DiMarzio Forum
DimarzioForum.Com => The Pickup Place => Topic started by: AverageWeekend on May 24, 2016, 01:45:39 PM
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I have a Les Paul-style guitar that currently has an Air Zone in the bridge and a Duncan 59 in the neck. I like the Air Zone except I wish it had less low end. Mids and highs are good. Output level is good.
Guitar is mahogany neck & solid body with an ebony fingerboard. I mainly use it for P&W at church, so it covers a wide range of sounds and versatility is important. I use the middle pickup selection a lot, so a bridge pickup that will blend well with the 59 in the neck is important.
The Dimarzio Pickup Picker, suggests the Super Distortion for a lot of the options I select, but I'm thinking that might be too hot for what I'm wanting and not as good with cleans.
I was considering a Transition bridge? Thoughts on that? Other recommendations?
Thanks.
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Transition is an ace pickup and would probably do the job well but I think you can solve the problem of too much low end with a capacitor in the right place.
Hopefully someone who has done that fix to the AZ/TZ will chime in.
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The AT-1 would be my guess.
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Here's the link to the low-end mod.
http://www.lonephantom.com/2010/11/taming-the-tone-zone
If you like the Air Zone apart from the "too much bass"-issue I'd really suggest you try this simple mod before buying a new pickup.
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Air zone with less bass = Lower the air zone on the bass side and raise the pole pieces.
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Here's the link to the low-end mod.
http://www.lonephantom.com/2010/11/taming-the-tone-zone
If you like the Air Zone apart from the "too much bass"-issue I'd really suggest you try this simple mod before buying a new pickup.
Highly recommend this mod! For my guitar I found the sweet spot to be around 0.01~0.015uf
Retains the fatness of my tone zone, just tighter, more cut, more harmonics
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My customers who do this tend to like that .01uf to .015uf range to, mostly for taming muddy neck buckers.
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Did you lower the bass end of the pickup in the ring. I know….sound too simple, but you'd be surprised.
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My experience with setting pickup height - especially for neck pickups is that you can only go low up to a point. Once you set the height below that point you lose the articulation on the low strings. With some guitars and pickups it's enough, with others not.
Cheers Stephan
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My experience with setting pickup height - especially for neck pickups is that you can only go low up to a point. Once you set the height below that point you lose the articulation on the low strings. With some guitars and pickups it's enough, with others not.
Cheers Stephan
Darkbluemurder is correct.
Capacitor values may be worth playing with. My solderless approach (use search function) allows you to swap capacitors in and out in seconds.
If you are looking for a different pickup that will fit this bill, try a PAF 36th bridge. On paper the AT-1 seems like it would be an Air Zone with less bass, but in practice it really is not. But the PAF 36th is the closest you'll get off the shelf for what you are looking for. Honorable mention to the Breed Neck.
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36th bridge has less bass, but it's a whole lot more bright and has less mids to.
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I did the same mod on a Evolution Neck and it sounds much better for leads. I still prefer the original configuration for cleans though. I can still switch the cap in and out with a push pull tone pot.
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Thanks much, everyone. I tried pretty much everything: pickup height, pole piece heights, tried the cap mod with both .047 & .022 (probably should have tried .015 or .010 but didn''t), etc.
Long story short, even after all those tweaks, I still wasn't happy with the Air Zone in that particular guitar. Swapped it for a Transition bridge and all is good in the world.
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So, tell us about the transition bridge...