New ernie ball cobalts with EMG's

[rovertnamrod]

i have a guitar with an emg 81 and i heard that the new ernie ball cobalts are bright sounding strings, and of course the emg is a bright pickup. so would it be too bright to use the cobalts with the emg?

 

[ibanez4lifesz]

I really think the best answer to this would be for you to simply try them. How bright of a tone do you like?

If you end up not liking the change, take the strings off and put your usual on there...it's $10 lost, and you answered your question.

You can always re-eq your setup aswell...I hear the cobalt strings have a very nice feel, so you may want to work with them for that reason alone.

Eric

 

[Rook]

I don't find the EMG 81 to be notably bright to be honest, you'll probably just get a tighter, hotter sound rather than losing low end.

Like eric said, just try them.

 

[djohns74]

Can't believe you'd really notice a huge difference just from changing strings when playing through distortion. And since I see "emg 81" in the original post, I don't really need to ask whether you're playing through distortion.

 

[The Norsemen]

Can't believe you'd really notice a huge difference just from changing strings when playing through distortion. And since I see "emg 81" in the original post, I don't really need to ask whether you're playing through distortion.

Are you insinuating that people who play with distortion and/or EMGS's can't hear small variations in tone? Or simply that you can't?
Plenty of people use EMG's for clean sounds and plenty of people excel at this.
EMG's don't limit anyone to high gain playing. Only a mindset like the one you're portraying does.

I use an assload of gain, and I've played with EMG's before and I can tell the difference when I replace strings or change brands.
Some strings even have charts on the package explaining where they fall on a line between dark and bright etc.
The character of strings can and does shine through distortion and active pickups.
It's a noticeable difference in my ears.

 

[MF_Kitten]

I would love a guitar with EMG 81 and 60 for their awesome clean tone. They do the Tesseract/AAL clean snappy glassy sound really well in my experience.

 

[djohns74]

Are you insinuating that people who play with distortion and/or EMGS's can't hear small variations in tone? Or simply that you can't?
Plenty of people use EMG's for clean sounds and plenty of people excel at this.
EMG's don't limit anyone to high gain playing. Only a mindset like the one you're portraying does.

I'm actually not insinuating anything, but thanks for reading so much more into my post than was there. For your information, "" generally indicates that a joke is being made rather than a serious, sweeping statement about guitar players and/or their favorite gear.

For the record, the EMG 60 in the neck position is probably my single favorite humbucker for clean tones, it's crystal clear without being weak and that's just fine in my book. I do not use the 81 in the bridge position for clean tones, but then again, I don't use ANY bridge humbucker for clean tones, though that's obviously just a stylistic choice on my part, albeit possibly a controversial one. Nevertheless, I don't think I'm alone in this choice, thus the basis of the joke, which, having been explained so thoroughly, will clearly not be funny in the least at this point.

All that aside, the original question was whether a particular set of strings would, by themselves, make a guitar "too bright" and I stand by my belief that if the guitar isn't "too bright" already, strings by themselves aren't going to push it over the edge. Certainly not to the point that a little amp EQ couldn't get it under control. Of course, my ears aren't nearly so refined as some, so who knows...