Originally Posted by: PonyOnethe worst part about switching a guitar to the active EMG setup (or any active setup, or onboard EQ/boost for that matter) is figuring out where to put the battery. some guitars have enough space in the control cavity for the battery, but, others will need to be routed further and have a battery box installed, which is not only expensive but is also removing a good amount of wood from the instrument. this may not be such a big deal on a cheapish guitar that's only going to be used in high gain situations only but it's still invasive enough that it can damage the sound of the guitar.

I personally don't really dig active pickups that much on guitar. i've played basses where they seem to be more useful, but, this is all just a matter of preference. On the DKMG i'd probably swap everything out for a less exotic passive setup, just with really nice pickups, and make use of the battery area/extra routing with an EQ or something of that nature (i'm not sure if the boost would be compatible with the passive pickups or not).

Replacing pickups is really easy if you have ever soldered anything before. if you haven't it may be a bit confusing. But you could do it by looking at the wiring inside the guitar, and how it goes to the switches and everything, then just remembering where everything was desoldered from. i can switch a pickup in probably 5-10 minutes or so, and rewire an entire guitar in about a half an hour, and i'm inept at electronics repair. i switched the pots on my Strat from 250k to 1 meg last week and it took about 20 mins for all three, with intermittent chatting and socializing.

The worst thing about switching to EMG is the fact that it is a very one box of tricks in tone