Seven String Pickup Shootout: EMG 707 vs EMTY Blackout

High gain humbuckers for metal motherlickers   11-Oct-12

The pickup market for 7-string guitars is expanding, guitar companies figured out pretty early on that if six strings aren't good enough for these crazy people, then crappy pickups certainly aren't going to be good enough!

Metal maestro Keith Merrow has compared two of the leading 7-string humbuckers in a video with some sufficiently chugging metal riffs. These are the EMG 707 and the Seymour Duncan EMTY Blackout.

Both pickups come out well on the video, but the Seymour Duncan works a bit better in the mix, it sits well in the frequencies that should be filled by a guitar. The EMG wanders slightly into bass guitar frequencies, but that's what a lot of guitarists are going for these days, so that's not necessarily a bad thing, just personal preference... and bad news for bass players.

The Seymour Duncan EMTY Blackout also seems to have a peak somewhere in the high mid-range that works particularly well with heavy gain. It's a great demonstration from Keith Merrow, and testament to just how much gain you can actually get out of the EMTY Blackout and EMG 707, both brilliant pickups.

Which do you prefer?

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