Joel Stroetzel

Joel's official website states that he uses EMG 81 pickups.

Adam Dutkiewicz & Joel Stroetzel from Killswitch Engage create music that spans from the cleanest of cleans, to aggressive melodic metal. In the studio, they’ve used a wide variety of active and passive equipped guitars. Live, this presents its own set of challenges. Now Adam & Joel have one set of pickups that does it all. The Killswitch Engage Signature Set packs tremendous versatility into one set of pickups. Voice 1 begins with our Modern recipe, but Joel & Adam prefer a tighter bass for more note definition and screaming midrange and harmonics. In the bridge, Voice 2 contains an extremely unique vintage/medium output hybrid passive tone, equally great for cleans, crunch, and searing leads, while the neck produces a crystal clean, fluid voice. In addition, there are unique single coil voices for each pickup, to nail the perfect modern active “hot” coil split, and vintage passive true single coil tones.

According to his website, Joel Stroetzel uses EMG 85 pickups.

Joel Stroetzel's website lists EMG SA pickups among the gear he uses.

Before co-designing the KSE fluence set, Joel used the Fishman Fluence modern set. Joel was the fist of the two guitarists to try fishman pickups. He instantly fell in love, and then showed the pickups to adam, who also fell in love with them. Joel states that he used many diffrent active pickups over the years, but had a hard time finding one that was right for the guitars he played. They would often be muddy and unclear. Joel liked that the fishmans where clear, consise, and didnt drive the amp too hard like most active pickups. He also liked that they complimented whatever guitar he put them in. Voice 1 of the modern set is what they ended up basing Voice 1 of the KSE set on

In joel’s signature guitar, he has a set of fishman pickups. In the bridge he has the killswitch engage signature humbucker, and a single width single coil in the neck.