Has anyone tried these pickups?
I have them in my '72 Guild JS-II
They have very broad response across the frequency spectrum, compared to the original Guild-made humbuckers - which were huge over-wound pickups (33K!) and more mid-focused. Those were actually great for dirty, overdriven, rock and roll and blues-type tones.
I'm not very good at describing sound in words, but the DSs are completely different animals from the Guild pickups. They can be punchy, growl(y)
, or clear-and-present sounding, or combinations of those. You can control a lot of their sonic character through your right hand position, and they seem very sensitive to dynamics in your playing. I also really enjoyed the sound of mine with a pick (I've always been mostly a fingerstyle player, but there are just times when only a pick will do...). I noticed this bass just springs to life with a pick now. I think the pickups accentuate that sharp attack a bit.
Oh - and with these pickups - I could completely get by on just the neck pickup alone. That is almost all I ever use. You don't have to rely on the bridge pickup to compensate for lack of attack or clarity. I know now that I could be happy with a JS-I or Starfire-I with one of these in it.
If you do buy a set, I would just consider them "portable" to other basses with similar string spacing. Like Dave said, you probably won't recoup the money if you ever decide to sell the bass. Best way to get them is probably buying someone else's bass (at their loss) - like this auction. Between the DSs and the custom bridge, I'm now buried in this JS-II. Luckily, I like it - so I don't plan on selling it.
I do think DSs sometimes get overhyped, but they are definitely a nice color to have in the crayon box.
