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The Pickup Place / Re: Which Pickup Features Which Technique

« on: February 01, 2026, 05:24:15 PM »

43AWG provides an increase in capacitance and resistance per turn over 42AWG. The Screamin’ Demon is slightly darker and has more growl than a 59. It also seems to be just a touch weaker, though not in any appreciable way; I mention this only because Duncan classifies it as medium output and I believe that to be misleading. At the end of the day they are different, and seeing that my favorite bridge pickup is the TB-12 I’m glad they decided to manufacture an under-wound 43-gauge design.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Bridge pickup for Strat

« on: January 16, 2026, 01:09:56 PM »

The Seymour Duncan Lil’ Screamin Demon is the best I’ve played and the best I’ve heard. The Chopper is my runner up, but it really isn’t all that close.

Others that I’m familiar with in the bridge position and am prepared to comment on include the following:
Fast Track 1
BC-1
BC-2
Fast Track 2
Little 59
JB Jr.
Hot Rails

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Position: Fast Track 1 vs. Injector bridge vs. Virtual Solo

« on: January 03, 2026, 03:15:01 PM »

Generally speaking, my tone control simply removes presence and does little to nothing in a band context when playing anything heavier than mild distortion.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Position: Fast Track 1 vs. Injector bridge vs. Virtual Solo

« on: January 02, 2026, 08:48:32 PM »

The Injector Bridge in the neck can be a good sound for sure. I’ve contemplated putting one in the neck for high gain solos, but for me it would just be a 1-trick pony. With weaker pickups there is still the option to turn down the tone control to remove some of the harsher top end. The HB2 is the hottest stacked single coil I’ve used in the neck position. It was in the HSS guitar before the FT1, but it was pitted against a hotter JB2 in the bridge and it just couldn’t keep up. The HB2 is now slated to go in an SSS configuration with a Virtual Solo in the bridge along with the 54P it was previously paired with in the middle position. Like with the Injector Neck you can coax a bit of vintage single coil sparkle out of the HB2, primarily by defeating the dummy coil and secondarily by reducing the loading, combined with the additional step of shelving away some of the body. This final step isn’t necessary for the Injector Neck.

I love the tones Jake E. Lee gets with a pair of SDS-1s and have been contemplating a noiseless option for that. I suspect a Lace Sensor Burgundy or Purple may be a better solution than a stacked design.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Position: Fast Track 1 vs. Injector bridge vs. Virtual Solo

« on: January 01, 2026, 05:12:55 PM »

I’ve been modding one of my Marshalls and testing it with my main guitar which has a Screamin’ Demon in the bridge and A3-loaded Duncan 59 Neck in the neck with a passive bass shelf control (to give you an idea of what I like in the neck position). I switched over to the guitar with the FT1 in the neck and both voicings sounded great without adjusting any of the controls on the amp. The bridge pickup is an A2-loaded JB/Screamin’ Demon hybrid which is a tad weaker and darker than the stock A5 Screamin’ Demon. The Screamin’ Demon is a vintage output pickup, on par with a Duncan 59 Bridge. With a stock JB in the bridge the FT1 is going to sound more like a vintage single coil (minus the chime, though still very bright), as if you plugged in a Strat and dialed your amp accordingly. There are key sonic differences between a rail pickup and a single coil, but in the neck position the FT1 sounds more like a single coil than a humbucker.

Piguitars has a demo of the Injector Bridge in the neck position to give you an idea of what it might sound like. It’s too dark for my tastes, personally. It still sounds very bell-like through the midrange unlike the FT1.

https://youtu.be/g5JQBRvF2qc?si=sJshNtJtHc6RCCl5

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Position: Fast Track 1 vs. Injector bridge vs. Virtual Solo

« on: December 19, 2025, 10:42:23 AM »

It’s less than 2%.

From the patent abstract:
“The coils have substantially the same number of turns of electrically conducting wire wound thereon, and the wires constituting the coils are of different gauges.”

Perhaps someone can tell me what two different gauges of wire can give those DCR measurements using substantially the same number of turns.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Position: Fast Track 1 vs. Injector bridge vs. Virtual Solo

« on: December 19, 2025, 01:27:21 AM »

I just measured mine (again):
Red-Black: 3.71k
White-Green: 3.77k

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Position: Fast Track 1 vs. Injector bridge vs. Virtual Solo

« on: December 18, 2025, 10:28:40 AM »

Since the Satch Track was compared to The Chopper, I’d like to add that unlike The Chopper which is a dual resonance design, the coils in the Satch Track are identical.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Position: Fast Track 1 vs. Injector bridge vs. Virtual Solo

« on: December 15, 2025, 04:30:25 PM »

My concern about pairing a Fast Track 1 with a fat bridge humbucker is about it lacking body, not so much about it lacking output. The limiting factor of it not sounding “humbuckery enough” has more to do with the aperture than the wind and this issue still exists with the hotter rail pickups, IME. In my SSS with an Area 61 in the middle and Injector Neck in the neck, the Fast Track 1 sounds very much like a humbucker, though I’m shaving off a bit of top end and am using a larger tone cap dedicated to position 1 in order to give it the appearance of sounding fatter. Likewise, in my HSS I’m sculpting the Fast Track 1 in the neck position to have more of a single coil tonality in position 4 and more of a humhucker tonality in position 5 (positions 4 and 5 are both neck-only). Context is everything. So with all that out of the way I say go ahead and give it a shot.

To push back a bit on the Satch Track sounding “too fat,” it’s actually pretty tight, the problem is that it’s dull. It’s great with a lot of distortion where the distortion is filling out the top end. Cleans are perhaps better suited for jazz, though it still doesn’t have enough articulation for my taste. Perhaps I’d be more ok with it in a 24-fret guitar that is naturally bright.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Position: Fast Track 1 vs. Injector bridge vs. Virtual Solo

« on: December 14, 2025, 02:25:16 PM »

I’d consider The Chopper or warmer/rounder Pro Track in the neck, and perhaps a Virtual Solo in the middle. Satch Track is another option in the neck if you want to go a little weaker, though I prefer the Seymour Duncan single-sized humbuckers over the Satch Track which I found to be disappointing.

I have an HSS with a Fast Track 1 in the neck, an HSH with a Fast Track 1 in the middle and an SSS with a Fast Track 1 in the bridge. It’s a great pickup for straddling the line between single coil and humbucker. It has the dynamics to keep up with vintage up to weaker medium output pickups but it isn’t particularly fat sounding in the latter context. It completely lacks top end chime, as does anything else hotter than the Virtual Vintage 54 Pro (though some chime can be coaxed out of the Injector Neck). This can be a good thing with distortion dialed for humbuckers where top-end chime can get brittle and harsh. However, I’m not recommending Fast Track 1 for the fear that it won’t keep up with the Custom EVH as you described it, combined with your preference for humbuckers in the neck that will likely also preclude the Injector Bridge and Virtual Solo, which sound even more like single coils than the Fast Track 1.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Quacky Neck PU for Super 3 Bridge PU?

« on: November 30, 2025, 12:01:09 PM »

What do you mean by quack? The term is normally used to describe the tone created when combining single coils from distinct positions in parallel. You can get quack-adjacent with a single humbucker when you run the coils out of phase though I don’t imagine this is how you’re using it.

If you simply mean bright then the most obvious choice is a Super 2 since it seems clear you want high output. Otherwise the PAF Pro is the overall winner for a bright powerful neck pickup that doesn’t peel paint. I imagine the D Activator Neck is also a good option from the high output category.

I’m not certain dual resonance makes for a particularly bright pickup as the goal is to impart a more vocal quality by broadening out the midrange. Virtual Vintage, on the other hand, provides more output, allowing for fewer turns in order to retain more top-end.

Non-DiMarzio higher output recommendations with a decent amount of treble for the neck:
Seymour Duncan Screamin’ Demon or Perpetual Burn.  EMG 81 (active, but worthy of a mention).

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The Pickup Place / Re: NGD - Ibanez JS1000

« on: September 15, 2025, 02:24:56 PM »

Good thing you have a Breed Neck lying in a drawer.

BNIB + PAF Pro FTW!

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck pickup to go with Air Norton in the Bridge of a Les Paul

« on: September 01, 2025, 02:49:10 PM »

Regarding whether DiMarzio pickups are hand-guided I dug this up. It’s an interesting read with contributions from someone who used to work at DiMarzio.

https://www.dimarzioforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=7154.0

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck pickup to go with Air Norton in the Bridge of a Les Paul

« on: August 31, 2025, 08:41:17 PM »

If it reads ~8.6k out of the guitar then I guarantee the pickup is mislabeled. At that point it could be anything, really; so it’s probably most accurate to say that if it doesn’t measure ~7.3k then it most definitely isn’t a 36th Neck. I’ll be charitable and say anything between 7.1k and 7.5k. +/-200 ohms is a large variance for a modern DiMarzio pickup.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Neck pickup to go with Air Norton in the Bridge of a Les Paul

« on: August 28, 2025, 10:42:06 AM »

You cannot compare the DC resistance of the Air Norton to the 36th for output because the coils are wound with a different wire.

This is especially true with DiMarzio pickups in general since air bucker, virtual vintage and dual-resonance technologies effectively render DCR numbers useless.

That out of the way I’m not sure why this is being raised.

The mV value is a better indicator.

The 36th Anniversary model that is spec'd with a DCR of 8.6k is spec'd with an output level of 285mV.

The Air Norton is spec'd with an output level of 270mV.