616

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: The Bluesbucker

« on: August 31, 2009, 10:44:55 AM »

I would like to add that in addition to being a great pickup for vintagey tones, it also handles lighter modern rock tones quite well as well as working extremely well under high gain as a neck pickup.

Running the Bluesbucker in parallel yields a tone that's somewhere in between a P90 and a true single coil, which is actually quite nice!

617

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: Mo'Joe

« on: August 31, 2009, 10:40:37 AM »

I figure I might as well add my 2 cents to the Mo ' Joe.

In my experience, it's definitely more of a pickup for heavier rock  and heavy blues tones. While you can use it for metal there are better voiced pickups for that from DiMarzio. If you're looking for a pickup that'll do instrumental shred stuff like the Joe Satriani stuff, it's great, but if you're looking to do more of the metal shred stuff, you will very likely want a bridge pickup that's heavier sounding.

For all you pedal and effects guys, the Mo Joe does handle processing quite well and also cleans up pretty good.

Overall, I'd say that this is definitely a very versatile pickup that would handle a vast majority of styles. Great 'rock' tone with harmonics galore. If you liked the Fred, you will love this. I haven't tried it in the neck position, but I'm pretty sure it would work in the neck if paired up with a higher output pickup in the bridge like a Breed or something.

As for pairing it up with a neck pickup, any of the neck pickups from the PAF family would work well like the Paf Joe, Paf pro, air classic, paf 36th, virtual PAF as well as the bluesbucker and the humbucker from hell. Basically, any of the pickups with more of a vintage vibe would work well. It also works well with the majority of dimarzio strat pickups.

618

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: Humbucker From Hell

« on: August 31, 2009, 10:27:29 AM »

What is the best body wood for the Humbucker from Hell?

In my experience, it works with pretty much anything. There's no "best wood" but rather what would give you the best net effect in terms of the tone you're looking for.  I had a set of them in an Ibanez J Custom Rg1302 with a swamp ash body and it seriously sounded like a super loud strat! In a mahogany bodied, maple capped Les Paul, it's very open sounding. I'd say it's a VERY good pickup for a Les Paul if you find that the neck tone is always a little too dark.

619

The Trading Post / Re: Awesome Traders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

« on: August 31, 2009, 12:59:20 AM »

I seem to be buying used pickups on a near regular basis nowadays which is since I don't have enough guitars to use them in!!

I've stickied this topic along with the Not so awesome traders thread just to help people know who's good to deal with and who's not so great.

620

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: The Cruiser Bridge Model

« on: August 15, 2009, 04:57:12 PM »

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.

621

Gear Closet / Re: Compression?

« on: August 08, 2009, 08:19:25 PM »

Compressors really kill pick dynamics. However, if you want to increase your sustain there are other ways to do it. It just depends on the type of guitar you're using. If it's a hard tail les paul, the only thing you can do is upgrade the hardware to lighter and more resonant parts. If your guitar has a trem you can always install a larger brass block or something like an esp arming adjuster. Adding more springs also helps the tone as you're transferring more energy to the body.

Lowering your pickups a bit also helps as it cuts back on the magnetic pull, but if you already have an airbucker or something with low magnet pull to begin with then it doesn't matter.

622

The Pickup Place / Re: PETITION TO DIMARZIO: PLEASE BRING BACK THE VIRTUAL PAF SET!

« on: August 01, 2009, 03:46:19 PM »

When I ordered my last VHPAF, I asked about it going away and was told it could always be ordered.

Has anyone called DiMarzio to see if they could order one?

My distributor says I can't order it but then again that's not talking to DiMarzio direct. I'm pretty sure that if anyone ever asked for a pickup from thier back catalogue, they could easily reproduce it for you (for an extra charge of course).

623

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: ISCV2 Evolution Middle

« on: July 07, 2009, 02:18:32 PM »

And I honestly have no clue where the heck DiMarzio came up with the name ISCV2.

Ibanez Single Coil Version 2?

That's a possibility. I've never cared enough to bug Steve Blutcher about it but maybe someone here should send him an e-mail about it.

624

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: Evolution Neck

« on: June 30, 2009, 10:56:33 PM »

You try emailing steve and see, he'll tell you there's no difference at all, he'll say that all dual resonance pickup will sound the same except for D sonic and certain other pickup. Or maybe he's got too many to reply that he doesn't have time to explain.

It's likely that he means that there isn't a big enough difference to be called different sounding. The D-sonic for example has a completely different sound if flipped backwards. The Air Norton and other Dual Resonance pickups will still sound more or less the same with some minor variations like a tad bit brighter but not drastically different like a whole lot brighter if you flip it.

625

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: The Air Norton

« on: June 14, 2009, 11:17:34 PM »

The Air Norton produces a tone very similar to a hollow body guitar and works well in the neck position in combination with virtually any medium to high output pickup. Tonally, it is definitely more on the warmer fatter side of things, so much so that it can sound muddy if you're used to hearing clean tones from a strat. There is no bell-like quality here with the pickup on it's own, but when used in single coil/split mode or in parallel with the bridge pickup split, the clean tones are very acoustic-like.

Now odds are, if you were even considering the Air Norton, you wanted something shreddy or ultra smooth sounding and if it that's the tone you've been wanting, this is the pickup to deliver it.

The Air Norton is by far one of THE most popular neck pickups for that sweet smooth lead tone. Whether you want soaring lead tones for shred or smooth fluid tones for some smooth jazz, this will do it.

NOTE: The Air Norton was also called the Norton Lite back before it was released as the Air Norton. This was the same pickup that was featured on the Ibanez JPM models.

626

Everything you wanted to know about .... / The Cruiser Bridge Model

« on: June 14, 2009, 11:06:43 PM »

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)

627

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: The Tone Zone

« on: May 24, 2009, 09:59:35 PM »

Tonally the Tone Zone is probably the 'biggest' sounding pickup around. Chords sound HUGE when played and there's plenty of muscle in it. However, the tone zone is EXTREMELY sensitive to pickup height and will refuse to sound good if it's not in the right spot. Where the exact spot is varies from guitar to guitar be generally I find that the Tone Zone sounds a bit better when backed off from the strings a little.

It's generally a pickup you want to use in the bridge position but it will also work in the neck position when paired up with another high output pickup. Michael Romeo is probably one of the better known players who use it in the neck positions as well as Paul Gilbert (Mr. big/Racer X) and Akira Takasaki (Loudness). This is usually my goto pickup when I need a pickup for a guitar.

In terms of versatility, it can handle virtually anything where you want your tone to sound beefy/meaty, chunky and warm.

628

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: The PAF Pro

« on: May 24, 2009, 09:53:55 PM »

I should point out that tonally, the PAF Pro is a relatively bright pickup and works great in both neck and bridge positions. It's a great neck pickup when paired up with a high output bridge pickup like a Tone Zone or Breed or as a bridge pickup when paired up with single coils.

It also sounds great coil cut and parallel. When wired in series (standard) there's a slight vocal like quality that's kinda like a wah when cocked up a little.

629

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: READ: ABOUT THIS SECTION

« on: May 23, 2009, 01:55:45 PM »

Oh yeah. I just fixed the YouTube video embedding. If you want to embed youtube videos you just have to use the following tidbit

[youtube]http://youtubelink[/youtube]

630

Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: Everything you ever wanted to know about the Norton

« on: May 22, 2009, 03:36:29 PM »

The Norton is great when you want that 80's brown sound feel to it. It's not 100% EVH's signature Brown Sound but it's definitely in that ball park. I personally find that it's got that EVH vibe along with some older Joe Satriani tones on. You can pretty much nail the tone Joe had for Surfing with the alien with the norton. Must be the similarities to the Fred that gives it that.