ZeroFivefour
Well-known member
I bought my Luke 1 in April 1994. I had never tried any Musicman guitar before. Loved it straight away. I liked EMG pickups anyway, as I had retrofitted some into my first guitar ( a cheap and nasty strat copy). But I realised the single coils were different to standard SA's. They had more power and clarity. They are SA57's. However when I bought my Luke II I realised the SLV's in that were much more vintage and overwound sounding, a lot more stratty, but without all the inherant noise issues associated with passives. Either way the single coils in both guitars have a beautiful sound. I play mainly clean & low gain, no metal music or anything like that.
I'd recommend them to anyone, and tell them to forget any preconceptions, as EMG's get a real bad rap on forums like this, and that might put a lot of folk off, without ever actually trying them. A mind is like an umbrella. It only works when it is open.
Totally agree with martyhk0 and Craiguitar here!
I also have ran emgs in at least one of my guitars since 1987. I had an original luke 1 with the 85 bridge and single coils, I now have a reissue with the same EMG pickups as the original Luke. One of the major attributes of the Luke guitar with emgs is its sonic versatility imho. I have recorded with the emgs using a dual recto and have obtained some insane huge 'rip your face off' sounds as well as some of the most beautiful sounding sweet tones using the different Luke pickups/combinations.
Luke knows what he is/was doing when he and EBMM designed the axe. I also run other guitars with passive pickups from a few other manufactures, including the axis with its killer dimarzio HH set up. But for me the luke is my absolute go-to guitar.
Cheers,
Tom
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