16

The Pickup Place / Re: Need a Dimarzio neck humbucker with bite under gain

« on: March 17, 2017, 05:51:54 PM »

Air Norton in the neck is excellent: smooth, hot, warm, and clear.

If you're running 250k pots and suffer from muddy sounding neck pickups, you'll want to put in something bright, like the Humbucker From Hell or the aforementioned Air Norton

If you wanna try Duncans, the Jazz Model should do better than the 59n. Also heard great things about the Full Shred.

17

The Pickup Place / Re: Difference between VV '54 Pro & VV Blues

« on: March 14, 2017, 04:46:34 AM »

Never tried the VV blues but I have the VV 54s. They have a very sweet top end and not too trebly, but definitely has that classic single coil sound. I run them in the neck and bridge, and I have an Area 58 in the middle.

18

The Pickup Place / Re: Favorite bridge pickup for shredding?

« on: March 13, 2017, 02:54:37 AM »

If you wanna do the Shrapnel stuff you want something high output with compression and smooth sounding

Evo or Evo 2 would do the job really well
Tone Zone is great too
I've also had a lot of success with the D Sonic doing that kind of stuff, so you can look into that whole family (Crunch Lab, Illuminator)

19

The Pickup Place / Re: RG 560 and Norton

« on: March 08, 2017, 05:28:47 AM »

AT-1!

if you're looking for a PAF Joe, though, I do have a spare brand new one. Feel free to hit me up for that

20

The Pickup Place / Re: Recommend me a single coil sized humbucker for my strat please?

« on: March 08, 2017, 05:25:25 AM »

Virtual Vintage 54 Pro!

21

The Pickup Place / Re: New bridge pickup for Ibanez SZ520

« on: March 08, 2017, 05:22:30 AM »

The D Sonic and the Tone Zone, especially the Tone Zone, will give you that massive dark girth and deep giant bottom end you want for the Sabbath-like and the Doom tones!

22

The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio for my Ibanez RG550

« on: December 26, 2016, 07:18:43 AM »

I find evolutions to have plenty of mid actually, but they are bright so you don't typically perceive them as mid heavy

But if you want scoopy sounding pickups you can look into these:

Dimarzio (most aren't scoopy but have more treble than Gravity Storm): D Activator, X2N, Super 2, Evo 2, Steve's Special

Seymour Duncan: JB, Custom 5, Custom

23

The Pickup Place / Re: Need a pickup recommendation for progressive rock

« on: December 20, 2016, 06:30:03 AM »

What amp do you play through? If your amp is plenty high gain, you don't necessarily have to go mega high output and that opens you up for a ton of options!

For bridge pickup, depends on what you're looking for
Huge ballsy sound: D Sonic
Balanced clear sound: PAF Pro
Punchy and clear with a ton of harmonics: Evolution and Evo2
Thick, warm, chunky sound with great harmonics: Tone Zone
Jangly, Chimey sound with clarity and bite, great cleans: EJ Custom Bridge

Neck pickup
Good harmonics, clarity, and warmth: Evolution neck, Air Norton
Extreme clarity and chime, unbelievably pleasant cleans: EJ Custom Neck

Those are all the Dimarzios that I've owned and played and they were all incredible pickups, really can't go wrong with any of them!

24

The Pickup Place / Re: Which DiMarzio for 80s metal that will also work for clean stuff?

« on: December 03, 2016, 06:04:08 PM »

PAF Pro anyone?

It's a custom Charvel right? Could you just ask them to install it to save you the trouble?

25

The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio Location?

« on: December 03, 2016, 06:00:47 PM »

It really doesn't take a massive factory and over 9000 people to make pickups

Seymour Duncan has about 120 employees and if you look at their factory tours on YouTube and look at it on Google Maps, it looks pretty small too

26

The Pickup Place / Re: Ibanez RG 970 pickups

« on: December 03, 2016, 05:22:28 PM »

I don't think RG970 comes with "standard" 5 way switch. It's actually an Ibanez proprietary super-5-way switch.

The difference? Unlike most normal super-5-ways, you can't really tell where the terminals connectors correspond to the switch position as easily, and that can cause some confusions when you're soldering it all up. I myself have been a dumb ass victim of this in the past.

You definitely want to dig around this forum's wiring diagram section to see if you can find a diagram for that.

As for pickups... what amp do you use? If you're into Guthrie type stuff.. I think the guy actually uses a medium gain setting but pushes the amp pretty hard with high output pickups. I could be wrong though, haven't been keeping up with his stuff after he switched to Charvel pickups.

27

The Pickup Place / Re: Murky sounding but great playing basswood squire

« on: December 03, 2016, 05:13:49 PM »

If you would like to stay with SSS and you love PG I don't see why you wouldn't want the Injectors!

But I think Squier bodies are routed to just be a giant rectangular hole in the middle, which means you can technically do SSH or HSH! The PAF Master set could be great for you too?

28

The Pickup Place / Re: Illuminator, Super Distortion, or?

« on: December 03, 2016, 05:08:36 PM »

Have you tried messing with the pickup height extensively? The Tone Zone is known to have huge amounts of variation in tone with pickup height adjustments. Not trying to steer you away from getting a shiny new pickup but if a few turns of a couple screws can save you the trouble of soldering and money, it's worth a shot!