II. Pickup Position

Generally, the "tightest" and brightest tone will come from the bridge pickup. I use this pickup most of the time. You will be unable to achieve a tight, djenty metal tone without using a bridge humbucker. It also works for tight, shred leads. I find that for leads where you want a softer, singing-type sound, use the neck pickup. It will have less attack and a warmer sound - more of an "oo" than an "ii". You can also use it for a fat rhythm sound – I find Satch often uses such.

I tend not to use multiple pickups at the same time, at least for distortion. It kind of puts the tone in no man's land. You can get a good, "bigger" clean sound using multiple pickups, however. But you can get some interesting sounds by running the pickups out of phase.

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III. Signal-to-Noise Ratio

One of the more important aspects of pickup selection is signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Cheap stock pickups generally have poor SNR, and thus your tone always sounds washed out. Adding a noise suppressor is only masking the problem. Many "high-output" pickups claim they will make you sound heavier, but you probably don't need a high output signal to get the amount of distortion you want. You just want a high SNR, so that you can crank the gain without getting a really noisy tone. If you are maxing out the gain knob and still not getting enough distortion, you've either got very low output pickups, or you're using the wrong amp (or amp model).

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IV. Frequency Response

Pickups also have a strong effect on the output signal's frequency response. Some pickups are dark, whereas some are bright. Some will simply lack response in one area or another, or be prominent in some range. For a high gain sound, you'll want somewhat bright pickups, but you don't want them to lack bass or lower mids. I used to have EMG's, and I put the EMG 81 as my bridge pickup. I find this pickup is too thin and cold (not enough bass or lower mids). It's simply incapable of achieving a good vintage tone or really warm lead. I switched to Seymour Duncan AHB-1 Blackouts, which has a more even frequency response and better dynamics (less compression), but they have their own shortcomings and I swapped them out for D-Activators. REMEMBER: you can't add frequencies to your signal that never existed in the first place, but you can always filter them out down the road. Trying to add frequencies that aren't there means you will simply add noise.

Here is a great comparison video of some different pickups and the effect they have on tone. You'll notice the distortion tone differs from one pickup to the next. This is mainly due to their varying frequency responses. You can EQ around these differences later on, but it's generally a good idea to start as early as possible with the tone you want rather than trying to dial it in later.

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V. Actives vs. Passives

It really depends on the pickup. Research the individual characteristic of the pickup, and generally disregard whether it is active or passive, except keeping in mind that actives have one negative aspect that passives don't: actives require you to fit (and occasionally replace) a 9V battery inside your guitar's electronics cavity. Some people like to run two 9V's in series to get 18V. I have heard this will improve the SNR on EMG's but has little effect on Blackouts.

Some people say that actives are more compressed sounding than passives. In general that's probably true, but again, it really depends on the pickup. Also, compression isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many artists like to run a compressor as the first piece of their signal chain. Just keep that in mind. If you want the versatility of more than one specific tone, you may want more dynamic pickups - you can compress dynamic pickups with other gear, but you can't decompress compressed pickups.

One positive to actives is that they are generally low impedance, which means less signal degradation over longer runs of cable. However, this problem can easily be remedied by a buffered pedal inserted in your chain before any giant runs of cable occur.

FWIW, I have given up on Blackouts and other active pickups. I'm just not getting the dynamic response and "life" to the tone I want. This means I will likely have a lower signal-to-noise ratio. So be it.

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