# Fishman Rare Earth Vs. Neo D



## elbandito (Oct 14, 2009)

Hey all! Just wondering how many of you have had experience with these two versions of the fishman acoustic pickups. There's a big difference in price but I'm wondering what the sonic differences are like. I can only find the single coil Neo-D in my area, so I can't try them out for myself (also, 'twas the humbucker version that I was most interested in) unfortunately and will have to make my purchase over the net. Any help you could give would be very much appreciated!


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## elbandito (Oct 14, 2009)

really? nobody has ANY experience with these pickups?


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## ronmac (Sep 22, 2006)

Lots of experience with the Fishman Rare Earth Humbucker (I have one in each of my main gigging guitars as part of a dual source system), none with the NEO.


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## warren pederson (Jun 22, 2009)

Basically the same pickup except the Rare Earth is active and the NeoD is not. They're both good pickups.


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## Mike MacLeod (Nov 27, 2006)

I had always thought that neodimium was one of the "rare earths". Warren's take is correct. Just a marketing buzz. they could have said "Active Neodimium" or "Passive Rare Earth" I guess they just needed greater differentiation.


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## ronmac (Sep 22, 2006)

Marketing... calling it as it isn't, too often.

Being a techy manager, there always seemed to be an opportunity to have a good chuckle at the marketing department of a 4 lettered elctronics company I worked at. One of my favourite Dilbert cartoons, that I had promininently displayed in my office, went someting like this....

_*Pointy haired Boss to Dilbert "They're short staffed in the marketing department, so I'm going to send you down to give them a hand. There's no time to train you, so we're going to hit you in the head with a hammer and give you some free drink tickets". *_


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