The x series guitars are equiped with active emg's, in the most expensive models/ or with floyd rose.

The other models came with passive emg's or duncan designed's.

Are'nt duncan designed's "inferior" even to passive emg's? Should'nt all x series guitars came with the best features? Why rrxt have duncan designd?

Thanks!

idk about a jackson guitar..i never had one with d.d. pickups but i did get an esp "lp" not long ago and there was some in there.. i kinda like them makes things a bit more verstial then im used too.. i thought about putting emgs in the guitar but i think if i do upgrade them it will be the real s.d. pick-ups.. i have to jacksons right now being my fav. brand i have a sdk2 with stock-ups in it..and a cheaper dinky i use to test things out with..right now it has its stock neck pick-up and the bridge has a GFS pickup in it... i had a jackson afew years ago that came with emg-hz pickups and i gotta say emgs are good i like them but those had to much high end for me..

What "Duncan Designed" means is that they used the standard Seymour Duncan schematic (I'm guessing for the Jazz neck and JB bridge models) and manufactured them overseas. If done right, it should be pretty darned close to a USA Duncan. For the record, the X-series guitars are also made overseas, likely in the same shops, so the Duncan-designed pickups make a lot of sense in that context.

EMG makes some great bass pickups, but their guitar pickups have never impressed me.

Long story short-- if you want the very best, get something from the custom shop.

Otherwise, it's not like there's a shortage of pickup options in the aftermarket...

I have a Rhoads RX10D that has duncan designed pickups, and I don't care for them one bit. The bridge one has too much bass, almost a muddy sound, and it sounds terrible for playing through distortion, which is about all I planned on doing with it of course. I'll eventually replace them with some EMG 81/85's, which sound great in my slat3-6, or maybe some seymour blackouts.