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Messages - mmmguitar

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16
The Pickup Place / Re: New Tone Charts!?!
« on: June 15, 2022, 06:21:27 PM »
Under the new system, the Air Classics, the PAF Masters, the PAF Pro and the PAF Joe are all suddenly tighter and brighter than the Bluesbucker. What happened?

Marketing happened.

17
The Pickup Place / Re: Gold Hex's For SDS-1 p/u's
« on: April 23, 2022, 04:08:38 PM »
PM’d.

18
The Pickup Place / Re: Al Dimeola Bridge
« on: April 11, 2022, 02:55:58 PM »
I’m not Ray but FWIW I use 500k volume and 250k tone in 50s wiring.

19
The Pickup Place / Re: Al Dimeola Bridge
« on: April 09, 2022, 04:40:27 PM »
The more I play this, the more I like it.  The extra tightness on the wound strings vs. a 36th and the way artificial harmonics just jump out are great.  No idea why it's discontinued, IMO it's one of their best pickups for sure.  Not thin in the bridge like a PAF Pro can be, not as middy as a Breed Neck in the bridge can be, a little more interesting harmonically than a Mo
Joe.  Really, really cool member of their PAF family.   Also, when split, the split coil sound is more robust than a 36th. 

That’s been my experience, as well. I put the DiMeola bridge in a guitar to replace an Air Norton and loved it, tried the Breed neck in another guitar and only liked it, then put a tweaked DiMeola (nickel covered, with a row of fillisters) in the next guitar and found I still prefer it to the Breed. I can see where Larry’s coming from when he said “that’s the most misunderstood pickup we ever made.”

20
The Trading Post / Re: FS: Mix of pickups from my parts drawer
« on: March 02, 2022, 07:25:30 PM »
Sure. Just let me know what you want and I’ll see if I still have it.

21
The Pickup Place / Re: 6 Screw Z-Mod - anybody tried it?
« on: February 26, 2022, 01:55:15 PM »
The bluesbucker is hum cancelling.  Are you sure you don’t have it wired in coil split?

I think Darkblue’s saying they want to achieve a humcancelling version of the BB’s split sound. Considering it’s essentially a dummy coil design, I’d try the coils in parallel before removing three of the slugs.

22
The Pickup Place / Re: H-S-H combination suggestion
« on: November 21, 2021, 05:58:25 AM »
I go for similar tones. For me, I’ve found the key to getting decent n+m and m+b strat tones is to find pickups that end up being more similar than different (Henderson uses three of the same pickup for this reason). This is difficult to achieve when balancing split humbuckers with a middle single (and why players such as Vai, Gilbert, Govan, etc. have signature middle pickups in their guitars which were designed to be in parallel with the split humbuckers).

The Bluesbucker is my go-to neck pup, but I find it so hot in split mode (which is the whole point) that I need a hot middle pup to balance with it. In one guitar, I have a Bluesbucker paired with a Duncan Quarter Pounder middle. It’s in no way a vintage strat sound, but I’m much happier with the combo than I am with the guitar that pairs the BB with an FS-1 (the FS-1 just isn’t hot enough to hold its own in parallel). I have the opposite problem with a guitar in which I have a PAF Master neck paired with a Dark Matter 2 single as an experiment (The DM dominates a humbucker that frankly wasn’t designed with splitting in mind).

Still, the output rating isn’t everything - I tried pairing a Bluesbucker with a Jem single, and found their voicings simply didn’t gel together at all - Same experience in pairing it with a Duncan SSL-3.

Do you have all these pickups on-hand, or are you exchanging/selling them between sets? I ask because a PAF Pro neck paired with a True Velvet is fairly common; and your personal results would help us counter-recommend a pairing.

For the bridge humbucker, the Holdsworth recipe is a low-output, double screw PAF through several gain and EQ stages, along with a lot of processing (e.g. UD Stomp delays). I currently like the Al DiMeola bridge and Breed neck pickups for this, though, because their fatter sounds and medium output means I can get in that ballpark with fewer gain stages. Honestly, you can get that “Fusion”-y, creamy lead tone with all kinds of gear and pickups - So it’s probably going to come down to what your rig is. If you’re using an Axe FX or something, then the pickup is going to end up being one of the least crucial components in the signal chain. But if you’re using something like a Fender amp with two particular stompboxes, then the right pickup will make all the difference in getting you into that ballpark.


23
The Pickup Place / Re: Which Pickup Features Which Technique
« on: November 13, 2021, 02:11:19 AM »
The Dark Matter neck, single, and bridge pups use the Virtual Vintage screws [edit: I meant SLUGS] with ceramic magnets.

24
The Pickup Place / Re: Which Pickup Features Which Technique
« on: November 11, 2021, 04:03:05 PM »
Just noticed the PAF Masters aren’t in the list. As I *recall* from researching them somewhat recently when I bought the neck model: the neck uses VV with the usual Air’d A5 magnet, with the bridge using only VV with an A4. Both use unbalanced coils, but not DR. Anyone please correct me if I’m misremembering.

25
The Trading Post / FS: Mix of pickups from my parts drawer
« on: November 10, 2021, 01:27:38 AM »
Being as this section doesn’t seem to get much traffic, I figured I’d post these before I eventually get around to listing them on Reverb. Free shipping within continental US. If you find any of these listed for lower, I’ll match the price. No screws, springs, or pickup rings included. Will PM photos and seller credentials upon request.

Dimarzio Bluesbuckers, black - I have them in pickguard mount, direct-mount, regular, and F-spacing: $50 each
Dimarzio Satch Track, white cover: $60
Seymour Duncan SSL-3, white cover: $48
Kiesel Allan Holdsworth KH12B bridge humbucker, black, 49.1mm spacing: $50
EMG Select HSS set I pulled out of a MusicYo Steinberger: $40 for all three, or $15 per pickup.



26
The Pickup Place / Re: Your help needed: identifying PU
« on: November 01, 2021, 04:07:03 AM »
The photos show that they are Dimarzios and…that they are pickups.

A vintage Ibanez group or forum with knowledge of which Dimarzios were included in Ibanez Artist guitars in the 1970s-80s will give you the cleanest info.

All I can really do is ask you to hook the start and finish wires of each humbucker up to a multimeter, note the resistance, then swap one of the wires with the series connection wire so we get the measurement of an individual coil for further reference. The numbers will establish which ballpark we’re in, but it will still end up being an educated guess.

Best guess based on photos is original Super Distortion and original PAF - But a resistance measurement could prove or disprove that.

27
Haven't tried that but the split Injector neck works well in a HSH set up with the split humbuckers (in my guitar a Norton in the bridge and a Bluesbucker in the neck).

How would you describe the parallel split tones? That’s setup’s similar to what I’m shooting for and, as I solicited in another thread, I’m going for SRV/Knopfler style sounds in Bluesbucker split/middle and middle/bridge split.

28
The Pickup Place / Re: Has anyone ordered direct from Dimarzio lately?
« on: October 02, 2021, 05:18:00 PM »
That’s great.

29
The Pickup Place / Re: hotter than air classic bridge
« on: September 28, 2021, 01:27:28 AM »
Another option is a clean boost or EQ pedal. I generally try this first if I love the pickup but just want a little more of everything pushing the amp.

If that’s a route the OP is willing to go, I can endorse running the Air Classic through an Echoplex preamp or even an MXR DynaComp for an “always on” solution.

30
The Pickup Place / Re: Middle pickup suggestions?
« on: September 27, 2021, 05:08:06 AM »
Apologies for piggybacking, but I may as well solicit suggestions concerning the same topic:

Several of my HSH guitars are outfitted with Dimarzio humbuckers and Duncan singles. I find, as a consequence of “middle pickup syndrome”, that I prefer hotter middle pickups I can then lower out of the way. So far, the Quarter Pound flat SSL-4 and SSL-6 have been my favorites for this purpose. Are there any Dimarzio singles in that vein? In positions 2 and 4, I generally go for the typical SRV and Knopfler vibes.

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