[darkbluemurder]

Maybe I just haven't found the right guitar for it yet, but the AT-1 bores me to tears.

I hear you as I have moved mine from guitar to guitar until I think I found a good home for it (for now....)

I installed Duncan Classic Strat Plus's in for somebody. I wasn't that impressed. A bit dissapointing. They seemed to lack responsiveness to picking dynamics. They were good if you switched off the noiseless. There's a reason the Dimarzio Area series have become the industrty standard for noiseless SCs, I guess.

When the Classic and Hot Stacks came out in the 80s I had one of each. While they had healthier outputs than the HS-x series of DiMarzio, to me they did not sound anything like true single coils. The OBL ("Original Bill Lawrence") L 250 series also missed that mark IMHO.

Cheers Stephan

[darkbluemurder]

Speaking of the HS-X series, DiMarzio was on the right way as regards the tone. However, they were so quiet, and not only in noise ...

Same for the Shock Wave pickups (long discontinued). I understand why they came with a preamp as they were just as quiet as the HS-X series.

[HeyNorton!]

I was not impressed with the transition neck in the neck position.  It felt stiff, with thin highs while also being warm.  Yep warm and thin up top, and a lot of low mids to over emphasize that warm high end. 

The bridge (which i really like) is more high mids,  so adjusting the eq for 1 messes with the other. 

[corypheus]

I have played Nita Strauss JivaJr that a friend swapped in DiMarzio Pandemonium and modded the guitar to accept schaller floyd rose. The guitar really negatively surprised me as the neck was twisted (mind you this was a fairly new guitar) slightly towards the bass side at the ending of the neck nearing the locking nut but the biggest surprise were the DiMarzios in it.

I found the bridge to be very in your face, which is a quality I actually personally like - but both of the pickups were lacking articulation and presence. Both were quite nasal sounding, congested in the mids and at the same time somehow they both felt stiff and dry.

I don't remember if I tried this years ago when they came out, I possibly could have, but I don't remember if I did and what were my thoughts back then - but trying them now really made me think they are possibly the worst DiMarzios I have tried, and I tried probably 90% of everything in the "high power" category and most in the other two as well. Could it possibly have been the guitar? Maybe, as the guitar wasn't really a good one.