EMG 89XR Black

whatever you can say of this, is what you can say to its 89X sibling, which is (from both design and construction perspective) the exact same pickup, but turned 180 degrees to have the "single-coil" setting place the vertically-stacked bobbins placed as close to the end of neck, hence "r"everted.

but, in this design concept, there's room for a little more experimental survey: i've swapped the two siblings, so that now the "single" coil isn't the closer to neck and the closer to bridge, but the other way around... it makes the bridge pickup a tad softer in tone, and the neck pickup a tad more discreet in its mid-low frequently range... it's kind of an hommage to where MusicMan placed its single pickup on the now iconic Stingray bass, and similarly pointing to a smoother hue of tonal color.

the pair of 89X and 89XR now fits a small-bodied archtop guitar primarily meant for jazz style... all the traditional voicings are there, with this EMG pair, along with Fender-ized vintage staples immediately recognizable as Strat- and Tele-like.

what an elegant, and flexible, sonic cookbook you have, with these two!

I put this pickup in the neck position of my Jackson Kelly J32. The bridge pickup is an EMG81TW-X. The combination of the two provides a very versatily range of sounds.

In the "single coil" mode you get a start kind of sound. I also own a stratocaster with EMG-S pickups. If I compare them the sound is very different. However, I don't think that is a fair comparison. For versatilty the EMG89XR is a good choice.

In the "humbucket" mode you get a very warm and open sound, compared to one of my guitars with an EMG60 in the neck. Again, the sound is very different. I would describe the EMG60 to be more "cold" sounding and more compressed. This is of course exactly what they tried to do with the X-Series, a warmer, more open sound.

In both pickup modes you will get the classic EMG charasterics with the "snappy" attack on the strings.

The installation, as with all EMG pickups is very easy with the solderless installationn.

Overall a very good pickup and in combination with the EMG81TW-X in the neck you will have a wide range of sounds.