16

The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio or Fluence

« on: October 03, 2019, 03:05:48 PM »

D-Activator neck in the bridge.

Interesting!

17

The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio or Fluence

« on: October 02, 2019, 10:40:01 PM »

Thanks for the response, I'll definitely look into those pickups. They do sound like they'd be more in the ball park. X is sounding pretty great to my ear so far.

Also thanks for the OD tip. I will go out of my way to try the mid-bump ODs into a dirty amp, that sounds like a cool trick. I still think the Steve's Special was not the right choice for how I'll use this guitar or how I play, but I'll make sure to experiment a little more before I move on.

18

The Pickup Place / DiMarzio or Fluence

« on: October 02, 2019, 02:02:47 PM »

I have a difficult decision to make regarding my Chapman ML-1 (HSS). I want to trick it out into a metal shred machine. I am caught between loving the sound of the Fishman Fluence Modern in the bridge, but also loving the sound of the Chopper and Tone Zone S in the middle and neck positions respectively.

I love the clean tones I got from the Fluence Modern Bridge when I played my bandmate's guitar. Obviously it also sounded incredible under high gain. But Fishman only offers "strat-voiced" single spaced pickups at this moment. I wanted to go beefy, so I'm very limited there if I go with the Fluence line.

I don't want to route my guitar for HSH, probably. I also can't mix Fluence with DiMarzio in this case: Fluence pickups all use a preamp and won't accept passive pickups into the circuit, and wiring around it would be a pain. So it seems like I must go with all passive or all active.

I originally planned on going with DiMarzios all the way but I couldn't decide what bridge pickup I wanted to use. I may wind up going that route in the end, so I'm soliciting some suggestions/reality checks from you.

The guitar currently has a Steve's Special, and I'm just not digging it. It's mid-scooped, which is cool, but not where I want to go with this anymore.

I'm looking to keep some of that aggressive mid-range (a bit of "Aw") and massive gain from the Fluence Modern, along with that top-end clarity and harmonics. Like an EMG 81 but more "open" on top.

I started by looking at the X2N, but found it was a bit too "twangy" and flat across the frequency spectrum, so I might want something with more midrange.

Been looking at Dominion Bridge, Super 2, and D-Activator X as well.

If you have any other pickups you think I should explore, even from other brands, please drop me a line.


TL;DR: Anyone have an opinion about which high-output bridge pickup (not the X2N) might blend well with the Chopper and Tone Zone S, and ape some of the tone of a Fishman Fluence Modern bridge?


Thanks for reading!