Fishman Fluence Classics: How passive-like are they really?

[Caca_Spaniel_123]

So I put a Fishman Classic set in my Les Paul Custom and this single handedly stopped myself from selling the guitar. I like my LP a lot now.. It ain't going anywhere now. But today I compared it to my PRS singlecut and the results were somewhat surprising to me, the neck pickup on the PRS was warm and fat and "large" while both voice 1 & 2 on the LP was bright, kinda compressed and stingy? They have low capacitance so I knew it was going to be much brighter but it was more than that, compared to the #7 on my PRS the Fishmans sounded like "active pickups" in a bad way (not the best way to put it I know)

I did some research on these pups and almost everyone seems to be happy with them, and judging from various YT clips the Fishmans sound 99.9% like the passive set they are based on. I was just wondering if anyone has played both the Fishman Classics and Duncan 59 set/ JB jazz set and whether there was any difference in feel/sound. Again I do like how these pup sound but the fact they are active and the sounds they produce might be a bad imitation of the OG passive set (kinda like what modellars are to actual amps) is bugging me Thanks yall in advance

 

[Devin]

I have the Classic and Single-Width in my Warmoth build and I like them. They are odd though....it's like they somehow have tons of output but don't really "sound" like a super hot passive humbucker? They are definitely very bright

At least in my setup they seem pretty unique

 

[Caca_Spaniel_123]

I have the Classic and Single-Width in my Warmoth build and I like them. They are odd though....it's like they somehow have tons of output but don't really "sound" like a super hot passive humbucker? They are definitely very bright

At least in my setup they seem pretty unique

I had a similar impression. They feel like super hot pickups but they don't drive the amp as hard, yet still have a healthy amount of output to them. Definitely don't feel vintage by any means. Have you played a JB before and if you have how does it compare?

 

[Devin]

It's been well over a decade since I last had a guitar with a JB in it so I'm probably not very qualified to answer that really but from what I can remember I'd still say they are pretty different. I think a JB would drive an amp more like you mentioned