Fluence Modern Active Humbucker 2-piece Pickup Set - Black Plastic Cover Review

No more noise!

Easy to Install sound great make my PRS even better than before! This is a no brainer get them you will be glad you did!

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Fishman Fluence

Switch ur pickup now, you're not gonna regret it!!!

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Best Actives Available

Fishman saw the Active pickup game, and changed it for the better. With the dual voicings, you can go from 80's thrash, when Duncans were the only game, to the precision attack of 18v EMG's with a clarity you can't get from EMG or Blackouts. All of my actives are now Fishman's.

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Lose your noise gate!

The Fluence Modern pickups live up to the hype, I can"t add anything there. However, these pickups put out little to no noise and as a result I"ve taken my noise gate out of my chain! Previously I was using the famous EMG 81/85 combo, and you absolutely need a noise gate for those. Get yourself a pair!

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A pain to install, but SOOO worth it!!!

Ok, I'll just get the obligatory "Sweetwater is awesome, product ships quickly, customer service is outstanding and followup goes above and beyond". Now that we got that out of the way. Let's talk about this pickup system. When you unbox the product, it really does feel like you just got something special. I have bought EMG, dimarzios, Seymours all in the past, with the Fishman… read more Fluence it really does feel like you bought something from the future. Very spiffy. The installation instructions are pretty easy to read and understand. The guides available on the Fishman website are fairly straightforward, but not exhaustive. If you are looking a very precise, step-by-step installation guide, you'll probably have to scourge the interwebz for a while. Personally, my life was gonna be challenged anyways, as I was removing the guts of a 2014 Gibson Les Paul Signature. This model has an onboard pre-amp, so it already had a 9 volt equipped back plate, simple enough, right?! Well....no, not so much. Initial installation took about 6 hours, and having no work bench meant I was bent over on the floor, with my tools, soldering iron, work light and coffee. After drilling the mini toggle switch to a wider diameter, I was ready to start installing and soldering. My first word of caution: if you are installing into a LP style guitar, make some kind of rig to pre-wire and then drop in. Getting your soldering iron into the deep cavity and connecting the leads, is frustrating to say the least. If you can do some pre-wiring before dropping, it will probably save you a few hours and a few cups of coffee. However, if you are installing into a shallower body or a pick guard, this will be quite a bit easier. Ok, now once everything was wired and function checked (i wired the wrong lead to bridge pot, just had to un-solder and fix), my first reaction was. "Hmm...ok...". Then I remembered, I had to adjust the pickup height. After I turned the screws til balance was good, no string pull, and good dynamics. Then I got to work on dialing in a tone. This was my "HOLY **** !!!!!!" moment. After creating a few new patches on the Headrush pedalboard (one Marshall Plexi, and one Soldano SLO) I was blown away!!! I played for hours. It really was a joy. The combination of alnico in the neck, and ceramic in the bridge gave me a usable tone from my Les Paul I hadn't felt since I bought the instrument. The neck sings, the bridge is bright and compressed, but not harsh. Where this system really shines is with the volume pots and the alternate voices. Activate voice 2 and roll back the volume around 5 to 8 and the plexi has an enourmous, crunchy tone without to much fizz or "mushyness". On the soldano, I selected the neck pickup, selected voice 2 and added a little delay. MY GOD!! Creamy and articlute, but not muddy or shrill. Just a joy. I really can't say enough good things about the sound. However, it isn't all sunshine and rainbows. First, one of the tone knobs spins a bit roughly and kind of feels like it has a detent. Some potentiometers are designed to have detents, to indicate different values and levels (especially in onboard eq knobs), but the other knob doesn't have this feature, so it might be a defect. Since the installation was such a pain, I am in no hurry to pull out the pots, send them back to fishman, and do it all over again. So I'm not gonna!! But other than that, I am extremely pleased with the sound, performance and feel. If you can afford to have a professional install these, you probably should. But if your bullheaded and persistent like me, and want a headache and a challenge. Pick these up. You probably won't buy another pair of Dimarzios or Seymour Duncans again. Unless you get an endorsement deal, haha.

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