Description
The EMG 85 has always played the sophisticated older sibling to the legendary 81, trading raw aggression for depth and nuance. Close-aperture coils wound around Alnico V magnets give this active humbucker a warm, muscular midrange and a lead voice that sings without shredding your eardrums — equally at home slinging blues licks or holding down riffs in a metal mix. Drop it into the neck or middle position for its classic rhythm-pickup role, or try it in the bridge for a smoother, more soulful take than most bridge humbuckers offer. It also plays well with nearly every other pickup in the EMG catalog, so building a mixed set around it is easy.
This particular 85 wears EMG’s gold cover — not a plated finish, but a genuine mirror-polished stainless steel cap that’s been surface-hardened with a gold-toned treatment usually reserved for machine tooling. That process hardens and penetrates the steel itself rather than sitting on top of it, so the finish won’t flake, chip, or wear thin after years of gigging. EMG went this route after finding that outsourced chrome-plated caps couldn’t be sourced consistently and risked altering tone from batch to batch — building their own solution in-house solved both problems while keeping the cover’s sonic footprint identical to their standard molded caps.
- Alnico V magnets, close-aperture coil design
- Active EMG circuitry for low-noise, high-output performance
- Genuine mirror-polished stainless steel cover, gold surface-hardened finish
- Designed and produced in the USA
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