Seymour Duncan APH-1B4C BLK

These are famously used by Guns N Roses guitarist Slash in his Les Pauls, so you can have a rough idea of what they sound like from that...however, not all of us use Les Paul's, or Marshalls, or Vintage 30 speakers.

In basic terms, the Alnico 2 Pro bridge is classic rock personified. It's low output (around half that of a Duncan JB) but as a result lets the guitar breathe and brings out the primary tone much more than a high output pickup. Most aggressive pickups feature Alnico V magnets because of their deep, tight bass tones and present, biting highs, but the Alnico 2 Pro bridge uses the much softer A2 magnet. This means the bass is a little looser and spongier, with a strong mid and slightly rolled-off highs - great with Marshall type amps to stop them getting too ice picky, but also brilliant with more scooped Fender and Mesa amps that can use the decent helping of mids the A2P bridge humbucker gives.

Clean wise, this pickup's smoother and more middy characteristics give a bluesy, rootsy clean that responds nicely to volume controls. Split the coils with the onboard 4 conductor wiring though and you're in Vintage Fender single oil territory, which is extra versatile if this pickup is loaded in the bridge of a Strat or fat Telecaster. Add some crunch and you can get Stones sounds for days, or some lovely Who-esque, almost P90 flavoured grit. For more modern rock sounds, with some strong overdrive or gain the pickup copes brilliantly, sounding fat and thick while still letting every bite shine through. Kick in some extra middy overdrive and the sustain is great - lovely fluid solo tones are easily found here.

Possibly the only thing I wouldn't recommend this pickup for is hard edged metal rhythm riffing - it's too classic flavoured for that, and you'd be better off with active EMGs, Duncan Blackouts or indeed most high output Alnico V pickups. However, for absolutely everything else, as far as I'm concerned this is one of the best pickups Seymour Duncan have ever put out.

Because I'm not a fan of the modern Gibson humbuckers in my Les Paul and prefer the '57 one I first wanted to order those. But my Les Paul has a coil split switch and the avalaible Gibson '57 humbuckers do have the correct conductor cables for this.
Therefore I went with the Seymour Duncan version and it did not disappoint. Great blues and rock tones from this bridge humbucker! Probably even one of the best available all-round humbuckers!

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...).

All in all, if the sound of the APH1 is appealing to you, go for it!