« Cheap way to beef up the tone of a guitar »

Most everyone knows about the Seymour Duncan Blackout pickups by now. They are Seymour Duncans attack on the active pickup world. With active pickups you get pickups with naturally weak magnets whos sound is bolstered by an active preamp built into them. Now Seymour Duncan in a genius move is selling the Preamp by itself. This means you can attach the preamp to any set of pickups and wire it up and have the sound of a set of active pickups. They wont sound exactly like the Blackouts do due to the different magnets in your pickups. But to me it sounds like the preamp takes over 3/4th of the guitar tone and makes it sound like a Blackout with just a few nuances of the original pickup coming through. This is great if you have a guitar with weak stock pickups like many lower end guitars. This preamp only sells for about 50 bucks and it is very easy to install. So for the cost of one good passive pickup you have a fully active guitar tone from your guitar. The installation is very easy since it uses a system close to Seymour Duncans Liberator solderless wire system. It is not completely solderless because you will need to solder the preamp to your pickup selector and output jack. You will also have to find some place to put the battery inside your control cavity. Once that is done you are ready to rock. Currently the preamp only supports two pickups with a master tone and volume knob. Once set up it gives you the trademark Blackout tone which some people like and some do not. It will give you a thick bassier sound with a lot of high end active pickup crunch. I hope they come out with a version that is voiced like the Mick Thompson Blackout pickups. I prefer the tone of those over the Normal Blackouts. The Mick Thompson blackouts do not have so much low end and sound more like EMG pickups. If you have a guitar with lousy stock pickups for 50 bucks you can have active pickup tone very easily.