Seymour Duncan AHB-1S

Características:

El paquete contiene ambas patillas, cableado y 4 potenciómetros

Junto a las pastillas, encontramos un panfleto con instrucciones para montar la circuitería en varias configuraciones, las explicaciones son muy claras y el montaje lo puede hacer uno mismo sin problemas.

Sonido:

La pastilla de puente es brillante, con mucha ganancia, pero sin llegar a un punto excesivo. Al ser activa podemos pegarla bastante a las cuerdas si queremos un sonido más agresivo. Es ideal para todo tipo de rítmicas, con palm-mutes muy marcados y potentes. Al contrario que otras de su tipo, no es chillona. A la hora de hacer solos rápidos y rockeros es una muy buena opción.

La de mastil también entrega una buena dosis de ganancia, por ello habrá que alejarla de las cuerdas si queremos un limpio cristalino. Si la acercamos mucho obtendremos algo de "overdrive" natural. Con el volumen aproximadamente a la mitad se puede sacar un buen tono para blues y estilos con mucho feeling. Contrasta mucho con la de puente.

Pros:

Set de pastillas versátil, se pueden sacar sonidos desde muy metaleros a muy blueseros o más limpios, pasando por un buen tono de Rock.

No hacen nada de ruido con el amplifcador a un alto volumen, captan muy bien los armónicos.

Contras:

La pastilla de mástil tal vez entregue demasiada ganancia.

Si la altura de ambas pastillas difiere, al cambiar la posición del selector notaremos una gran diferencia en el volumen.

Conclusión:

Buena alternativa a EMG u otras activas. Habiendo probado varias activas, encuentro que estas son las más equilibradas, dejan "resonar" más a la guitarra y en general limitan menos el rango de sonidos diferentes que se les puede sacar.

En cuanto a calidad-precio, la relación es buena y se encuentran en la misma gama de precio que sus competidoras.

En definitiva, las recomendaría a alguien que busque activas, pero no quiera limitarse solo a sonidos duros.

I built these into a baritone guitar I designed and made on recommendation from the guys at the Seymour Duncan factory themselves.
I just had to make a few design changes to accommodate the battery.
I wired the guitar in 1 vol, 1 tone, 3 way switch format. The pickups themselves connect with push on connectors making it very easy to change them out if desired.

Sound.
Beware these pickups are extremely powerful and will overload the input stage of a solid state input stage (modelling amplifiers for instance) quite easily. It is best if you turn on a little compression first of all. On valve amplifiers there is no such problem and you will be rewarded with a superb crystalline clarity on low guitar volume settings all the way to a superb overdriving of the input stage when the volume control is full.
You can achieve the same with a solid state amplifier but as stated with compression on.
There is absolutely no noise at all from these pickups, no buzzing that you get with non active pickups (stage lights are good to induce this), no hiss from the circuitry and when you take your hands off the strings no mains induced buzz.

Battery life. I left the guitar lead plugged in to see how long the battery would last. Up to now I have had the same battery for around 100 hours continuous use and it still works. Only time will tell how long it will last before being replaced.

All in all these guitar pickups work great with low B strings all the way up to the top of the register. The balance between the pickups is superb as long as you get the pickup height right. The neck pickup is very mellow sounding, the bridge pickup as you would expect is sharp but still with a lot of depth. When you blend both pickups together you get another very distinct sound. It is quite a honky mellowness.

The pickups come as a matched set marked B and N with all the cables, 4 potentiometers, 2 capacitors, nuts, washers, screws and springs. All you need to supply is the pickup rings, switch and jack socket. Of course if you are putting them into and existing guitar you will have all of that already. You must use the 25K pots that come in the kit though as the design calls for them. Also you must use the supplied capacitors too.

I can thoroughly and heartily recommend these.

The sound on the Seymour Duncan AHB-1S pickups is just brilliant. I'm using them in my PRS SE and they sound very meaty and substantially better than the stock BDSM pickups. Output level is very high as expected yet noiseless. For cleans you'll need an amp that won't break up easily as these pickups push out a lot of sound. You can get nice bluesy tones out of them in the neck position with just a touch of gain to round out the sound. For lead/distortion they are extremely heavy and tight sounding. I'd say it's perfect for both neck and bridge, but if you play a lot of chordsy stuff, stick to a sligtly lower output active pickup like the EMG-60.