Man, I picked up my ExpSolar for band practice yesterday, hahaha that was a good perspective shift. While everything I said about the S model I got the other day stands true, there's still quite the jump in quality from the S to the actual Solars. You can polish the S model into something that doesn't quite feel like an entry-level model, but the techwood fingerboard and super light poplar body tend to keep it typecast to that role, if that makes sense. If the S weighs more than 6.5lbs I'd be surprised and picking up a 10.5lb mahogany bodied-setneck Explorer right after handling it is a bit of a shocker.
This probably would work pretty well for all the pinch harmonics and harmonic bar dives, especially since he's also using a 5153 and it's not like Gojira is lacking in any balls or saturation anywhere along the way. I shouldn't have dismissed it as fast, my bad,
@norminal.
The other guitarist in my band is getting a crash lesson in how pickups and your picking hand can really define what you're actually doing and to a degree, the genre itself. There's stuff on their demo I believed they were going for a punk vibe with, but now that he's bringing these different pickups into practices and there's so much more clarity, I'm hearing he's actually doing a lot more syncopated things, albiet a bit sloppy with the picking hand, that's much closer to metal than punk and compeltely changed my perspective on the songs as a result.
He's brought in a new LTD with the rails version of the Nazgul and that thing is pretty fucking intense. I have the regular Nazgul in my Solar plugged that LTD into my rig, I had to turn the Drive from 4.5 down to 3 on my Red channel and still felt like I had a boost on the amp.
I just find tones sound so much bigger when the output of the pickup isn't slamming the front end of an amp so hard it's compressed AF. It almost always requires a bit more effort on the picking-hand front, but the payoff is worth it.