KSR Juno + Fortin 33.

The past few months I've been on a pickup swap rampage revisiting ones I have in my stash that I haven't played in a while. The most recent one has been the Motor City Hellbaby. It's such a great pickup.

Tonally it's a very balanced pickup with lots of clarity and string separation for a hot pickup. I've had it in a few different guitars and it has performed well in them all. It has a good mid range snarl. The lows sit in the right spot - they’re present and warm with no excessive sub-lows. The highs are clear without any ice picks. 

They're pretty tight as well. It doesn't have a surgical or overly percussive feel resulting in more of a wall of sound sort of presentation vs being in your face, but it’s plenty tight enough for metal riffing.  It hits decently hard. Maybe not as much as some other over-the-top passives, but I can't imagine someone finding these feeling underpowered. The attack is on the dry side, but its sustain keeps it from feeing too stiff. The clarity and dry attack do make for a very revealing sound since there isn’t a lot of “gel” between the notes if that makes sense. 

Here's a short clip I did with it through my Natas with a single SM57 on a V30. There is no post-processing on the guitars. It has the solo'd double-tracked guitars followed by the same take with bass (bass has high & low pass filters) and drums. 

Chain:
MCP Hellbaby
Fortin Natas
Kerry Wright 4x12 w/V30's
Single SM57
Interface
And as usual, no post processing.

Motor City Pickups Hellbaby and Fortin Natas

Frank Hutto

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