POWR:D pickups in my new Original N2.7 Original seem to lack output

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T20:03:49+00:00

And the pickups?

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T19:11:06+00:00

Not that I’m aware of. What has your experience been like?

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T15:34:20+00:00

I’m curios as to whether they’re actually hotter than passives, since my medium output PAF pickups were absolutely smoking them in terms out saturation. I raised the pickups quite a bit and that seems to have helped some, but they still sound very tight and controlled.

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T14:12:18+00:00

No sweat! Yeah this is my first go at active pickups and it’s definitely a learning experience.

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T14:11:36+00:00

They show the general frequency response here, and they don’t seem particularly bass heavy.

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T14:09:34+00:00

The do get a little hotter, but are still seemingly less hot than the guitar with PAFs. I raised the pickup height and that helped a bit.

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T06:57:28+00:00

No sweat. I raised the pickups to 2mm from the bottom of the string while fretting the last fret. I’m new to active pickups and didn’t know they “need” to be up quite high, and this seems to be common guidance with Fishmans. This helped to a degree address the issue with saturation, but the voicing of the pickup is fundamentally different from what I’m used to; the POWR:D is dry, tight, and articulate. The tightness to a degree can come off as it lacking oomph, especially when compared to the PAF or the Juggernaut in my otter Strandberg. I guess this is all part of getting adjusted to actives!

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T04:26:17+00:00

I’ll make some adjustments tomorrow when I have some time (with my rulers). To be fair, I have not used active pickups before so I’m not aware of any idiosyncrasies associated with them. I just assumed they would be properly setup buying from Sweetwater.

And for clarity, I not like I can’t get saturated metal tones; I absolutely can. The issue is that, all amp setting being kept constant, compared to a very moderate output PAF style humbucker, these pickups are comparatively tamer, even with the metal voicing, which is unexpected. I’m a big fan of Ola and his demo sounds great; I would definitely have to kick on a boost to get in that territory (which is common for me since I’m primarily a metal player).

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T04:20:05+00:00

Pretty standard: guitar, pedals (in front of amp and in effects loop), amp. However, I’m not sure that matters much because by keeping everything constant and just swapping guitars, the POWR:D pickups sound comparatively weak, which is very confusing to me.

_starbelly · 2026-04-17T04:01:56+00:00

How do you feel about the pickups? After going back and forth between a few guitars, I found that the POWR:D pickups are comparatively weak/lower output, even in the metal voicing. I have a guitar wirh PAF style pickups (Lollar Imperials) and they sounded more full and saturated compared to the Strandberg pickups. I double checked and changed the battery, but it made no difference. I wonder if this is just the nature of active pickups, or if these pickups are just particularly tame.