The Bluesbucker

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Offline bubs_42

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #15 on: February 16, 2015, 09:58:42 PM »
Ok, I've read in this thread how well they work for the neck with a hot bridge or in the bridge, but how does a Set sound? Do they make a "calibrated set" for Bridge and Neck? If not hows the balance between them?

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Offline darkbluemurder

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #16 on: February 17, 2015, 03:55:02 AM »
As far as as I know there is only one model which can be used in both positions. Unfortunately I never used one in the bridge so I cannot comment on how it balances in a set.

Cheers Stephan
Area 67, Area 58, Area 61, VV Pro 54, Injectors, VV HB2, Virtual Solo, SDS-1, Area T, Area Hot T, Area T 615, Virtual Hot T, Chopper T, Bluesbucker, Breed set, Air Norton, Super Distortion, DLX+ set, DLX-90, DP240, DP198, DP168, VPAF b, AT-1, Mo' Joe, FRED, Super 2; GS b

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Offline mertay

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #17 on: February 21, 2015, 03:03:50 AM »
Ok, I've read in this thread how well they work for the neck with a hot bridge or in the bridge, but how does a Set sound? Do they make a "calibrated set" for Bridge and Neck? If not hows the balance between them?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIS52q18RKU

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Offline Kelly Briggs

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #18 on: December 30, 2017, 09:30:26 PM »
Ok...just to bring a thread back from the dead; I'm dying to get one of these Ibanez, but I'm lukewarm on the stock pickups. Would a Bluesbucker bridge with a Twang King or True Velvet T neck blend together well?

http://ibanez.wikia.com/wiki/FR365

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Offline darkbluemurder

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #19 on: January 08, 2018, 05:35:33 AM »
The problem with all tele neck pickups I played so far is low output. The Area T neck is fine but is already overpowered by something like the Area Hot T, so even a low output humbucker like the Bluesbucker could be too much for either the Twang King or True Velvet T neck. Unless you really like this particular guitar I would rather pass.

Cheers Stephan
Area 67, Area 58, Area 61, VV Pro 54, Injectors, VV HB2, Virtual Solo, SDS-1, Area T, Area Hot T, Area T 615, Virtual Hot T, Chopper T, Bluesbucker, Breed set, Air Norton, Super Distortion, DLX+ set, DLX-90, DP240, DP198, DP168, VPAF b, AT-1, Mo' Joe, FRED, Super 2; GS b

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Offline darkbluemurder

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #20 on: January 15, 2019, 04:40:41 AM »
Yes. If the harmonics do not come out well it is something else.

Cheers Stephan
Area 67, Area 58, Area 61, VV Pro 54, Injectors, VV HB2, Virtual Solo, SDS-1, Area T, Area Hot T, Area T 615, Virtual Hot T, Chopper T, Bluesbucker, Breed set, Air Norton, Super Distortion, DLX+ set, DLX-90, DP240, DP198, DP168, VPAF b, AT-1, Mo' Joe, FRED, Super 2; GS b

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Offline blueman61

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #21 on: January 26, 2019, 07:37:16 AM »
continuing the vampire thread.....I'm going to put a Bluesbucker in the neck of an SG. I'm interested in any and all reactions to the following bridge possibilities:

1) Super Dist.
2) Fred (very intrigues with this choice, especially because Michael Thompson apparently uses one)
3) Air Norton(had a reg Norton in this guitar once, liked it, but less might be more)
4) Air Zone (Had a tone zone in an 80s brick of an LP year ago...ballsy but very dark, air zone maybe less so? ...dark that is.)

I'm a typical dinosaur, Blues Rock guy....Cream, Beck, Hendrix, Allmans, the usual suspects.  I also dig old school metal and hard rock...Montrose, Hunter/Wagner, Dio, AC/DC etc. Plexis and tweeds thank you. Very intrigued by these pups. May have to try them all. Had Super D's back in the 70s in....gasp...a 335. Worked pretty well as I recall. Never tried the others. But it's been a long time. Your reaction? Any other ideas? Let the fun begin.
"the best revenge is not to be like that" - Marcus Aurelius

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Offline corypheus

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #22 on: January 26, 2019, 04:58:22 PM »
continuing the vampire thread.....I'm going to put a Bluesbucker in the neck of an SG. I'm interested in any and all reactions to the following bridge possibilities:

1) Super Dist.
2) Fred (very intrigues with this choice, especially because Michael Thompson apparently uses one)
3) Air Norton(had a reg Norton in this guitar once, liked it, but less might be more)
4) Air Zone (Had a tone zone in an 80s brick of an LP year ago...ballsy but very dark, air zone maybe less so? ...dark that is.)

I'm a typical dinosaur, Blues Rock guy....Cream, Beck, Hendrix, Allmans, the usual suspects.  I also dig old school metal and hard rock...Montrose, Hunter/Wagner, Dio, AC/DC etc. Plexis and tweeds thank you. Very intrigued by these pups. May have to try them all. Had Super D's back in the 70s in....gasp...a 335. Worked pretty well as I recall. Never tried the others. But it's been a long time. Your reaction? Any other ideas? Let the fun begin.

Hi,

I won't be much of a help regarding the Bluesbucker (I understand the irony of posting in this thread about it), because I never tried one, but I had all the others mentioned in the bridge, so I'll strictly speak of the choice of bridge pickups here, from my experience. I'm not primarily a blues player, but I do all sorts of covers and I do play in a club regularly (as much as health allows).

Super Dee's been my favorite for years, although I started digging Evo2 last year a bit more. Can't ever go wrong with Super Dee. If you're guy that likes to fiddle with volume and tone, you can get any kind of sounds out of Super Dee. It never has issues cutting through the mix, it's loud and has enough presence - and it has tons of mids so it's actually great for thickening single note solos, bends ring longer - it's compression prolongs sustain (of course, it was one of the reasons it was made the way it was made, back at 70s). If you find it is not expressive enough for you, take some of the mids down, or take it away from the strings, you will find almost a totally different beast of a pickup with it.

With that said, I wouldn't necessarily take Super Dee primarily for blues - not that it can't do it - it certainly can, it just doesn't excel at it as some other pickups in DMZ line up do.

Fred is a very peculiar pickup, in essence it's done as a big modern PAF, it has a very vocal quality to its mids (it also has alot of high mids), and it's low enough output to make it very expressive with different picking techniques. It's great rock pickup, for sure, but it's equally as great blues pickup.

It does have a waah kind of midrange of some other DMZs, a kind of sound you either dig or you don't, so something to have in mind about it.

Air Norton is, obviously, Norton with air technology, you can mod the one to be the other and vice versa. The airing makes the pickup sound weaker, and by proxy - more vintage in character. I love AN in the neck - in the bridge, I feel it can sometimes sounds too squishy, and compressed. It's bass can sometimes sound blurry and lack articulation to my ears, which is why in general I prefer it in neck as solo pickup and never used it as rhythm.

Air Zone is something I tried in both bridge and neck, and could never gel with the pickup. Possible reason is that, unlike Tone Zone that punches with power and presence cut, Air Zone had it's presence lowered thanks to airing technology, which to my ears accentuated some of the negatives of the design (depth of bottom end, flabby bass, really fat lower midrange), while not doing much in terms of highs. It does have a waah vocal quality to it, though, and I can see it working for a certain kind of solos, but again I wouldn't pick it for rhythm.

What I'd also consider is 36th anniversary bridge model, while it's a PAF design it's still more then powerful enough for any kind of metal as well and unlike PAF Master, generally doesn't turn into flabby mush for power chording with a high gain amp. It's an excellent blues and blues rock pickup, it's very expressive and has enough mids and presence to cut through any kind of mix. This pickup will also balance volume wise with Bluesbucker excellently as well.

Mo'Joe is another one of those open-sounding vocal pickups from DMZ, a variation of the Fred, if you will, which makes it a bit more punchier and modern sounding, imho, but doesn't take away anything of it's melodic quality. It's very versatile, and will happily do everything from funk, blues to rock and metal.

AT-1, Andy Timmons has a specific playing style and specific sound, but it's definitely an expressive and warm, pleasant sounding one, and my experience with AT-1 is that it captures that sound very nice, it's warm on the bottom end, have a push in the middle and have open highs. It's a nice sounding pickup, specially for softer playing and it's thick enough for simpler but more expressive solos.


Personally, as a safe bet, I'd take 36th anniversary, or either the Mo'Joe or Fred on the bridge, with a Bluesbucker on the neck. Those combos will do everything you want them do, and more.

HTH

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Offline blueman61

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #23 on: January 26, 2019, 08:00:49 PM »
Thanks. Very nice and complete response. I actually had a set of 36s in this guitar for a while. Can't remember why I took them out because, as I recall, i liked them. Maybe I'll get one of those again and give it and maybe the Fred a whirl. Certainly any other opnions would be welcome as well. thanks again.
"the best revenge is not to be like that" - Marcus Aurelius

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Offline darkbluemurder

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #24 on: February 08, 2021, 10:50:45 AM »
Recently I set my guitar with a Super Distortion in the bridge and the Bluesbucker in the neck for the following wiring:

neck, coils in series
neck, coils in parallel
bridge (coils in series) in parallel with neck (coils in series)
neck, screw coil in parallel with bridge, bridge side coil (hum-cancelling)
bridge (coils in series)

The Bluesbucker with the coils in parallel sounds a bit weak and the output drop vs. the coils in series is significant. I probably switch that to either neck split (screw coil) or to bridge parallel.

Cheers Stephan
Area 67, Area 58, Area 61, VV Pro 54, Injectors, VV HB2, Virtual Solo, SDS-1, Area T, Area Hot T, Area T 615, Virtual Hot T, Chopper T, Bluesbucker, Breed set, Air Norton, Super Distortion, DLX+ set, DLX-90, DP240, DP198, DP168, VPAF b, AT-1, Mo' Joe, FRED, Super 2; GS b

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Offline PaganScience

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #25 on: February 17, 2021, 05:13:19 PM »
Is the split or parallel sound louder? I've used the bluesbucker split before and liked how it stayed about the same volume when tapped as opposed to the typical humbucker.

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Offline darkbluemurder

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #26 on: February 22, 2021, 03:04:36 AM »
I have not tried it in the same guitar but my guess would be that split is louder than parallel.
Area 67, Area 58, Area 61, VV Pro 54, Injectors, VV HB2, Virtual Solo, SDS-1, Area T, Area Hot T, Area T 615, Virtual Hot T, Chopper T, Bluesbucker, Breed set, Air Norton, Super Distortion, DLX+ set, DLX-90, DP240, DP198, DP168, VPAF b, AT-1, Mo' Joe, FRED, Super 2; GS b

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Offline darkbluemurder

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #27 on: October 11, 2021, 10:20:49 AM »
During my recent project I discovered that the Bluesbucker is excellent in HSH set ups. The link to the thread is here:

https://www.dimarzioforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=15881.0

Cheers Stephan
Area 67, Area 58, Area 61, VV Pro 54, Injectors, VV HB2, Virtual Solo, SDS-1, Area T, Area Hot T, Area T 615, Virtual Hot T, Chopper T, Bluesbucker, Breed set, Air Norton, Super Distortion, DLX+ set, DLX-90, DP240, DP198, DP168, VPAF b, AT-1, Mo' Joe, FRED, Super 2; GS b

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Offline darkbluemurder

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #28 on: October 11, 2021, 10:23:15 AM »
Quoting my response from the Injector thread as it fits better here (question asked about two Bluesbuckers in a HSH configuration):

"Bluesbucker in the bridge has one problem with the e-type megaswitch as the splitcoil operations in #2 and#3 are predefined and different (#2 uses the neckside coil and #3 the bridgeside coil, which does not work well with a pickup that uses one coil as dummy). In the neck position it is not an issue as both #3 and #4 use the neckside coil of the neck pickup, which is the signal coil in case of a Bluesbucker. You would therefore have to use a 24 pole switch (aka Super Switch) to make this work with the Bluesbucker in the bridge, and the polarity of the pickups must be checked to make sure the combinations are humcancelling."
Area 67, Area 58, Area 61, VV Pro 54, Injectors, VV HB2, Virtual Solo, SDS-1, Area T, Area Hot T, Area T 615, Virtual Hot T, Chopper T, Bluesbucker, Breed set, Air Norton, Super Distortion, DLX+ set, DLX-90, DP240, DP198, DP168, VPAF b, AT-1, Mo' Joe, FRED, Super 2; GS b

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Offline darkbluemurder

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Re: The Bluesbucker
« Reply #29 on: June 15, 2023, 04:22:22 AM »
The Bluesbucker's biggest asset IMHO is its split tone which I really really like, even though it is - by nature - not humcancelling. It really adds versatility to any guitar with a full size humbucker route in the neck spot as the single coil tone is not weak but really useable. 
Area 67, Area 58, Area 61, VV Pro 54, Injectors, VV HB2, Virtual Solo, SDS-1, Area T, Area Hot T, Area T 615, Virtual Hot T, Chopper T, Bluesbucker, Breed set, Air Norton, Super Distortion, DLX+ set, DLX-90, DP240, DP198, DP168, VPAF b, AT-1, Mo' Joe, FRED, Super 2; GS b