DiMarzio Forum
DimarzioForum.Com => The Pickup Place => Everything you wanted to know about .... => Topic started by: buddroyce on June 14, 2009, 11:06:43 PM
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I'm typically not a huge fan of single coils but I do happen to have an ESP Vintage Plus Strat with two singles and a humbucker and could never get used to the tone from the singles. That being said I was actually going to swap out the neck pickup for a DiMarzio mini humbucker like an Air Norton S for a tone I'm more familiar with and very happy with, BUT I just happened to have a Cruiser Bridge pickup laying around for some time that I bought off someone a while ago and thought.. hey I might as well give it a try.
It is honestly one of the best sounding neck pickups a guy like me could ask for. I can see why Andy Timmons likes the Cruiser so much now. Output wise it's fairly low but unlike most strat pickups it doesn't sound thin to my ears and this is coming from someone who's used to playing on fairly fat sounding humbuckers in the neck position. It's got all the clarity and sparkle one could expect from a true single coil but just a bit more umph to it.
The clean tones are fantastic with this and handles distortion very well. A mild distortion yields a great blues/rock lead tone and also produces fantastic shred tones if you crank up the gain. I'm honestly really surprised how great this pickup is and may have found a new favourite neck pickup. Too bad the one I had lying around was black. I wish they did this in white with chrome blades. (ok, I know, I can just get white covers, but the blades are still black)
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The Cruiser Bridge model is great for a slightly stronger strat sound, while still retaining all the bell-like clarity one would expect from a strat pickup.
And yes, it would be AWESOME if DiMarzio made silver blades on rail pickups.
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And yes, it would be AWESOME if DiMarzio made silver blades on rail pickups.
or Gold .... :madness:
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hi
the cruise bridge model its something every strat player should try.
i will make them change their minds.
it is son sweet and can take a lot of distortion with muddy a little bit.
i have it on the middle position with a pro track neck and a air norton s bridge on my white mex strat called "rosita".
it will be great to have gold or silver rails like richie kotzen has on his tele.
i hope dimarzio hear us.
maybe sometimes
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I just got the white cover for the Cruiser I have.. it just doesn't look right to me with the black blades, but it sounds so damn good that I don't want to give it up. Maybe I'll just put back in the black cover and stick it in a Caparison Horus.
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I have a cruiser bridge in the neck of my Peavey Limited VT (VT = vintage = 3 single coils ;D)
Clean - Amp Fender with some reverb
http://www.goear.com/listen/495f8c9/Clean-Cruiser-eMs
Same track with more bass and different amp - http://www.goear.com/listen/dd32a8c/Cruiser-CLEAN-more-bass-eMs
Mid Gain - Amp Mesa with some gain + delay
http://www.goear.com/listen/18d549d/Cru ... d-Gain-eMs
Mas gain que el anterior - Amp mesa, a little more gain + delay
http://www.goear.com/listen/9b235fd/Cru ... e-gain-eMs
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Thanks bro, +1 karma
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Question: would you guys use the CruiserBridge in the neck position of a Strat with 250k or 500k vol and tone controls? I'm thinking of ordering one just to try it out and see why Timmons digs it so much (his neck pickup sound is awesome). And I'll be ordering a new pickguard and vol and tone controls, not sure what values to get though. Thanks guys
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Question: would you guys use the CruiserBridge in the neck position of a Strat with 250k or 500k vol and tone controls? I'm thinking of ordering one just to try it out and see why Timmons digs it so much (his neck pickup sound is awesome). And I'll be ordering a new pickguard and vol and tone controls, not sure what values to get though. Thanks guys
Go with 500k. It adds a bit of shimmer to the top end.
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I always thought that the Cruiser was made so that you could get a realistic single coil sound in an HSS or HSH guitar and have no mismatched pot values.
And Andy uses them with 500ks all around (also the reason that he went with the AT1 as opposed to the JB)
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Great info guys, thanks. HSS is what I'm going for with this pickup. Thinking about possible matches for the bridge. Maybe FRED, Air Zone or PAF36Bridge or even SuperD...
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Why not jut go allout and put an AT1 in there?
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Yeah, I could do that aswell. Didn't even occur to me. Althoguh I'm not trying to emulate AT's tone...
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Althoguh I'm not trying to emulate AT's tone...
Well you should be :madness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBVFcPoCdlk
Sparkling clean to THE FATTEST distorted tone I have ever heard...
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I want to add that if you wire the Cruiser Bridge in the neck in parallel that you get an almost hs-3 / hs-4 type of tone under gain. I really like it wired this way.
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Just scored one on the bay and replaced the Bluesbucker in my telecaster (bridge pickup is a Chopper T). Not only because of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxzTZFgEKg
but also because I got increasingly tired of the Bluesbucker in the neck. I am just not a real fan of full size humbuckers in the neck. Even though it is one of the least muddy humbuckers around it still does not have the tight low end that a P90 or a strat style single coil can offer. Of couse I had it set up so that I could split it but then it loses the humcancelling effect.
Basically I have nothing to add to Budd's excellent review - the Cruiser does all that and does it really well. It is however much lower output than the Chopper T so I had to back the Chopper T off quite a bit (it was quite close to the strings before to match the Bluesbucker's output in series humbucking mode). Now I got it set where the volume between both pickups is balanced with the Chopper T in parallel mode so I can have a boost when in series mode.
The tone cap right now is a 0.0047uf. This works well for the Cruiser and for the Chopper T in parallel. For the Chopper T in series mode it's a bit too much but not bad. We'll see what I will come up with to resolve that :)
Cheers Stephan
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I've tried one recently. ZOMG! Sexy tones to be had in the neck position. Could play some neat jazzy stuff on it 8)
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I have now set up a different tele with a Chopper T in the bridge, a Cruiser neck in the middle and a Cruiser bridge in the neck. I have not yet foreseen the option to select the parallel mode on the Chopper T but that is soon to follow. The tonal results for the bridge and neck pickups are as I already described. I also like the bridge + middle position but the bridge + neck and middle + neck positions have room for improvement. I expect that the bridge + neck improves with the parallel option on the bridge pickup, and I don't really use the middle + neck combo much.
BTW I used a 500k volume and a 250k tone pot. 0.0022uf on the bridge, 0.0068uf on all other combinations.
Cheers Stephan
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Meanwhile I changed the tone cap on the neck and middle from 0.0068uf to 0.0047uf, and I like that much better. Very juicy tones now coming from the neck pickup.