TB-14 Duncan Custom 5 Bridge Trembucker Pickup - Black Review

Custom 5

Perfect pickup! I've tried the jb, 59 hybrid, distortion and pearly gates. I'm putting these in all of my guitars. Hands down the best.

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Great pickup.

First of all I want to say don't listen to most people when they talk about how "scooped" this pickup is and that it has no midrange. They get that in their heads from inaccurate descriptions on the SD website. Just like the PAF pro where Dimarzio mistakenly claims it has a "wah" sound and everybody claims that is so when that is not true either. If it never was wrote no one would… read more ever think that on their own. It came from Paul Gilbert talking about how some pickups have different vowel sounds and got twisted from there and used in the description. Back to the TB-14,"Scooped and sounds like a loud 59" is put in people heads so they denounce it based on what they read in stead of having a neutral thought going in. I resisted buying one because of this afraid it would have no body, but that is far from correct. This pickup has about the drive and sound of a 498T Gibson for comparison and sounds fantastic in my ESP custom shop Eclipse. I bet it would be great in a Les Paul too. Or really anything for that matter. I became interested because I found out Paul Stanley uses these in EVERY guitar he uses. Not that he is the tone master or that I think his sound is amazing but seriously he could have anything he wanted but uses these for everything. I figured the mids can't be sucked out of them like everyone has in their heads. In fact I believe this is the best sounding Duncan I have ever used out of JB,Distortion,Custom,59 that I have tried. Yes it has great mids. They just aren't "pushed" and grungy like many Duncans are. For a hot wind, this pickup has a lot of clarity because of the mids being tamed down and clear where they should be (compared to most hot winds.) I am only upset I didn't try this sooner as I believe it would have been a better choice for many pickup replacements I have done in the past. In my lifetime I have probably spent at least $3,000.00 on pickups and for sure this is of the top 3 I have ever used. I had a regular Custom in this guitar, recorded it put the TB-14 in and recorded it and you can clearly hear the grungy pushed mid drive get cleaned up. Not a huge difference because of only a magnet change, but enough of a difference I would never go back to a regular custom I used to think was pretty good.

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