EMG 40TWX

Once upon a time, the folks at EMG gave me a tip that the TW bass pickups make great guitar neck humbucker/single coil pickups. At the time, I got a 35TW for a 7 string, now I've added this 40TWX as the neck pickup with an 808x in the bridge, it's a great pairing, I'll be enjoying this pickup a lot!
Special note, using the solderless wiring system made it easier than normal BUT still required help... and Konstantinos from the Thomann guitar dept. was a great help. Outstanding customer service and technical knowledge.

This pickup is a TW, which means it has both a humbucker and a single coil inside the pickup, so this switches between them instead of "tapping" the pickup in half. The X part of the pickup means it has the newer preamp, for this model that makes a huge difference because the single coil and humbucker are nicely balanced with no difference in volume, only in sound.
The humbucker is full and rich on cleans, it can squeal and chunk in distortion mode and has a nice wide-open neck tone for leads. One note: the bass is very strong on the humbucker mode, I had to turn down the bass setting on my amp's clean channel. Not a bad thing, but worth knowing. The single coil is great as a reduced/denounced presence (in a good way) without getting quieter (like my old 35TW did before EMG's X preamp was available) and it gives the "slinky" sound that strats and teles are known for. This single coil sound is fantastic for clean and low distortion clarity, and sadly is absent on most factory built guitars with EMGs.
The installation of this pickup was quite easy, but only after I got the right diagrams from EMG and some extra parts (connecting wires & barrel jack) from Thomann, all of which took some time. I advise double and triple checking your guitar/bass from pickup to the input jack to know exactly what you'll need and how you'll install it. Call Thomann and EMG, they have all the answers and were super cool in helping me.

We I'll know that EMG manufactures high-end quality components. Some Builders actually use them for their stock pickups in their high-end equipment. These are very nice because you can switch from single coil to humbucker to get a different tone. Plus EMG now is everything to where it's plug and play with supplied wiring so that you don't have to do any soldering. A lot of people don't know how to do quality solder work. Everything comes with detailed instructions on how to plug everything together. The X Series has more Headroom than the other pickups and produces a good clean clear tone. I don't always use Active Electronics but EMG is high on my list of components to use when I want to do so.

Had a 5 string which played like a dream but it had quite bad soundig electronics...
I've bought an EMG 40TWX and all my problems were solved. Low B now sounds punchy and thick and the coil split option is the most amazing thing I've experienced...
Playing anything from Rush to RHCP to BFMV sounds exactly like on a record.
It could use a bit more of low end but a little tweak on any decent amp and it's the best sounding bass I've tried after many