Seymour Duncan AHB-1S

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.

Ich kann mich den "Vorrednern" nur anschließen! Ich habe die PU's letzte Woche in meine LTD MH-400 eingebaut und mit meinem Engl Powerball 1 getestet. Meine MH-400 hat noch kein Quick-Connect beim switch und bei den Potis, weshalb ich einige Zweifel hatte was den Einbau betrifft. Diese erwiesen sich jedoch als unbegründet, da die EMG's (81/85) erfreulicherweise doch den Quick-Connect Anschluss hatten. Ergo verlief der Umbau problemlos. Alt raus, neu rein, fertig! Das Einzige was ich zu bemängeln habe ist, dass die Federn mit denen die PU's aufgehängt werden wesentlich kleiner im Durchmesser sind als die Vorgänger. Durch die nun kleinere Auflagefläche kippeln die PU's ziemlich im Rahmen, weshalb ich einen Stern bei der Bewertung abziehe. Beim nächsten Saitenwechseln werde ich wieder die alten Federn nehmen und dann sollte sich das erledigt haben.

Zum Sound:
Um es kurz zu machen: Die beiden sind genau so wie in den anderen Beurteilungen beschrieben. Ich hatte vorher die 81/85er mit 18V mod und die blackouts sind transparenter, wesentlich definierter im Ton und einfach fetter als die EMG's. Den 81er in der bridge Position empfand ich immer als zu mittenlastig und zu sägig, wohingegen der blackout deutlich ausgewogener und wärmer ist. Der neck-PU hat noch 'ne ordentliche Kelle mehr Bässe, falls es mal so richtig rumsen soll. Wer den 18V mod mag, wird die blackouts lieben.

Nachdem ich jetzt doch alles wiederholt habe ist das Fazit eine ganz klare Kaufentscheidung!