Product: ESP Duncan Designed
Price Paid: N/A used
Submitted
12/13/2000
at
11:45pm
by
Joseph Lucido
Email: Lucidology at aol<dot>com
Features
:
Pickup features: Two Passive Humbuckers with coil/splits.
Impedence or other specs: Don't know...It's not on their website. Which is too bad when one wishes to compare.
Instrument
:
Model of guitar or bass: ESP Horizon
Position: all positions
Pickup being replaced: Stock pickups...actually took out and put back in after trying out some other brands.
Other pickups on guitar:
Artists using this pickup: Wish I knew.......Curious about that??
You musical style(s): Funk, R & B, Smooth Jazz, Fusion Jazz,Straight Ahead Jazz. Modern Blues. Instrumental Rock.
Reason for pickup change:
Sound
:
No Opinion
Perceived output level: Normal output. More like an original PAF then I had ever imagined!
Tone: Balanced....Coil tapped level does not, as drop as much as PRS and Parker's do.
Sonic evaluation: Use it either with a Roland 120, Peavy Classic 100, 50 and 30 depending on the gig(I'm a fulltime musician and play almost everynight of the week in some capacity...solo or band). When I first purchased the guitar I figured that if it could sound this sweet with stock pickups then it would be even better with upgraded ones. Boy was I mistaken!!! First I tried a Duncan '59 and a JB. The Horizon lost it's clarity and became quite muddy sounding. Then I put in a DiMarzio Humbucker from Hell and a Air Norton. This was quite an improvement over the Duncans, always finding DiMarzios will bring out more defined note attack. However,the originals still had more sweetness, sustain and,oddly enough,articulation! Don't get me wrong, I love all the forementioned pickups to the max, but I'm blown away by these stock ESP pickups in the Horizon model.
For which styles and positions is this pickup (un)suitable: I mentioned styles in the Sonic evaluation sectin. However, I know ESP's have a reputation for being a metal/hard rock instrument. But I would rather play this guitar for all my various jazz, funk and R & B gigs. Believe me, I'm blown away by this fact!
Overall Rating
:
10
Comments: I love the sound of these pickups. Wish I could purchase them seperately to drop in my Smartwood Les Paul (have been searching far and wide to find something appropriate for that axe......the stock Gibson's are really pretty bad). I think these ESP pickups would be a perfect match for the exotic wood combination. The ESP Horizon guitar has an ash body and a fender scale length. This may be one of the particular reasons why these pickups work so well. So with this particular guitar, they rate as a 10 in my opinion.
