I've tried various Seymour Duncan humbuckers over the years. First was '59s then a Seth Lover set. More recently a Slash Alnico Pro II set and a Joe Bonamassa sig set. Recently I picked up an older R9 that had WB pickups in it that were high output and not my cuppa joe so I was allowed to trade them back to the shop for a new set of whatever I wanted so I picked out a shiny set of SD Pearly Gates' with nickle covers. I was hopeful they would at least complement my R9 until I replaced the dinged up covers of the stock 57 Classics that were shipped with the guitar in a separate box. These PG pickups far exceeded my expectations. They have a classic Gibson humbucker sound with a strong clear and woody neck pickup with tight lows, the bridge pickup reminds me of my new Custombucker in my 2014 R8 but with a better punch and some great pick postion color variation. It can grind nearer the bridge pickup rings or get very dark and nasally (whick I crave) between the pickups. Also the middle position tone is old school Gibson all the way and it's kinda fun to just set the switch there and leave it now. They both sound good and loud but measurements tell a different story. The bridge pickup measures about 8kohms and the neck about 7.10 The Custombuckers in my R8 measure 7.97k in the bridge and 7.87kohms for the neck pickup. But somehow the Pearly's sound fuller and have a slightly more agressive attitude. Don't know how Seymour does it but I've finally found his PAF clone that satisfies the craving for PAF tone the way his Broadcaster set does it for Telecaster pickups.
One other thing that stood out with the Pearly Gates set. Today I decided to play around with polepiece heights and I kind of just eyeballed the adjustment to mimic the fretboard radius like my Custombuckers had from the factory. Basically I raised the A-D-G-and Bs slightly and lowered both E polepieces to the top of the pickup covers. The response of the pickups to this little adjustment was just short of staggering (pun intended!). Seriously a rather edgy top end was smoothed out and the notes really opened up and sing with gobs of sustain and a very nice bloom after the initial attack. I noticed none of these things if they were there much before the adjustment but they became major focal points afterwards. Incredible.
One other thing that stood out with the Pearly Gates set. Today I decided to play around with polepiece heights and I kind of just eyeballed the adjustment to mimic the fretboard radius like my Custombuckers had from the factory. Basically I raised the A-D-G-and Bs slightly and lowered both E polepieces to the top of the pickup covers. The response of the pickups to this little adjustment was just short of staggering (pun intended!). Seriously a rather edgy top end was smoothed out and the notes really opened up and sing with gobs of sustain and a very nice bloom after the initial attack. I noticed none of these things if they were there much before the adjustment but they became major focal points afterwards. Incredible.
