Was looking for a replacement pickups for my Gibson Firebird Studio, as the stock 496 pickups were too hot for my style. Considering a lot of different ?boutique? pickups in a 400¤ range I realized that there is nothing wrong with the ?standard? Seymour Duncan pickups. I am ready to bet anyone that playing around with pickup height & polepieces in any vintage output Seymour Duncan and any boutique manufacturer in the same guitar in the hands of an experienced guitarist, even an another guitarist would struggle to hear a substantial difference. Let alone an average listener. I see Seymour Duncan as a golden standard right now - quality product with predictable results at a fair price.
After listening to a lot of sound samples on Seymour Duncan website (which are helpful a lot, especially the band mix samples!), decided to go with APH1 in the bridge an the Pearly Gates in the neck.
Now, I am a huge fan of single coils and am not so familiar with humbucker pickups, so it took me a while to set up the humbucker pickup height to work properly with my rig which are all extremely sensitive to pickup input (fuzz face, rangemaster...). I found this to be particularly difficult to do in the neck position as in a lot of setups the bass frequencies overwhelm the treble and the pickup gets lost in the mix. Pearly gates was no exception here, but if you take your time to tweak the pickup to your rig... you?re in for a treat - this is an amazing neck humbucker.
