Do any of you guys use overdrive pedals with actives (EMG's)

I do. I use Mighty Mite C4 chrome covered actives and I also run a maxon OD808. I am a metal player though. I dont know what kind of music your into. But in the metal scene emg 81s boosted by a TS type pedal into the dirty channel of a high gain amplifier with the gain rolled back is the recipe for metal these days. Listen to any song by killswitch engage and that is what your hearing.

 

EMGs are NOT versatile, so you have to play EMG kinda stuff or they'll just sound bad.

 

That's baloney. I've played clean as well as dirty with EMGs and Blackouts.

 

BOGUS! The reason i bought active p/u's in the first place was to drive the effects. They work fine with any kind of effect, and they're dead quiet on stage, and in the signal chain. EMG SA's in a strat back in the 80's, when everything was way overprocessed was the ticket then, and quite frankly it still works well today.

 

87' Charvel w/a EMG-81, ZW-44 Wylde OD gain at 1/3rd open, Friedman KS JMP 2203.

The key with high gain amps is i back off the gain 1/4 on the amp and run the pedal only open 1/3rd with EMG's.

 

It all depends on whether or not you have a shim in the pocket.

 

I used a metal zone for a while with an EMG-81 super strat when my Marshall amp was new. Sounded pretty good.

 

I had a set of emg kerry kings with the boost switch back a while ago. They ripped they were allot of fun. Even though they were supposed to be metal pickups you could pull off allot of different types of music with them

 

yeah but i use it as a boost, i dont add any drive to it brah

 

Doing this is like using a Fuzz factory on max gain, with a cranked marshall. TOTAL OVERKILL DUDE.

 

Wrong. Just different than what you do.

 

I'm not a fan of the EMGs, but Kerry King uses them and an EQ set to boost AND an OD into a JCM800 and doesn't have a screamingly high gain sound.

Part of the concept of EMGs was to drive through long pedal and rack setups. They can get a bit sterile if you're not careful, but they are made to be used with effects.

 

Tosin Abasi does it well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt-RoSzsEKA

 

ive always used a overdrive for a lead boost, all my guitars have emg's @ 18v
they all sound fine it mostly depends on your amp.
right now i use a way huge green rhino, its an amazing tubescremer clone with more knobs, sounds great!
before that i had a ts9, wylde od, coffin blood drive and a sd-1
my first od pedal was a DoD but o forget what it was called lol
i usually set everything to noon and tweak to taste, i remember the everything at 1:00 setting on a tubescremer usually sounds pretty good