Replacing soap bar pickups/looking for new pickups

[bangu101]

So i have an esp h -1007 and they have the EMG soap bar pickups even though i like the look of them i want something new so does anyone have any clue of what kind of pickups i can replace them with? i also don't want to do any serious body work i know BKP make soap bar but i don't want to spend my ....ing soul on them unless i can find them cheap so if anybody has any clue help me out. My band is switching to more of a prog sound cynic,btbam contortionist, etc. i mean ill make my own sound if i want just trying to give some examples and i really want to change to passive thats really the whole reason behind this.

 

[Chemical-Pony]

Those are active pickups not soap bar pickups (P90s). I believe Seymour Duncan do most of their pickups in an active mount option if you simply want to replace your EMGs with passives.

 

[GuitarBizarre]

Those are active pickups not soap bar pickups (P90s). I believe Seymour Duncan do most of their pickups in an active mount option if you simply want to replace your EMGs with passives.

The EMG mount is still correctly referred to as a soap bar mount. Just the same as similar bass pickups are referred to as soap bar mounts, (In fact, the EMG soap bar mount is what it is, because EMG's earliest 7+ string pickups were actually built into bass pickup housings) and some P90's (But not all) are referred to as soap bar mounts.

There are also Dog-Ear P90s which aren't soap bar either.

P90 style pickups are characterised by having a wider, shorter coil than Stratocaster pickups, generally being higher output, and not having magnets for the polepieces - the polepieces are screws and the magnet is a bar magnet underneath. You don't need a soap bar format to do that.

To OP - As far as I know, your only mass-market options are BKP and Seymour Duncan. I don't know of any Dimarzios. There are bound to be lots of small companies offering it but that's a minefield.

 

[Action]

you can buy plastic covers that are the same shape as the EMGs, for a few bucks apiece, and the finished product will look the same as it does now. Having just done this on my 8 (covered d-activators), I can say it came out well, but i checked the dimensions of the pickups and the covers beforehand, and when it turned out to be a tight fit, i was willing to spend an hour shaping the covers and thinning some of the internal plastic with dremels. i ordered extra covers in case i messed up, and it came in handy after botching one.

 

[SpaceDock]

Duncan soapbar active mount. You can get most of their models in this size and a lot cheaper than bkp.

 

[lewis]

the only issue with covering pickups with the plastic soapbar covers is there is then more distance from the pickup and the string (as the cover is between them) so you lose output. Unless you drill out the pole pieces and have them sticking through the cover?. Which would be cool. Would look like the Seymour Duncan Nazguls for example.

 

[Unleash The Fury]

Get the BKP pig90 if you want brutal, tight gain. I have one in my prs se soapbar ii and it slays to hell and back. It's worth it. Good cleans too

 

[Jaxcharvel]

Check out the Lace Deathbar and Xbars. The 3.5" mount is a direct replacement for EMG soapbar mounting. And I can personally attest that they sound surreal. And I think they look cooler than any of the other active mount pups.

 

[Action]

the only issue with covering pickups with the plastic soapbar covers is there is then more distance from the pickup and the string (as the cover is between them) so you lose output. Unless you drill out the pole pieces and have them sticking through the cover?. Which would be cool. Would look like the Seymour Duncan Nazguls for example.

Yeah, it might matter. My reasoning was that passives are supposed to sit further away than actives for a good tone. I put them in with the covers very close to the strings and I was happy with the output, eventually even backing them away some from my initial installation.

I do need to remove the covers to fine tune the pole pieces, so when I'm doing that, I should try bringing the pups closer than is possible with the covers, and see if it sounds better instead of just louder. In my limited testing so far I got the impression that I was able to find a sweet spot with the covers on, though. I can see covers not working for some setups. Mounting rings, or faux mounting rings covering a direct mount, are another option, but if they look ugly you've got permanent screw holes in your top :/