Alembic Guitar Pickups

Alembic's own designed pickups that are hum cancelling design rather than humbuckers. They are standard strat sized pickups.
The pickups themselves are passive but what comes with them is Alembic's pre-amp circuit with the tone filter, three position Q-switch and 5 position pickiup selector switch. Since the circuit is active a battery is needed which lasts about a year depending on how much you play it.

The pickups are installed on a USA Standard Maple neck Stratocaster replacing the standard pickups.
I don't know of any artistes using this setup but there are a few members of the Alembic club who have done this upgrade to the strat.

the output is slightly less than the passive pickups that they replace but this can be adjusted via the trim pots inside the guitar.
Generally the guitar is played through a Fender "The Twin" amp which is great.
The sound of the pickups are incredibly crisp clear toned with a good bite to the sound. from the bassy end to the high end the sound is great. It has what seems to be an hybrid acoustic/electric sound that cannot be matched by the regular strat pickups.

I changed the electronics to a bass and treble controls so that I could use the q-switch and filter on my alembic Orion Guitar. It sounds more at home there.

the bass and treble on the strat seems to fit much better tonally and gives me the ability to get a nice warm neck pickup sound but add a little bite to the attack of the note.
So far I have only used the guitar on reggae and blues gigs and the reggae chop has more riteoous authority to its sound and for the blues, its clean bell like clarity gives that Robert Cray sound plus some more.

The only thing I have found to be hard to get on a guitar with alembic pickups is a good over driven sound. From the Fender twin you get an acceptable sound but not great.

If I lost the pickups for any reason, I would try to get some more to replace them however they are not cheap so it may take some time.

What I like about alembic pickups is that sound very different from others that I have listened to and offer a great noise free sound even when others around are taking in interference.

I would recommend them to anyone wanting an upgrade to their sound unless they were playing rock or music where the distortion sound is paramount.

Having said that, with the filter the overdriven sound is better since you can tune it in with the filter and q switch to get the sound you want.

Active Hum cancelling low impedance strat style pickups.
Each pickup has two coils, one wound around the magnet and one that is not which cancels the interference. This results in a strat like tone but without the noise associated with single coils.

These come with alembic active preamp circuits featuring a low pass filter, 5 position pickup selector and a 3 position q-switch that gives off and two boost levels actingon the sound at the frequency selected by the low pass filter.

These are installed on a USA Standard three pickup maple necked Fender Stratocaster.

I changed to these basically due to wanting a different sound from my strat and wanted a more versatile sound but without resorting to humbuckers.

These alembic pickups keep frequency response of the signal constant when the volume is lowered, unlike standard passive strat pickups.

I think Dave Gilmore used them on one of his earlier strats, Gerry Garcia, Johnny and Edgar winter, Steve Miller also used them.

The sound from these pickups is very powerful and hi-fi which is what alembic are know for.

Very strat like but with more meat on the bone. The 5 position pickup selector gives a great variety of pickup combinations.

Uniquely to alembic they use low pass filters to shape the tone on these pickups. Simply this means that as you alter the filter knob you are filtering out any frequencies above the cut off point at i think 12db per octave. Operating the q-switch means you are boosting the frequency at the cut off point. With the q-switch on you can get a wah wah effect by rotation the low pass filter knob.

The additional benefit of the low impedance design is that there is no noise at all. Also the magnetic pull seems less which does prevent the strings being grabbed by the pickups when using whammy bar dives.

I'd love to put these on all my strats but It's good to keep one standard.
I would certainly consider getting another set if these went missing or got damaged.

I love how making very small changes to the filter control makes a big change to the sound. It's pretty easy to get the sound you want, then fine tune it.

What would be nice is for the volume to be maintained when the filter is in the bassier end of the sweep when changing pickup positions. What happens is the bridge pickup has less low frequency information so when moving from the neck to bridge on the pickup selector, the volume drops significantly. Less noticeable on the high frequency end of the filter circuit.

You can compensate for this by using the q-switch to add boost but there is not much low frequency signal at the bridge position so it has limited benefit.

Pickup features: Active, H-S-S configuration
Impedence or other specs:

Model of guitar or bass: Various Strats/Strat-style
Position: all positions
Pickup being replaced: All
Other pickups on guitar: none
Artists using this pickup: None that I know of
You musical style(s): Eclectic rock
Reason for pickup change: Crappy pickups on guitar.

Perceived output level: Quiet, for active pickups. Slightly less output than the passive pickups they replaced.
Tone: Thin in the default setting (full volume, tone). Completely adjustable.
Sonic evaluation: These pickups are the same units (I assume) used in Alembic's "Californian" model guitar. They are active pickups and they're extremely quiet in all positions with no hum anywhere. They are extremely flexible in the tone department, however - if you move the selector switch to the "Q" position, the tone knob becomes a sliding "Q" adjuster. You can actually make a wah-wah sound with it. The tone knob is actually quite useful as well, taking some of the biting treble off the pickups. You can make each pickup sound like a double-coil humbucker this way, thickening the sound significantly.

For which styles and positions is this pickup (un)suitable: I used this set of pickups on two Strat-style guitars - one cheap Gibson Strat copy, and a Japanese Strat '62 reissue. They made each guitar sound better. I use these guitars for mostly eclectic, electric rock.

Comments: If these pickups were lost in any way, I would have a hard time replacing them, since they're no longer available new. I would actively seek them out but not terribly hard.
I have been playing for about 15 years in an ameteur setting, with occasional gigs out. I have many guitars, from Les Pauls to Parkers to Talmans to Strats. Most of it gets played through tube amps with vintage pedals, but also through my solid-state rack rig as well.
I love the neck pickup on this set. It has a clear, bell-like chime tone that cuts through a mix yet retains body and character. The middle pickup is mediocre (but that's normal), and the bridge is actually a little thin for my tastes until the tone knob gets rolled back a notch. The set does not eat batteries like a Parker does, thankfully. :\
I am generally satisfied with this set of pickups. They sound fantastic clean, and pretty good amped up, as well. I would not recommend them for high-distortion music, but for overdriven bluesy sounds they work well. They do especially well for jangly, percussive rhythms.