Product: Kinman AVN-62B
Price Paid: UNKNOWN
Submitted
04/10/2009
at
05:17pm
by
Oddsocks
Features
:
Bridge member of the traditionnal mk2 set from kinman (see their site for info).
Goes well with the avn56, of course.
Instrument
:
First I put it in a strat (rw), then in a setneck sabre style guitar, and now in a p90 les paul junior (it fits in the p90cover, and screws directly in the wood, very easy fix).
Did the same neck-side with the avn56.
These kinmans totally respects the own sound of the guitar, while totally changing it too (only for best, simgle-coil chime to spare).
Sound
:
10
Not hot pickups (the woodstock kinman I put in the neck position of the les paul was way hotter and wilder), hence very manageable.
Whatever the amp (bassman,valvetronix,cube60, marshall tube clone, roland bluescube 310) these pups sound very good and balanced, no peaks nor unusable freqs (as often with proper single coils).
The 62b is a bit on the thin side (compared to a humbucker or p90) and behaves very good with healthy distorted amp or box.
In between sound with avn56 is near perfect, lets you play whatever you want, balanced again.
In fact over the years I stated that low to medium output level pups are better to work with, and since those are even quieter than normal humbuckers (and today's amps have way much distortion capabilities) you don't lose anything at all vs high power pups.
Overall Rating
:
10
Sounds great, really. Not that spectacular, but so usable with anything.
I had the woodstock kinman (now on a stratosonic, great pups to spice up the hollow mahogany body sound) and the 62n (very balanced, no peaks to spoil jazz runs).
Interestingly kinman have a lot of choice and you can trust their sound samples, they give you a precise idea of the tone differences among pups).
On the strat, after the kinmans (56-62b, nothing in middle) I put a texmex bridge and sd ssl1 neck and they sound livelier, with their downsides (uneven frequency response to say the least) making a great deal of fun to play srv with. Especially the texmex sounds truer than the 62b, but as soon as you play loud&real the 62b shines (the texmex is too noisy and unprecise now).
I play the strat with the normal single coils now (no hum problems in my rehersal room surprisingly, even my baja doesn't flinch with healthy distortion) because 1:I like the "normal" sound of it, very real stuff sounding, and 2:I don't play it live (not possible with all the humming issues).
For real-life situations the kinmans rules, simply, and the louder you play them the better they get!