Throughout his storied career, Zakk Wylde’s weapon of choice has typically been a Les Paul saddled up with EMG 81/85 humbuckers. It’s been the cornerstone of his sound with Ozzy Osbourne and numerous projects beyond – but he was a PAF loyalist until one of his guitar students turned his world upside down.
In fact, Wylde only deviated from the LP after founding his gear brand Wylde Audio, and the pickup combination survived the transition, such is his love for the clarity and power they provide.
Active pickups were an alien concept to a then young wild, who taught others to hone their shred credentials before winning a spot in Ozzy’s band in 1987. It was a strange experience, he has recently recalled after he noticed one strange trait common amongst his fellow auditionees.
The firm’s flagship pickups are used by everyone from Kirk Hammett to Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman and modern-day guitar hero Diamond Rowe. They pair Alnico V and ceramic magnets for a hot and brutally-tuned sound. His student, Wylde tells EMG TV, blew his trusted Les Paul away with nothing but a Fender Mustang and combo amp.
“I was giving guitar lessons at the time, and I remember I had a Marshall ’78 combo with a master volume,” he says. His student’s Mustang stuck out for its curiously jet-black – and it turns out, active – humbuckers.
“I was like, 'Oh, what kind of pickups are those?'” Wylde remembers, “and he just goes 'They're EMGs. You've gotta put a battery in your guitar.”
"I was like, ‘A battery? What are you talking about?’ And I’m like, Wow, that’s weird.’ I didn’t know anything about active pickups or what they were.”
Intrigued, Wylde put down his Les Paul and tried the guitar out.
“I plugged in his guitar,” he says, “hit a G chord and I was like, ‘Wow, the clarity! That’s what the amp’s supposed to sound like.' Because I had my Les Paul with the PAFs in it, right? It was as if somebody had a moving blanket on the cabinet and took the moving blanket off.”
The “Fender with the little body,” which was dwarfed by the thick, likely mahogany, body of his preferred electric guitar had him outgunned.
“That guitar sounded a trillion times better,” he accepts.
“There was just no film, it wasn’t muddled,” Wylde adds. “The chimey highs were in there, the mid-range, the bottom end, I was just like, ‘Wow.’” His student had schooled him.
Impressed as he was, and though he quickly modded his beloved Les Paul Custom, Wylde did soon learn that there was one pickup position that “the boss” Ozzy Osbourne couldn’t abide. That is why it can’t be heard on his 1988 debut album “No Rest for the Wicked”.
His Ozzy success has seen him forge ahead with some notable other projects – and he’s detailed his career highs with Guitar Player – with Black Label Society and his role in a new-look Pantera pick of the bunch.
However, he nearly had another name to add to that list when Slash had earmarked him for Guns N’ Roses. It was a move, it turns out, which temporarily cost him his spot by the Prince of Darkness’ side.
Curiously, his Wylde Audio brand has been subject to a strange and very fake, AI-fuelled website – Guitar Player has warned readers not to order from the site.
It claims that John Mayer plays his acoustics – he doesn’t make any – and that Jimmy Page first started playing his axes as early as 1965 – when the Wylde was two years old.
