Blackouts Vs Ceramic Humbucker

The sh13 is designed to be used in the bridge position and made to the exact spec that dimebag himself used.

Blackouts vs ceramic humbucker.

Alnico tends to produce a very musical pickup in most setups. It has tight lows a bump in the upper midrange which gives you more character and crunch and an airy high end that cuts through heavy distortion but is also great for achieving crystal clear clean tones. Ceramic pickups aren t the cheap alternative worth noting that if you replace an alnico magnet in a humbucker with a ceramic magnet of the same strength you won t change the pickup s sound much runs ducks because the pole pieces themselves are steel that s not true with fender single coils of course where the pole pieces themselves are magnets. To crown a winner in our alnico vs ceramic magnets shootout we would need a way to accurately compare the two which is not an easy task.

But this isn t about active vs passive we re talking about active vs active today. Alnico is nice and warm and great for blues. You often hear that the sound of a pickup is dominated by the choice of magnet used in its construction. The treble is high but it has sufficient bass and mids.

However there are fantastic sounding ceramic pickups out there such as the g l mfd pickups as well as our own humbuckers and p90 s. They have a clear distinctive difference in tone from humbuckers and fender type single coil pickups. The appropriately named dimebucker is a passive humbucker that aims to make you sound like famous shredder dimebag. So we often hear.

The reason ceramic has a bad rap is probably due to its use on low quality instruments in low quality pickups. The seymour duncan blackouts or ahb 1b have a very similar tone profile as the 81s. The original blackouts do use ceramic magnets but there are variations of it that use alnico 5 in case you re seeking that organic quality that seymour duncan is world famous for. Whereas ceramic is used in metal as it sounds tight loud and cool.

P90s have a much warmer tone compared to other single coil pickups. Emg pickups have dominated extreme metal for a long time now and continue to in spite of seymour duncan releasing their own set of actives that d be the blackouts to compete. You can think of them as being in between single coil and humbucker pickups. There s a huge output which is well suited to loud players and the magnet is powerful and ceramic.

Alnico seems to be the popular favorite but on the other hand there is no shortage of popular recordings that feature ceramic pickups. Check out our detailed breakdown of single coil vs p90 vs humbucker pickups for more info. A hot humbucker which uses a small ceramic magnet and custom wound coils to dish out a p a f on steroids tone.