« 7 string active warmth and fullness »

Seymour Duncan Blackouts are taking over the metal pickup market. For the longest time there was 1 name in the active pickup market and that was EMG. Now Duncan is in the market and they are giving everyone a new look and something to compare the EMG's to. It seems that Duncan set out to do with their active pickup what the EMG was weakest at, warmth and fullness, both things hard to achieve with active pickups. They have succeeded. With the extended range guitar market taking off they need to offer their Blackouts for those guitars as well. They did a smart thing by making the 7 string Blackouts the same size as the 7 string EMG pickups. The size is irregular but I guess they figured someone who already had active pickups would be more likely to try out the Blackouts in their guitar. If you want to put these pickups in the place of a passive 7 string pickup you will most likely have to do some modding to the body of the guitar. Comparing these pickups to the classic EMG 707 which is probably one of the warmer sounding EMG pickups you get a lot more warmth. I found that most Blackouts have an eq more tilted to the low end compared to EMG's. This is true for this pickup as well as it seems that the high end is more refined and not as raw and active sounding like on EMG pickups. The high end bite is more natural sounding on the Blackouts and they seem to take into account better what kind of guitar they are in where as EMG's tend to sound the same no matter what kind of guitar they are in. You may like this for consistency but some people may like to bring out the character of the guitar instead. If you have a 7 string with active EMG pickups and are looking for something a bit different, maybe a bit warmer or a bit more full in the low end, you should try the Seymour Duncan Blackouts they seem to do well what the EMG's are weak at.