Side by Side Comparison of: HDE vs Seymour Duncan

--- Carl Jr. Review Bottom Line ---
Overall I do recommend this Acoustic Guitar pickup.
Overall I would buy this again if I needed to.

PROs:
- It is very solid and it can withstand the abuse of a couple concerts.
- It has lasted 4 years so far.
- Sound quality is good.

CONs:
- There are no cons and nothing that I do not like about it.

--- Interesting Facts: Neither Pro or Con ---
- I wish there was a cheap wireless one that was this good.

--- Full Review ---
This pickup truly transforms a pure acoustic Seagull into an amazing acoustic electric worthy of the big (to me) stage. I am not a professional musician, but I have done several concerts as a guitarist.

I had to perform a couple concerts in front of 3-400 people with my Seagull Acoustic Electric SM-6 and did not want to shell out a couple extra hundred dollars to purchase a new one, so when I searched for alternative I was skeptical at first. I love the sound and the depth of the Seagull acoustic, and none of the acoustic electrics by them at the time that I had tried sounded as good, so having this was a game changer for me.

Sometimes I plugged right into the main system, and other times I plugged into an amp that they had mic’d up and both times worked out amazing. People had no idea that this was an inexpensive add on.

It is has lasted strong all these years, so if I ever lost it I would not hesitate to purchase this again.

I don't write reviews of things that I buy...usually. But THIS pick-up? You have GOT to try it out to believe it!
Seriously, the design is ingenious, and the sound is faithful and strong! I have recently played some out door gigs where I used to have my acoustics miked. So, I would have to sit or stand in one place and really watch any movement I might be making. Well, that certainly can kill spontanaiety right there! But using this pick-up on my Yamaha AND my Epiphone acoustics OUTSIDE makes me want to sing its praises.
It is so simple and soo effective. and if you use the Planet waves female to female coupler to attach it to the amp input, you have quite a bit of freedom. I actually used a Reverb pedal along with it and got Just -the -Right Sound out there.

So, If you are thinking about it, go ahead and take the plunge. And you really DON'T have to mark up your guitar to use it.It will stay where you put it, if you do it right!

Have fun, and KEEP ROCKIN'!!

I've bought several electric sound-hole pickups over the years - and have never been quite satisfied with them - until now. All the others were either too difficult to install, or produced an incredibly aggravating hum, or had pitifully low output. This one, the cheapest of them all, managed to avoid those faults. Of course, it has limitations - there's no way to adjust the balance between the strings (so the "B" string is likely to be a little stronger, due to a larger solid core and nearer distance to the pickup) but the overall output is smooth, reasonably extended frequency response for a electro-magnetic pickup (this is not a piezo device, so it will not pick up many overtones or harmonics). It will provide a very fine balance to my piezo devices already installed in my acoustic-electric guitars - and would even make a decent pickup all by itself, if I chose to use it that way.

I had a guitar laying around and bought Rocksmith Guitar and Bass - Playstation 3 to learn how to play it.Since it didn't have a cable entry built-in the guitar, I needed a pick up and struggled a long time with the one made by AXL Acoustic Guitar Transducer Pickup with 1/4 Jack and 9 Foot Cable that din't stay in place.This one works just perfect with the Planet Waves 1/4 Inch Female Stereo Coupler.This way I didn't have to buy a new acoustic-electric guitar while I'm not sure I'll be any good at it.It's super easy to install too! Since it has a fold-able adjustment in the back it seems it can fit about any guitar with a sound hole.

I am on a very low budget and I rarely play in public, so I'm just an old (76) Cajun having fun and writing some old-man songs. I purchased my first two real solid-body electric guitars withing the past six weeks, plus a really nice (old) acoustic-electric. I've relied on a couple of in-hole pickups for years, even when I was playing solo in Army Clubs in Germany in the 1970s, trying to be the next Kristofferson (I did not make it). I gave my daughter's friend one of my in-hole pickups, and purchased the Woodie Seymour Duncan from Amazon for my 12-string Jasmine. I still have other flat-tops awaiting amplification. Then suddenly, I found myself with a new Rogue resonator acoustic guitar. I ordered the HDE® Guitar Pickup Acoustic / Electric Transducer and used clear tape to attach it just below the neck. Sounded great! Next I used some crazy glue to hold it in place,but the whole deal was clumsy so I removed the pickup and set it aside. After two weeks, I moved the Woodie to my Sea Gull and slipped the HDE into my 12 string Fantastic! A luthier invited me to bring the Rogue and the HDE by and he'd see what could be done, but I'm so happy with the HDE on my 12-string that I'm not going to do it unless I find the $20+ to purchase a second HDE
for the Rogue. Meanwhile, I recommend interested people who don't have all kinds of sophisticated needs to take the plunge and try the HDE or a similar piezo-electric pickup on their acoustical instrument. You are missing out if you don'!
"drhanzonscience"

Wow, just wow. I just installed these babies on my Epiphone G400 Goth and man, what a sound! This guitar hast just become my favorite over my Gibson Les Paul Studio and my Fender Stratocaster MIJ '87. The clarity of these pickups when split is unmatched by any other, pristine crystaline sounds. I even kinda liked them better split than my SSL-1 on my strat. When in humbucking mode, these pickups just kick ass! I started playing ACDC straight into a cranked Marshall and felt like Angus himself was playing. These pickups really shooked me all night long!If you're planing on buying these, stop thinking! Go get them!

If you are looking for a set of pickups to make a cheap guitar into something great, this is it. I installed these on my $500 Epiphone Les Paul Standard. The Jazz is typical classic Les Paul, warm, mellow and classic Slash when distorted. The JB breaks up easily, you can get everything from modern hard rock to classic ZZ-top style blues. I don't use clean tones very often so I can't comment too much but they sound great there as well. I also have both set up to coil-split and when I do it sounds eerily like a Tele.I'd recommend these pickups most to a rock guitarist, they aren't going to get a saturated modern metal tone without effects. These are both fantastic pickups and they made a cheap guitar into one of my favorites. They don't give you great tone "for the money" they just give you great tone.

Man oh Man, these pickups revitalized an old cheapo guitar. I have an Epiphone Les Paul Special II that was in dire need of being overhauled. I barely could pick that guitar up to play it I thought it sounded awful. These pickups are creamy, smooth, crunchy, really whatever you want them to be. I love playing this guitar now that these babies are installed.I needed to follow a separate wiring diagram to get them installed since they are designed for a 4 Pot Les Paul (Real Les Paul) and my Epiphone has only 2 knob Pots. But with a little finagling I got them wired up.Great investment and now one of my favorite guitars in my collection

These pickups are AMAZING!! I replaced the Duncan Designed pickups that came on my Schecter C1+, and they have transformed the tone of this guitar. The Duncan Designed PUs were nice, but they lacked the power, clarity, and overall bite that the Hotrodded Humbucker set provides. I recorded before and after comparisons between the old and new pickups, and the different is night and day!! The best deal of all, I got them the under $100 through Amazon!! I wish I had picked these up years ago!!! If you have been eyeballing these pickups, don't wait...you won't be disappointed!!

First of all, it is rare to find two pickups for the price of one, let alone as a house-hold name. These pickups are the bomb! I have them installed in my Epiphone les paul and they sound great. The distortion sounds way better than the standard pickups and the cleans are much more clear. Overall these pickups are a great buy IF you are trying to stay under a budget. If not, you could look at the more expensive Seymour Duncan pickups and get an even better sound than these. If you have an Epiphone les paul and you want to instantly improve and put more variety in your tone for a low price, this is the answer.

I was looking for a jazz-type sound with versatility and these provide all that, and lots of warm, expressive, quiet tone.The neck pickup is particularly smooth and warm; the bridge pickup captures a more percussive sound with lots of mids, but otherwise with some of the same qualities as the neck. Together they are also really useful either "all on" or with mixed blends of each.I am using them without covers, though these will work with covers if you prefer.Highly recommended if you tastes in pickups run along these lines. The "stock" Gibson spacing for bridge and neck pickups (to strings when held to last fret) was very close to evenly balanced out of the gate, but afterwards I did tweak just a little for ultimate balance when both pickups are engaged.The only competitive products I considered are the jazz humbuckers from Bartolini, which proved difficult to find and/or considerably more costly.

Finger picking sounds amazing on this, however with regular strumming, the higher strings severely drown out the EAD strings. I love it still though.

I am really quite amazed at the quality of the sound this very inexpensive pickup produces. I bought this last minute as I was asked to perform at an open mic night. I had very little hopes for it's quality but heck, it was just an open mic night so anything will be good enough. I ended up playing for an hour and this thing performed admirably. So well in fact that at the next open mic night a fellow player who was there the time before asked to borrow it when he played.

If you are looking to get decent sound out of your acoustic for cheap money this is absolutely the way to go.

My wife plays a Fender Acoustic Guitar and certain gigs we have they request we use pickups SO we bought one that cost alot more than this one that hangs on the bottom of the sound hole. While at first she said it was Ok. when she started playing it she noticed that sometime she hit it while strumming so you have to be careful. We were thinking of buying her an Eletric Guitar and getting away from the pickups all together Until I saw this one online SO I figured it was cheap and worth a try before we invested all that money in another Guitar. It came in last week and upon putting it in the guitar she fell in love with it. It sounds great. I would have rated it 5 stars BUT I don't know how long it will last BUT as of right now it is 5 stars and even though it may quit tomorrow?

If you have an acoustic guitar and want to be able to plug it into an amp but it doesn't have a pickup already installed, look no further than this guy. It fits into most guitars fairly easy however I did notice that with my 1970s Yamaha classical acoustic the pickup had a really hard time fitting onto the wood, it's just a bit too thick. I was getting it to work with nylon strings but if you want the clearest quality just do it on a steel stringed guitar. It has a pretty good amount of output but one minor annoyance I've found is that it doesn't have any sort of gain control so the output you have is what you get. I'm not sure if it's anything better than what you'd get out of a decent acoustic-electric guitar so I can't say whether or not you're better off buying one or the other, but for what it's worth this is an incredibly versatile tool.

I bought this because I have three acoustics and didn't want to spend big money on pickups for them. This little baby pops in and out like a breeze. Kind of lightweight, but very effective sound reproduction for the money. Sounds really good through my PA.

Quick and as said it was

This is a great Seymour Duncan Pickup set. I enjoyed the way this set sounds. Balanced and loud. The jb is not hot enough for me I prefer the Custom Custom. But I do like the way it sounds and will leave these in my Schecter guitar.

If youre looking to find a warm and tasty sound, you can go for this, the bridge pickup for me is near to a tele even strat, and in the neck position you will find an excellent sound, great humbuker for rock and blues..!!! im happy with this product, it change the soul of My epiphone les paul custom.!!!!

These pups are a great product at an affordable price. Shipping was timely and i will continue to purchase products from at amazonan from my armchair.

Great matched pair. Brighter than expected, so I eq-ed the individual poles for a slightly higher bass response. Using the tone knob also helps. This can do everything from clean jazz, to overdriven blues to hard rock and metal. Much warmer than ceramic magnets, so that might make metal guitarists soft in the pants. Dropped in and installed easily into triple shots on an epiphone les paul ultra for maximum flexibility.

Need A cheap acoustic pickup to see if thats the sound you are looking for? Buy these cheap one before investing in something expensive.

This pickup is ok. It arrived early and was in perfect shape so that was a plus. The sound quality is ok but the b string is so loud that it gets annoying. This pickup is good for just strumming chords but if you want to do finger style or anything that depends on each string sounding equal in loudness it's not so good. All together it's a good beginner pickup for the price.

I've used many of these pickups before, and none of them sound perfect because the lack of a pre-amp. But of the ones I've used, this would have to be the best. Still, I find the sound to be fairly muffled. It'd be best to just get an acoustic-electric in the first place. But if you're not able, then this is your best choice unless you're looking to pay out the @$$ for a high-quality pickup and a pre-amp.

I picked this up to try with my Yamaha Acoustic LL6. It is plugged into a Fender Champion 20 and does what its suppose to do and that is amplify the sound of your guitar. You really have to play with the knobs on the amp to get the sound you are looking for and play with the positioning of the pickup on your guitar. I found that I can get the best sound with the pickup on an angle. For some reason as with another buyer of this product, the B string has a much louder electric sound than the rest of the strings. It is really apparent when you play the B string open. The B string actually sounds electric as opposed to the other strings so you have a tendency to change your picking when playing that section of strings. (Yamaha LL6 acoustic guitar). I think I might order the Woody and see which one gives me more of an even tone across all the strings and send one of them back. This was not purchased for the price but all the 5 star reviews. I do not mind paying the price for the Woody if it will give a more even sound across all strings. Not sure I would recommend this product unless I got a bad one. Will update when the Woody gets here.
FOLLOW UP:
Big difference for a little more money. Bought the HDE® Guitar Pickup Acoustic / Electric Transducer along with a Fender Champion 20 amp. The HDE worked, but really gave the B and E strings a much louder pickup than the others. I went on you tube to check out some other options and saw some reviews on the Seymour Duncan Woody single coil pickup. It seemed to have a much better overall sound than the HDE so I ordered one and I think there is a big difference and well worth the extra $15.00. It has more of an amplified acoustic overall sound and the B string is a lot softer than the HDE. The 14 foot cord is beefy and it has a quality 1/4 inch plug.
There were some comments that you need an amp bigger than 20 watts to make this work. NOT TRUE! My vol is set to a 7 out of 10 on the vol and 4 out of 10 on the gain and works just fine on my practice amp. (I do not play in a band, just bang my strings at home) I am very happy with this combination with out having to buy and electric guitar at least for now. I have a Yamaha LL6 acoustic guitar and with this pickup I have have the best of both worlds. If you want perfection than go to you-tube and see the reviews of the ones that cost a few hundred dollars. Enjoy!
PS: For the money and the different sound it produces, I am not returning the HDE.

I was hoping to get a clean sound from my acoustic. Unfortunately there was terrible feedback while doing so--specifically, the low E string. It does very well when we shoot for an electric guitar sound, but we just can't get that clean acoustic sound. I give this product three stars based on what I've heard. It might also have something to do with our amplifier, but I've used an amplified acoustic with the same amplifier before, and both worked fine.

I got these pickups as an upgrade to the stock ESP LH100's that came in my LTD M-10. They have a rounder tone than the original stocks but... These are pretty boring pickups ultimately. The set was delivered on time. I was hoping for a lot more versatility to them but have been moderately disappointed. I am going to try to adjust the pickup height, the pole heights and other things but thus far they are not as versatile as they are touted to be

My Guitar tech called and said the bridge pick up was defective. He spent extra time trying to make sure it was a bad part. It sounds tiny and 1/2 volume. Now my guitar is tied up another week. Had to re order another set. Piss poor.

I lost this damn thing like three years ago and eventually just got a real A/E guitar.

It didn't sound as good as I hoped. There was a lot of static coming through.

does work on a classical

Large amount of single coil hum, need to ground it to the strings if at all possible.

I bought it because people said it was a really clear pick-up. Wow was that wrong, at least for mine.
It is not clear at all. When I try to play on it, it sounds very distorted, almost as if I was playing on my electric guitar, except there's only one sound setting. If I'm going to use this product I might as well play my electric. Don't get me wrong, the distortion actually sounds pretty cool, but a distorted sound was not what I was looking for. I could get a clearer recording through my headset mic than this pick-up.

I just got it yesterday and it doesn't work no sound no nothing , and I even changed the strings. Defective

to much feed back when you get close to the amp and in my opion poor sound reperduction and even being as cheep as it was i can't reccomend it as it just didn't get the job done.

As some others' complains, the B string sounds louder. Other than that its sounds ok to me.

DOA! Is there anything more I really need to put. It never worked from the get go.

The pick up was erratic and couldn't produce reliable result.