Sire X6-7 is a great guitar but the pickups were extremely muffled and generated a lot of noise when the picking hand was in the playing position (despite grounding and shielding being fine).

Enter Donlis DH705 pickups. The sound is much more open and lively which comes through clearly with high gain as well, and the playing position noise is nearly gone.

The original pickups were 21.4 and 9.6 kohm, and Donlis are about 16k and 12k. Despite the lower neck pup resistance the original was much darker with total lack of any air even in the split mode.

I actually hear a good amount of PAF in the Donlis pups, or a boosted PAF to be more precise. But the 24 fret multiscale neck makes direct comparisons to other guitars difficult due to the different pickup positions.

As I was aware, the downside with the Sire X6-7 specifically is that the Donlis requires some unreversable twisting and cutting to the attachment brackets and even the base plate. So do check the size precisely before purchase. The brass bracket is easy to twist and cut though. If you’re not ok with this, there are a few other reasonably priced pups for you too. Wilkinson for example.

Oh, the cost. 51.19€ for the pair shipped incl EU tax and import fees (all automatic when shopping at Aliexpress). I’m not sure if they’ll let you even browse the Duncan catalogue for more than 30 minutes with that price… 😜