I've been looking at EMG 81-7s or 707s, but I'm not sure it will give me a broad enough range of tone. So any comments on the EMGs, or reccomendations for other pickups would be appreciated.

For what guitar exactly?

IMHO with the Air Norton/Tone Zone you can cover alot of ground .

Regards

André

Lundgren.

Nevermind your EMG's. Don't even think of routing all that loverly wood.

you have to route the guitar for emgs to fit in it ??

Yes, you have to route the body of most 7 strings to fit EMGs into the cavity because they have a rectangular shape and most 7 string pickup cavities are oval. If the EMG 7 string pickups are comparable to their 6 string counterparts, then they might make your guitar a heavy metal machine. Of course, I would personally go for a Dimarzio Blaze Custom in the bridge and an Air Norton 7 in the neck simply because routing the body is kind of pricy (if you want it done right) and the pickups that I suggested will sound fantastic.

this gives me nightmares, im getting a 7 string soon and im changing the pickups the first day i get it. i want the chunky sound that the emgs give but im not even thinking about routing anthing

Yeah, routing could be a pain. But if you can afford it then I would say go for it. Just make sure you get a professional to do it properly. If you don't want to go through all of that hassle then I would suggest finding some nice passive pickups to fit the bill. I think that the Blaze Custom is the next best thing to an EMG 81-7 for the bridge of a 7 string.

+1

i use the air norton/tone zone combo in my mahogany 7 and an air norton/blaze custom combo in my basswood 7. both sound great. i love the AN/TZ rig in mahogany 6's so i knew i would love it. lotsa low end, but focused, through my rig is not muddy at all. the tone overall is smooth and really organic. lotsa really good natural harmonics and overtones. this is for both pickups. now the AN/TZ in basswood was kinda the same, but the TZ was a little more boring in basswood versus the mahogany. i knew that going in, though. i was just buying time until my custom mahogany body came in. the AN was a winner, though. i liked it so much, i put it in another basswood 7620 coupled with a blaze custom. the BC was more of a crapshoot, and was definitely worth the risk. killer tone and was overall brighter than the TZ. more output, too. basswood tends to be pretty BLAH sounding to me, so i needed a pickup to awaken up the dead tone of the baswood and new7's. the AN/BC combo fit the bill superbly. so much in fact that my other guitar player has ordered a BC just because his stock 7620 sounded like a toy next to both of mine.


rich