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zentropa
Gold Member
USA
837 Posts |
 Posted - 04/21/2008 : 16:39:42
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Well, i finally tracked down my shred guitars, a pair of 1987 MIJ Kramer Focus 1000's (baretta copies). Single angled humbucker, original authentic floyd rose, 3 piece neck, manufactured by ESP, etc.
i'm digging the simplicity of these guitars and i have em set up extremely fast and the neck is very manageable for my hand size (12" radius, medium-thin C shaped neck slightly thinner than a strat but not stupid thin like a wizard neck).
downside is i'm not finding pickups to my liking so far.
the gotoh pickup that was in there (alnico V, 10.7K resistance) was warm, but to the point of mud. i dropped a dimarzio evolution in there and while i don't mind the tone, it isn't what i was hoping for. actually, it sounds pretty good it just doesn't quite kick over the top like i was hoping it would.
that being said, i was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a dimarzio pickup that's 1 notch hotter. i've owned nearly every duncan pickup made and i'm not a fan of their bridge humbuckers as their resonance peak is too low and it always feels like the treble is being chopped off abruptly.
basically, i'm looking for something that will crunch with a palm mute and not have much of a tone change if set up with really light strings (i've noticed the hotter the pickup, the less change there is in body with string gauge decreases and it's more of just a volume change), however, i still would like a moderately passable clean.
on a side note, the angle of the humbucker is giving me fits on the pole alignment to the strings... f-spaced = 51mm from E to E poles, the pickup that came in the guitar was 57mm (read as: the low E lines up and everything else is waaaaaaay off). i had someone recommend blade-style humbuckers to correct this but i've yet to find a blade that i liked the sound of in the slightest.
i'm still within the 30-day dimarzio exchange guarentee and i'm wondering if i should keep the evo's or if i'm better off stepping up to like a super distortion.
as for sound, i'm trying to rehab my hand playing 1978-1983 metal (iron maiden, van halen, etc.). my other guitars are sg's and les pauls wired with 498/490's and my strats have single coils voiced like over-wound 50's style and i'm going for some contrast but not trying to sound poo-tastic. i used to play 13-58's and these guitars are strung up with 9-42's that are almost laying on the fretboard in an effort to build up my hand strength again :(
any input would be much appreciated. |
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sp-1
Platinum Member
Germany
1454 Posts |
Posted - 04/21/2008 : 16:52:57
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I had a 'super 3' long time ago but somehow it was to small for my 'V', indeed not lining up with the strings, sounded good though.
Replaced it with a seymour duncan 'custom custom'
I guess I'm not helping at all  but maybe you can do some searching on the 'super 3' |
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zentropa
Gold Member
USA
837 Posts |
Posted - 04/21/2008 : 17:14:08
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thanks for the input. i'm open to any recommendations from people who've owned the pickups or spent a lot of time with em.
i've heard super 3's before with overdrive and they definitely have a lotta kick to em. how did they stack up clean? i haven't heard one in around 10 years and if i remember the clean was a bit... abrasive?
i know the evo's spec out as if they should be really hot but i find they're voiced a lot more like a JB but with over the top harmonics and slightly better treble response.
i'm using a couple of songs as benchmarks for hotness:
1. waiting room by fugazi. i use this song to keep my strumming arm up to speed and endurance (lots of fast 16th and 32nd note palm muting for pretty much the entire song). so far the evo's are "thumping" on the palm mutes rather than "crunching."
2. seventeen by winger. i learned this song as a joke because the guitar riff is really cool yet the song is downright terrible (i'll often mess around and say something along the lines of "greatest love song ever written" before i bust into it). the downside is the riff closes with a little pull off section invovling the D and G strings together and if you can hear each string individually (instead of them sounding "as one") it sounds bad. the evo's still sound like 2 strings. if i'm going to make fun of something, i want to do it well (although playing and singing this song at the same time is proving challenging).
i'm guessing i need a bit more midrange response to mud up a little, but not so much that the tone goes buh bye.
i know dimarzio will swap em for pickups of my choosing but i want to be very careful before i choose whether or not to jettison them or keep them. |
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zentropa
Gold Member
USA
837 Posts |
Posted - 04/22/2008 : 07:55:41
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made a phone call today to dimarzio's tech support line to make sure my pickup was installed w/ the correct orientation and to ask about the relative hotness etc.
after 2 minutes of him explaining that the pickup orientation didn't really matter even though the evolution is an asymmetrical pickup design and that only 1 in 100 people could tell the difference, etc. i finally just flat out asked which direction the lead was supposed to be pointing from the pickup housing and after a little bit of beating around the bush i finally just said "lead towards the bridge or towards the neck?" and finally got the "towards the bridge" answer.
i had installed it correctly so i asked if the pickup was really supposed to be hot because i was finding it wasn't hot enough to kick over the top and crunch on a palm mute. he then spent 2 minutes explaining to me that without being in the same room with me he couldn't tell me what was "wrong." this made my jaw drop that someone would say something that blatantly obvious and make no effort to give any kind of guess or recommendation on anything. i wanted to reply "well i was actually expecting you to hop on the first supersonic jet over here and come listen to me play in my apartment living room and tell me what you think is wrong," but i bit my tongue instead.
my next question was if there was a pickup that was 1 step hotter (the evo is so close... but not quite there) he could recommend. he said plenty of things but gave no recommendation. i asked about the super distortion and he said definitely no because it had more bass... to the best of my knowledge it's usually mids that help with crunching.
i then said i was playing a kramer baretta with angled humbucker. his response was that because of the angled pickup position that basically every pickup was going to sound bad since every string didn't line up perfectly with both poles of any of the humbuckers (i've never actually had a guitar that lined up perfectly with every string let alone over both poles). after asking for a recommendation i finally got the response that i might get a usable sound from the d-activator x because it was bladed and he reiterated that no other pickup would sound good because of the string spacing.
heh... it left me feeling rather irked as i had to leave work early in order to get a phone call during their tech support business hours (12pm-5pm EST Mon-Fri).
also made me think of many things afterwards...
if dimarzio and steve vai really spent 2 years developing his perfect pickup and that pickup happened to be asymmetrical, wouldn't it actually matter which direction it was oriented?
if every individual poled pickup will sound bad with my slanted humbucker, how come there were many famous guitarists who played barettas in the 80's and none of them used blade-style humbuckers? also, the baretta came with a stock non f-spaced JB that lined up horribly with the poles and its tone wasn't affected to where it didn't perform anywhere near what was advertised.
why didn't the tech guy try to give any hints on how to improve the sound or get a sound closer to what i was looking for? pickup height adjustment? individual pole adjustment? change the pots/caps? mod the pickup mounting rings? anything? apparently everything will sound bad? heh.
kind of soured me on them. i wrote a nasty (nasty for me, which was more of an official sounding wtf) email to them stating my displeasure.
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Edited by - zentropa on 04/22/2008 07:57:18 |
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Dimarzio Humbuckers
