blues band. He uses very little effects but with pickups like these, who needs them!

Visit Hamer Guitars to see their latest offering. Also visit EMG Pickups to see their great work as well.

Guitar Sound Sample

Greg play’in some hard rock’in blues!