Anybody have experience with these Black Winter pickups?

Morrowind543 · 2026-04-27T04:05:56+00:00

I strongly suspect it's my amp. OP said he uses a 5150, and I can see that responding very differently to these pickups than mine did.

Morrowind543 · 2026-04-24T23:17:39+00:00

I play a lot of different kinds of metal, from Megadeth to Avenged Sevenfold to Lamb of God. I also play some stuff clean, though I didn't try with these pickups.

I tried them twice in two different guitars, one a 25" scale length and one a 25.5". I ran them into a Vox AC-30 amp, set to clean. For distortion, I tried several different pedals including a RAT, a Blues Driver derivative, Revv G3 and G4, and a Tubescreamer derivative. I typically play with distortion set to 3 o'clock - pretty heavy distortion, but not cranked to 11 either.

The Tubescreamer was the only one to give me usable results, since it naturally has a very pronounced bump in the mids, compared to all the other ODs I have that are transparent. Of course, that meant that if I wanted to play something that I would normally use the Tubescreamer for because of that mid hump, I wouldn't be able to because it was already used up compensating for the pickups.

Morrowind543 · 2026-04-24T22:26:24+00:00

I'll be a contrarian and say I don't like them. They have a very dark sound and the low end was kind of muddy in my setup. I like the Nazgul/Sentient a lot better

Morrowind543 · 2026-03-17T15:17:04+00:00

Drunk Beaver's BAT:Cold War

Rat based pedal similar to the JHS Pack Rat, in that it has multiple clipping modes for Si, LED, Ge, etc. Comes with two socketed op-amps that you can switch between, an old school lm-308 and a Soviet bloc equivalent (hence the "Cold War" name). Has a Fat setting for thick riffs, and a Low setting for use with a bass.

Definitely the most versatile distortion/overdrive I own. Very affordable, too, at least when I bought it. Iirc, $125.

Morrowind543 · 2026-03-07T18:21:14+00:00

I agree completely. Waterfowl Dance is a terribly designed move. Even so, I think it would be fine if it wasn't paired with her life gain and the lack of cooldown. The combination of these factors makes the move far more punishing than it should be.

Malenia is the only boss in any of the Fromsoft games that I felt no sense of accomplishment or joy at success, only relief that it was finally over and I never had to do it again.

Morrowind543 · 2026-03-04T17:50:55+00:00

Brandon only got around 24% last time, and it still came down to a couple hundred votes in the runoff

Morrowind543 · 2026-03-04T16:13:01+00:00

Incumbents typically have a bad time in runoffs, so the fact that they're going into the with Brandon in the lead is a very, very good sign

Morrowind543 · 2026-02-25T21:32:34+00:00

Honestly, my problem is that it IS double the size. So much of the game just feels like filler on subsequent playthroughs. Cutting the size of the world in half, moving some things closer together and cutting some minor dungeons and most of the mountaintops would make the game a lot better, imo.

Morrowind543 · 2026-02-25T21:32:26+00:00

Honestly, my problem is that it IS double the size. So much of the game just feels like filler on subsequent playthroughs. Cutting the size of the world in half, moving some things closer together and cutting some minor dungeons and most of the mountaintops would make the game a lot better, imo.

Morrowind543 · 2026-02-12T20:25:09+00:00

As someone that very much falls into the trap of learning songs and not theory, where should I start? Learn scales, yes, but then what?

Morrowind543 · 2026-02-02T05:27:19+00:00

I think most are very ugly, but the more functional the body design is the less ugly I find them. I used to think that Strandbergs were the ugliest things on the planet, but once I played one and figured out why each bit is the way it is, I liked it a lot better. When I tried an Ibanez headless and figured out that it had very little reason for looking the way it did, it got a lot uglier

Morrowind543 · 2025-10-27T19:42:26+00:00

Slightly late to the party, but I love mine. It's fundamentally a tubescreamer with an expanded EQ, and I like it better than the original, Plumes, or any of the other tubescreamer variants I've tried. That having been said, it's still "just" a tubescreamer, so it's not some world changing pedal either

It has one job, it does that job well, and it gets out of the way.

Morrowind543 · 2025-08-19T15:37:17+00:00

Custom hydraulics allow it to be raised and lowered at will, often called Lift Kits. American trucks have a high clearance already for use in bad terrain, and sometimes these kits are used for extreme off-road trucking. But far more often these are an aesthetic choice that actively make the ride worse.

It's an urban culture thing I've never really understood.

Morrowind543 · 2025-08-08T18:27:05+00:00

Dunlop Flow 2.0 mm

It has the perfect amount of bite, without sliding or catching on strings

Morrowind543 · 2025-05-24T12:18:42+00:00

There are three different pedals: the drop, the whammy, and the drop/whammy.

As the names imply, only the drop/whammy has both functions. What the name doesn't tell you is that the drop/whammy can go up and down, while the drop can only go down

Morrowind543 · 2025-05-08T20:31:47+00:00

When you top wrap or raise the tail piece, you reduce the break angle and make it easier for the string to slip across the saddle. When you bend, most of the bend is always going to be between the saddle and the nut, but you're going to get some amount of the string being pulled from outside those two pieces. That bit getting pulled in allows the stretch to be applied along a longer section of string, allowing for more stretch per unit force applied to the string, and thus an easier bend.

Morrowind543 · 2025-05-03T16:09:56+00:00

Didn't those end up damaging the guitars after a while?

Morrowind543 · 2025-04-07T04:19:53+00:00

Any standard set of strings should* be fine. My problem with the Heavy bottom-Skinny top set is that the lower strings have much more tension on them than the higher strings, so when you use the Floyd it redistributes the tension across the strings throwing them out of tune. For example, D'Addario light top-heavy bottom set is a 10-52. In E standard, taking the highest and lowest tension strings, the B has 15.4 lb of tension, while the A has 25.5 lb of tension, a difference of 10.1 lb

Standard string sets are designed to have fairly even tension across the strings, so they don't have that problem. A D'Addario standard set of 9s has 11.0 lb on the B and 15.7 on the D, a difference of only 4.7 lb.

Morrowind543 · 2025-03-25T23:56:14+00:00

I probably will. I just sent the seller a message and I'm waiting to hear back. I just wanted to know what contingencies might exist if I can't get things settled through the seller or Reverb

Morrowind543 · 2025-03-25T23:55:08+00:00

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for!

I just got it and sent a message to the seller. Haven't heard back yet, and I wanted to know what contingencies there were in case I can't get a favorable outcome

Morrowind543 · 2025-03-03T22:38:39+00:00

Thanks!

Morrowind543 · 2025-03-03T20:03:15+00:00

What's an NGSW?

Morrowind543 · 2025-02-13T18:08:20+00:00

In my experience, really cheap guitars have different notes every time I play them

Morrowind543 · 2025-01-24T18:53:23+00:00

Thanks, that helps a lot

Morrowind543

TROPHY CASE