H4 Passive Ceramic Bridge Humbucker Guitar Pickup - Black Review

Perfect Upgrade at a Great Price

My friend has an RG3EX1 with a dead bridge pickup (ibanez passive pickup "designed by EMG"). I bought this replacement passive EMG specifically because it came with a new wiring rig allowing me to upgrade the dated electronics in his 16year old Ibanez with EMG's easy quick connect setup. New input, new pickup, new wiring, sounds great now! 3 way selector switch was easily trimmed… read more away from old wiring and connected into retrofit inputs on the new wiring harness. 2 small solders to join the wiring from the old pickup to one of the quick connect leads and I was set to go! Buster in sales was excellent in helping me make sure I bought the right kit and had everything I needed to get the job done. thanks guys!

---

Cancel Comment

No metal

This pickup has an amazing clean tone. I got this as a bridge, and and it still sounds good on clean. However, EMG is a metal pickup company. This is very muddy on the heaviest distortion tones. There is no metal to be found in this pickup. I'm sure if I got this as a neck, it would sound muddy on clean too. Just please stick with the actives. Don't make the same mistake I did.… read more The EMG-HZ pickups are terrible.

---

Cancel Comment

Amazing pickup

I put an H4 set in my Jackson Dinky and it sounded 10x better than the stock pickups. The bridge pickup is tight and clean under gain, and the neck sparkles with cleans. I play metal/hard rock myself but I would recommend this to any player. These pickups put out a perfect signal: not too hot, but not too quiet either. The only bad thing is that the springs that come with it… read more aren"t very powerful and the pickup swivels if you punch in it.

---

Cancel Comment

Excellent, versatile passive pup

I've been using EMGs in guitars for some time. They're strong but not overbearing and offer a clean, across-the-board even tone. The solderless switch is an excellent idea, saves time and (if you're like me) burns on the hands, fingers, work surface, etc. I use these to play classic rock and classic metal, and they're well-suited for both genres.

---

Cancel Comment

Better then active equivalent

I owned a Schecter Damien 6 with these and a Hellraiser with the active version both at the same time and did recording with both. I actually prefer the passive version! Compared to the active the H4 was more dynamic and gained back alot of frequencies that the active compression takes away. This also made it more versatile making it able to handle things other than metal. If you… read more are on a budget or don't want to dissect your guitar to install an active pickup then I suggest you seriously give the H4 some consideration

---

Cancel Comment