^^^^^^^^^^ That is a beautiful guitar!
I never understood it when guitar makers used mahogany but then covered it up with a solid color. Usually woods for an electric guitar are either strictly tonewoods like maple, mahogany, basswood, alder, or ash. But some woods have more looks, but probably not the best tone like my all-koa BC Rich I had, cocobolo, buginga, and korina.
But luckily mahogany and maple, which both sound good bringing out low mids and highs, respectively, also look so nice either satin finished or clear finished. Gibson could save a ton of money, and even improve their sound pulling out muddiness most criticized by players in their classic models, by simply using something like an alder and ash for a solid colored Les Paul or SG. Nobody would know and they would sound more balanced plugged in. I had a rather uneventful looking walnut Gibson and it sounded better than my Les Paul Custom which had the pretty mahogany and maple. Unless the maple and mahogany are blemished, they should let those show the wood since their strengths at the end of the day is for looks.
To counteract the low definition caused by mahogany (my guitar, ESP/LTD Viper), electric guitars with a naturally bassy tone unplugged could use pickups that accentuate the highs. I took out tone control altogether and I put in push pull to make humbuckers go to single coil when I wanted stricter definition and less mud. But going into a passage where mud is OK, like jazz or something that sounds like Cream, then it's OK to go full humbucker with a mahogany bodied guitar. As we all know, we saw what Clapton did, for better or worse, with the Fenders he stuck to later when the tone he had from a strat accentuated highs.
All that being said on solidbody electric guitars, I still think the tone is 90% percent the pickups and electronics (see below link to Laiho pickup) and maybe it's only geeky gearheads who like the nuances of wood and how that effects the electronics in a very subtle way. I notice on Clapton he went from neck pickup on SG, Les Paul, Firebird, and 335 to almost always the lead pickup on the strat for most of his mid and latter career stuff. That choice of lead pickup had a lot more to do with his high end bite than the snappier woods on his strat (maple neck, alder/ash body) than his mostly mahogany bodied Gibsons (save the 335).
I bet if your guitar was solid maple, like the Gibson L6-S, but with same pickups, it would sound nearly identical to what you have now.
I play in 2 bands 1 is a Speed/Thrash metal band and the other 1 is a Industrial/Goth metal band. I use my PRS in drop B for the Industrial/Goth band because it sounds great for those low chunky riffs and bluesy licks that I add in,so the SH-1 and SH-1N Seymores will make good work with that. My Jackson I use in the Speed and Thrash band because its just made for that type of music and I think that the Blackouts will just make the sound even more dirty and intense.
A previous guitarist had active EMGs in his guitar and I didn't like them they were to loud and added unwanted sounds and very ott in a way.
I think maybe it's the way the previous guitarist used the EMGs. They are kind of an unforgiving pickup and forces the player to be a lot more precise. Was he kind of a sloppy player? (nothing is wrong with that and greats like Hendrix and Page wrote the book on sloppy).
On the upside is that if you want every note to cut through, especially on single note leads, this is a great pickup. The Blackouts are similarly accurate but to me sound like a blend between your '59s and the classic EMG 81, but obviously closer to the 81s with all that horsepower. I use EMG HZs and even though they are EMG, they don't have any more power or definition than any medium output pair of humbuckers. They do have a nice warm, vintage tone but with a little extra push on midrange. Alexi Laiho uses those but has a built in boost on the volume knob to more accurately keep up with the active EMG side. It's the best of both worlds with a warm tone with passive electronics but a cutting lead if kicked into overdrive:
http://www.guitarcenter.com/EMG-ALX...02246-i1458238.gc?source=4WWRWXGP&cagpspn=pla
