hey everyone. Im refinishing my guitar and also want to get new pickups for it. It has a basswood body, maple neck w/ rosewood fretboard, edge pro and the pu's are direct mounted. i find the stock v8 and v7 pickups to sound pretty flat and boring in this guitar through any rig ive played through. Right now i have a rocktron pro gap and mosvalve poweramp and using my marshall mg100dfx's speaker since i dont have a cab at the moment. I want something more articulate and powerful, with better harmonic content but also have nice tight lows. Im looking for a more classic heavy metal to thrash metal tone, but could also handle low tunings if i ever decide to use it for that. i really like judas priests live tone lately along with eric peterson of testaments tone so i have been thinking an emg 81 and 85 combo with the 18v mod but i want to see if there's any passive pups you would recommend as emgs can be a bit pricey and im not too sure if they are really what i want.