Seymour Duncan P Rails vs Fluence Open Core

[Elkoki]

I'm trying to decide between these 2 pickup sets. Don't really know which would be better for my situation.

I'd like to put them into my Schecter which is a 2 humbucker swamp ash Tele style guitar. I'd mostly be playing in standard occasionally a little lower but nothing crazy I have other guitars when I want to do serious down tuning. I want this to be a general purpose guitar for covering classic rock, metal, punk , but cleans are important too.

Which would you choose? Both can be found used for the same price $180-190. Both are versatile , P rails being a little more versatile because of so many combinations. I have experience with the Open Core pickups and I really liked their tone and quiet operation, but P rails look really interesting! Thoughts?

 

[smk506]

I’ve thought about getting a set of p rails, but every time I read a bunch of reviews I always decide against them. It seems like they’re pretty decent all around pickups but don’t really excel in any one area.

I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the inevitable p90 comparison where they apparently fall a bit short. I wouldn’t mind a review focusing more on what they are and they do sound than focusing on what they don’t quite get right, but there’s more of the later than the former out there.

 

[noodlingguitars]

The P90s fall a bit short, but that's expected because of the construction. The rails are very meh.. they have that "thin single coil" sound, but not that much high end sparkle in them. Humbucker mode is very unimpressive.

They do a thing though. Like if you're doing a cover gig and don't want to bring around too many guitars, having a set of these with the triple shot rings means you can have your swiss army knife guitar.

 

[ArchEtech]

I had a LPC with P-Rail. I would echo noodle.

They have a lot of great sounds and are versatile, but they ultimately didn’t do anything fantastic. They tamed the muddy sound of a 2004 14lb LPC but weren’t great enough to make me keep it. I actually found the P-90 sound the best and played on that mode 90% of the time so it out in to question why not have p90’s.

I think they are worth trying out to experiment with, especially if you play a lot of different types of music genre. You might like them married to say a high end modeler setup.

The humbuckers were great but not enough juice for my Modern likes, and lacked something sometimes. The single coils were fine but still lacked something. If you build patches up specifically for the different pickup options, and to beef up their shortcomings, like I said, you could have a very versatile setup.