a guy local is selling a set of these for $50, I couldnt believe it, I told him I only wanted the bridge pickup and could give him $30 and he said ok so I'm picking it up tomorrow and i dont even know what guitar I'm going to put it in. I just know its awesome sounding from the clip on the seymour duncan website and it's probably the highest output pickup i can get. he says no hardware is included. what potentiometer should i use? this pickup takes 18 volts right?? I dont even know if the guitar tech at sam ash would know how to wire it up..? oh well its only $30! hahaha retail cost is $224.25 for the set.

anyone use this pickup or the set? should I just buy both pickups? I dont know how the neck pickup sounds its part of the metal livewire set but theres no clips on the seymour duncan website. probably nothing special, thats why i told him i just wanted the bridge pup. any thoughts?

it's an active, right?

duncan doesn't make very good actives like emg doesn't make good passives

well, that was a bit overstated. may not be the best highest gain sd pickup you can find, but I hope you'll like it.

__________________

you need 25k pots, and the only way to check how it sounds is by getting it in there and playing it. I'd say get both... check how it is... man its only 50$ for 2 pups, and if theyre shit, ebay them for 75

__________________

Ok, I will assume you havn't heard it so go here and check out the LW-HMET Live Wire Metal bridge pickup

http://www.seymourduncan.com/SDToneWizard/hummer.shtml

Looking for people who play with this pickup or the livewire set. But people, dont get these confused with the LW-CH1 Live Wire Classics, totally different pickups(dont like those).

yeah plus cost of installation. I need to learn to swap pickups pretty soon lol. but does anyone actually use these?

dark funeral use them, and their tone is SICK, probably one of my favorites ever... if only i knew the rest of their gear.

__________________

haha im sitting here listening to them right now(older stuff). yes thats what im shooting for, i just assumed they use marshalls. not my favorite band but yeah the tone is great

EDIT: looks like they use randall amps/cabs nowadays

i know they use marshall, the question is WHICH marshalls, and what kind of crazy rack gear/pedals are in between?

__________________

i like livewires. they're nothing like emg's. but that's not always a bad thing. some people hate emgs. i say buy both, since they're active it'll be easier to have two active pickups set up in that guitar. you can mix passives and actives, it just may be a bigger pain.

__________________

i have two guitars
les paul copy w/JB bridge/stock neck
jackson slsmg soloist w/emg85 bridge/passive emg 'h' neck

so the jackson is already painfully setup with a passive/active mix. i bought it off ebay setup this way. theres a switch inside the cavity and switching it one way makes the neck pup louder, i dunno anything more about how its setup. anyways, its started making noise when i play and all the solders in the back are good so i dont know what to do. there is a jumble of wires back there. I may take the guitar to just have this livewire set put in but like I said i dont know if it would be difficult for my guitar tech to install them(or even 'uninstall the mess back there now lol). he said he hadnt done a 18 volt active pickup setup before when i asked him about doing that with an emg 81 a while back. we'll have to see what he says but hes more of the lazy pot smoker type (nothing wrong with that!) and i dont think that he knows that much about electronics. may have to look for a new guitar tech.

Dave Mustaine....

Cheap actives. They sound nice for medium/lower gain stuff. I see them around for so cheap.

don't put it in the lp. You'd have another passive/active combination, and actives don't really give good tonewood any props.
You probably want to put it in the neck of the soloist, but what wood is it made of?

__________________

the soloist is mahoghany. the metal livewire(that im definitely getting) is a bridge pickup. no one puts that in the neck. it wont make a clean sound at all so they say. if anything it will go in the bridge of the soloist, in place of the emg85.. then i will sell the emg85..

But then you would have another passive/active mix. I would definitely ditch the passive EMG, keep the 85 and put it in the neck, and install the livewire in the bridge position. Passive EMG's are pretty lousy pickups anyway.

__________________

the passive EMG 'H' actually sounded really good clean, but as I said it's making a static noise now. Also, I don't like an EMG85 in the neck so much, EMG60's are much better for me.

Anyways, I got the pickup set.

Pickup 1 - Tag says IMD67 HMBHB-LW-B
Pickup 2 - Tag says IME11 HB-LW-Bridge

They look identical other than the tags on the back. Are they both bridge pickups? I'm going to email seymour duncan and find out. With the Livewire Metal set, it's supposed to come with a 'Classic version' for when cleans are needed because the metal livewire doesn't create true clean tones. The guy I got these from said you can put either one in the bridge because they are the same thing but I don't believe that as the identification numbers on the back are different.

i have not used them but dont buy them because of how they sound on the computer ,buy them because you have used and liked them ,I bet they sound nothing like on the website ..........you will probably like the gear they recorded the clip with instead of the pickup

Heres what a seymour duncan tech guy said about them.

Hi Jason,
It looks like you have two bridge models. But they can still be used in
the same guitar.
Production codes can vary, but it’s safe to say they’re both bridge models.
Live Wires whether used alone or in a pair require 18volts. Also, the values of potentiometers they require are different (100K for ours and 25K for EMG).

So I think I will keep one, sell the other, and try to find an EMG60 for my neck position. Will that be a bitch to wire up because of the difference in voltage and pots required for the two pickups?

Well, I know it won't severly fuck up your sound when you use 'wrong' valued pots with passives, but I honestly can't tell about actives.
Here's a question, how important are pots to you? you don't have to have them, you can just put in the pickups, a switch, and route them to the jack. That's what I did with my strat copy.

__________________

it wont be a bitch, it will just sound like shite. For pickups, high impedance pots = more output, and more trebel. So, with 100k pots, the duncans will sound normal, and the emg will fucking scream, and be a bitch to get anything clean out of. If you use 25k pots, the duncan will sound like shit, it will lose alot of trebel definition. This only applies if you use mastervolume/tone, if it has 2xvol 2xtone, then each pcikup can be matched to its respective impedances.

IF you're at 1xvol and 1xtone, i would say rip out the tone and turn it into another volume knob... but thats because i dont use tone knobs anyway...

And please dont put actives into an LP, its a waste of an LP

__________________

Good idea I think I'll try and do this. Right now my soloist has an inactive tone knob and I don't care. I guess the previous owner bypassed it.

dave uses/used jb/jazz last i heard. awesome stuff

__________________

He switched from the jb/jazz to Dave mustaine signature livewire pickups, NOT the livewire METAL set.

__________________

oh ...i remember reading about his jb/jazz set up which is why i bought a jb for my jackson...oh well i love my jb another cool pickup is the quadrails by kramer...

__________________

dont worry... he only made the switch in the last 2 yeras... so jb will get all of his older tones.

__________________