“I’ve discovered that the more subtle thing works for me”: Metallica’s Kirk Hammett wishes he’d never started out using active pickups
Ask most guitarists to picture Kirk Hammett’s rig and they’ll probably imagine high-output active pickups feeding a wall of gain. These days, though, the Metallica guitarist says he wishes he’d started with traditional pickups instead.
Reflecting on his tonal journey in a chat with Guitar World, Hammett explains how spending time with Greeny – the legendary Les Paul once owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore – has cemented his love for P.A.F. pickups, to the point where he now thinks he “had it backwards”.
Hammett says his appreciation for traditional pickups has grown steadily over the years, thanks in part to the unique way they mature with age.
“Old P.A.F.s are so much more touch-sensitive and I’ve been trying to figure out for the last 10 years whether or not active pickups age well,” he says. “Because it’s a bunch of circuitry – but your traditional pickups, with [just] coils and magnets and wire, they have a tendency to age.”
“That ageing factor really makes P.A.F. pickups individual.”
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The guitarist recalls dropping an old set of DiMarzios into one of his signature guitars and being surprised by the results: “I put an old pair of DiMarzio pickups in a KH [Series S-style guitar], maybe it was an LTD, and I was amazed at how good it sounded to my amp setup. I thought to myself, ‘Maybe the age of active pickups is over.’”
That isn’t to say he’s fallen out of love with active pickups entirely. Hammett says they were exactly what Metallica needed back in the ‘80s.
“They had a higher output – a battery-assisted higher output. They’re basically less microphonic, higher output, which means lower noise. And that’s what I needed back then for Metallica: we were all about distortion, being loud, high-gain… just a fucking wall of sound.”
As his playing evolved, however, so did his ears.
“As I grew as a guitar player during the ‘90s, I started noticing P.A.F. pickups. Man, that’s the sound that I grew up hearing with all these British guitar players that I loved. Even Michael Schenker’s Flying V had just stock Gibson pickups in it. Sometime in the ‘90s, I just realised that you can push a P.A.F. pickup; you can take an amp and fully just gain it out.”
“That P.A.F. will just take it and take it,” says Hammett. “You really can’t do that with a high-output active pickup: you turn up the gain and then you’re lost and it’s noisy. Then the [tonal] distinction’s gone, the harmonic distortion changes, it’s not as touch-sensitive – and you can get away with a lie, it covers up a lot of your mistakes.”
“What I love about P.A.F. pickups is the clarity of it: clarity of note, clarity in a succession of notes,” he continues. “You can’t really get away with a lot… Something like legato, it’s easier with active pickups, not so much with P.A.F.s. But when you do legato [licks] with P.A.F.s, it sounds so much better to me.”
Looking back, Hammett believes he approached his gear evolution in the wrong order.
“I still like that EMG active-pickup wall of sound and it works for our older material,” he says. “But there was a shift in me about 15 or 20 years ago where I realised that P.A.F. pickups, and stock pickups in general… I think you can push them way more than you can push EMGs.”
“You could almost say I had it backwards. I should have started with just a regular pickup, pushing that and going, ‘Okay, EMGs are the next level.’ But no, I was, like, next-level first and then went to the more subtle thing – and I’ve discovered that the more subtle thing works for me.”
He’s not the only member of Metallica who’s come around to the idea.
“James [Hetfield] is the same way,” Hammett adds. “He loves P.A.F. pickups and thinks P.A.F.s are great for lead – but, for him, the EMG active pickup sound is great for his rhythm sound and he really, really likes that rhythm sound.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
