Need pickup suggestions

[DonP]

I had HB-108N and HB-108B in neck and bridge respectively.

I'm not familiar with that set, but it's not the JB set (HB102B). So you didn't replace the same Duncan Designed with a Seymour Duncan equivelent, you swapped in a completely different pickup. It's not really a fair thing to bring up that your Duncan Designed's don't sound as good as these totally different Seymour Duncans. You're not comparing apples to apples.

[Bocha]

I'm not familiar with that set, but it's not the JB set (HB102B). So you didn't replace the same Duncan Designed with a Seymour Duncan equivelent, you swapped in a completely different pickup. It's not really a fair thing to bring up that your Duncan Designed's don't sound as good as these totally different Seymour Duncans. You're not comparing apples to apples.

You're right, but I never said I was. I kinda didn't think that there could even be such a low-gain humbuckers, I wonder what music are they for. Also I actually can't judge the whole Duncan Designed pickups anyway, those two were tho only ones I've heard. It's just everybody talks about how bad this pickups are, like literally everyone familiar with them says that. When I was waiting for my guitar's arrival, I already had Seymour Duncans and actually thought that I'll listen to my new guitar and likely will change nothing, and use my Seymours in my JS30RR, so I was optimistic after all. I was expecting Designeds to be a minor difference, that my combo would not even hear. Well, I was disappointed to hear that the default guitar state was unplayable due to several reasons, one of which was virtually non-working pickups. This conversations seems to become an offtopic, I really have no experience with Duncan Designed pickups except this pity one, so I don't think I can give advices about them anyway.

[1994]

For my two cents, I really like the DiMarzio Super Distortion: Great output, well balanced and impressive string definition even with high saturation. For rock/metal this pickup ticks all the boxes, in the same way that the Seymour Duncan JB is an industry standard.

I also use a Seymour Duncan Full Shred. As the name suggests it works very well for soloing, but for riffs and rhythm playing it a bit light on bass

Happy hunting.

[Chief_CrazyTalk]

I've used a SD distortion for years and loved it. The Dimarzio SD is also excellent.

I'm using a JB in my new DK2 and am loving it. Do you use your tone control? I don't. In fact I never use anything but the bridge JB. Since I clipped out the cap on the tone control, the guitar sounds a little more articulate to me. Perhaps that's my imagination...but I swear I can hear an improvement.