Active humbuckers have a distinctive sound - powerful, clean, open-sounding, with excellent harmonic overtones and very tight lows. The down side for many players is that they also sound cold, have limited dynamics and run out of headroom when played hard. And of course, they need batteries. In 2006 we took a close look at the most popular active neck and bridge humbuckers to see if we could capture all of the good qualities and eliminate the disadvantages. The D Activator™ neck and bridge models are the result. They have the same loud yet clean sound as the active humbuckers players are familiar with, and killer harmonics. They also respond instantly to hard or light pick attack. In a word, they rock. And they don’t need batteries.

Recommended For: Neck. Can also be used in bridge position

Tech Talk: There’s a big difference between a pickup that sounds bright and one that sounds thin. A thin-sounding pickup will be brittle on the highest frets and empty-sounding in the mids and lows. The D Activator™ neck model doesn’t do this – both the wound and plain strings remain tight and bright up the neck, and very well balanced. This allows the D Activator™ neck model to function well in both longer scale bolt-ons and shorter scale, set-neck guitars. It also makes for a good bridge pickup if you want a sound with a lot of snap and power. Like all passive pickups, D Activators™ require controls with a minimum value of 250Kohms. 500K is the standard all around value, and our 1Megohm tone control is best for long cable runs.

Specifications:

Wiring 4 conductor
Magnet Ceramic
Output 385mV
DC Resistance 7.22K
Year of introduction 2007
Patent # 4501185

Instructions

• 4Conductor.pdf

Wiring Diagrams

• Humbucker-Single-Humbucker

• Humbucker-Single (Humcancelling)-Humbucker

• Two Humbuckers, 5-way Rotary Pickup Selector

• Two Humbuckers with 3-way Center Coil-split

• Two Humbuckers with Multipole 5-way Switch