Soulcrusher_X
New member
Initially, I wasn't expecting much. I'm still used to playing heavier styles of music with higher-gain pickups, so this is a slight departure for me. I haven't gone through adjusting pole height or pickup height and just went to plug in a jam. Now, I don't have the best amp right now. I sold just about all of my amps to help my wife start a buisness, and only have a little Randall solid-state combo that I bypassed the internal speaker and plugged into my 4x12 Greenback cab.
Anyway.....they are definitely low-output. I needed to bump up the gain to get them to where I am used to with say...my JB, but there was this clarity to the entire midrange that was really nice. The highs and lows are definitely rounded and fairly soft, but when you wail the snots out of the strings, the bridge crunches up nice and can get a little raunchy, even for a little bit of chugga-chugga. It also takes very well to my SD1 for a little boosting. VERY dynamic pickup indeed. I'm not sure what the EQ range is on the Duncan site, but it seems very even to me. No offending spikes anywhere.
The neck has a very round character with really no offensive EQ spikes. Instead of crunching like the bridge, when you dig in hard, the neck seems to become more focused and "sting" on notes. It might be a little round for my tastes, but it's less boomy than the '59 that I have used. It's also LOUD. One of the loudest neck PUs I have tried.
I'm not sure if I will end up keeping these, but I'm really glad I got to try them. I'll rock them for a while and maybe try something else in the low-output range of Duncans. I really wish I had a nicer amp to try them out with. I'm still waiting on parts to fix my friend's JCA 50H, so I might get to try that out in a few weeks. Maybe then, I'll get a better idea of what they can do with some tubes in the signal path.
Overall, I would like something a little tighter, some more bite and raunch. I do like the warm and woody mids, though. I bet these would SMOKE with a Marshall and some G12H-30s.
Anyway.....they are definitely low-output. I needed to bump up the gain to get them to where I am used to with say...my JB, but there was this clarity to the entire midrange that was really nice. The highs and lows are definitely rounded and fairly soft, but when you wail the snots out of the strings, the bridge crunches up nice and can get a little raunchy, even for a little bit of chugga-chugga. It also takes very well to my SD1 for a little boosting. VERY dynamic pickup indeed. I'm not sure what the EQ range is on the Duncan site, but it seems very even to me. No offending spikes anywhere.
The neck has a very round character with really no offensive EQ spikes. Instead of crunching like the bridge, when you dig in hard, the neck seems to become more focused and "sting" on notes. It might be a little round for my tastes, but it's less boomy than the '59 that I have used. It's also LOUD. One of the loudest neck PUs I have tried.
I'm not sure if I will end up keeping these, but I'm really glad I got to try them. I'll rock them for a while and maybe try something else in the low-output range of Duncans. I really wish I had a nicer amp to try them out with. I'm still waiting on parts to fix my friend's JCA 50H, so I might get to try that out in a few weeks. Maybe then, I'll get a better idea of what they can do with some tubes in the signal path.
Overall, I would like something a little tighter, some more bite and raunch. I do like the warm and woody mids, though. I bet these would SMOKE with a Marshall and some G12H-30s.
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