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Bloody vaginal belch
- Oct 20, 2007
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Yeah, id go with the Full Shred if you are going to play downtuned alot.
They cut through very nice and they do also have a very hot output.
Recommend me a passive bridge pickup
- Thread starter Ericlingus
- Start date
Yeah, id go with the Full Shred if you are going to play downtuned alot.
They cut through very nice and they do also have a very hot output.
All these pickups will need to be boosted with a TS either way for any clarity in B.
I've had a lot of experience searching for good passive bridge buckers. A lot of people find what they need in emg and stick with em. I've always found them a bit one-dimensional so I did a lot of research and still ended up going through four pups before I found one that suited me.
I can back recommendations for the fullshred, but not the jb. The jb will be too loose and flubby and won't sound as modern as the fullshred either. The fullshred has a very dimarzio esq vibe. Ironically the only dimarzio mentioned is trying to achieve the sound of emgs. An evo would work just as well I bet. Bulb has done amazing clips with those lundgren m7 pickups- I bet the m6 would suit you great. DSS3 has told me that those bareknuckle pickups have unbelievable clarity- they're also quite expensive. If your definition of modern is emg, the deactivator is the choice. If that's not necessarily true, I prefer the tone of pretty much every other pup I mentioned in this paragraph.
I however always wanted clarity in a vintage voicing, and after trying the parrallel axis trembucker, jb, fullshred, alnico 2 pro, custom, and not being totally happy with any I gave duncan one last shot and found that the jazz set is fucking incredible for metal both neck and bridge. For you though, I would bet that the lundgren, fullshred, or deactivator would be the most solid choices.
I've had a lot of experience searching for good passive bridge buckers. A lot of people find what they need in emg and stick with em. I've always found them a bit one-dimensional so I did a lot of research and still ended up going through four pups before I found one that suited me.
I can back recommendations for the fullshred, but not the jb. The jb will be too loose and flubby and won't sound as modern as the fullshred either. The fullshred has a very dimarzio esq vibe. Ironically the only dimarzio mentioned is trying to achieve the sound of emgs. An evo would work just as well I bet. Bulb has done amazing clips with those lundgren m7 pickups- I bet the m6 would suit you great. DSS3 has told me that those bareknuckle pickups have unbelievable clarity- they're also quite expensive. If your definition of modern is emg, the deactivator is the choice. If that's not necessarily true, I prefer the tone of pretty much every other pup I mentioned in this paragraph.
I however always wanted clarity in a vintage voicing, and after trying the parrallel axis trembucker, jb, fullshred, alnico 2 pro, custom, and not being totally happy with any I gave duncan one last shot and found that the jazz set is fucking incredible for metal both neck and bridge. For you though, I would bet that the lundgren, fullshred, or deactivator would be the most solid choices.
Going to call bullshit on the clarity remark because the D Sonic, D Activator, and even a Super Distortion wired in parallel have given me great results even without a TS - I often won't use a TS on my DA, DS, or even sometimes the JB. A JB with an Alnico 8, or even stock with tight enough strings and dialed in right won't need anything, and I've taken a D Activator down really low just to see how it could handle things and the strings got floppy before I couldn't tell what notes were where.
As for the EMG vibe... they have the clarity and punch that I like in EMGs, but are for all other intents and purposes passive.
Jeff
As for the EMG vibe... they have the clarity and punch that I like in EMGs, but are for all other intents and purposes passive.
Jeff
- Oct 31, 2006
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Same way I'd recommend the Dimebucker for any tuning - not at all. A 500XL like Dime himself used wouldn't be that bad but I never understood why that Dimebucker was allowed to exist.
Also going to go out on a limb and recommend that if you go SD, have a Custom somewhere. Custom/Custom or Full Shred/Custom would be good.
Jeff
Also going to go out on a limb and recommend that if you go SD, have a Custom somewhere. Custom/Custom or Full Shred/Custom would be good.
Jeff
- Oct 31, 2006
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The deactivator looks like a good bet. Same with the duncan distortion. Numerous people have recommended the full shred. After comparing the distortion with the full shred, the full shred does sound cleaner/clearer. Ugh so many choices. I want a saturated sound. The emgs have that. The pickup I have now just doesn't sound saturated. I keep wanting to turn the gain up on my amp butfor recording it just doesnt sound good except for that saturation I get. When I hear samples of the emgs with not much gain, it still sounds saturated.
On the seymour duncan site, i'm a little confused on the samples. Some of the pickups like the blackouts and dimebucker are way louder and massive than the others even when other ones have the same or more output. Compare the duncan distortion to the dimebucker. The dimebucker kicks its ass. I'm not sure how much I can trust the samples though.
On the seymour duncan site, i'm a little confused on the samples. Some of the pickups like the blackouts and dimebucker are way louder and massive than the others even when other ones have the same or more output. Compare the duncan distortion to the dimebucker. The dimebucker kicks its ass. I'm not sure how much I can trust the samples though.
Duncan Distortion is failure incarnate. It's a JB with a ceramic magnet, so it just sounds more 'fake' and brittle. Fuck that shit with a cucumber on a ten-foot-pole. Also... don't trust the samples, look up who uses them and try to pick things up about the pickup's character from that.
Jeff
Jeff
Odd to hear you say that Jeff, seeing as how all the Dimarzio pickups you mentioned above (D Activator, D Sonic, Super Distortion) have ceramic magnets in 'em. Also, how come you wire your pickups in parallel? What's the difference in sound?
A lot of DiMarzios do, but they're suited for them. The JB just sounds like microwaved geriatric ass... brittle and flabby at the same time. Epic fail. It works for DiMarzios - and some people even put new magnets in those and get different sounds - but the Duncan Distortion just doesn't cut it compared to the JB. Really makes it a one-trick pony, and not a very good trick at that... if a JB doesn't go, I really doubt a Distortion would do better than a JB or a JB with an Alnico 8.
As for the parallel wiring, it is a different sound - all I can say is 'different'... just try it. Paul Gilbert did it to his Tone Zone pickups when he used those in high-gain stuff, Brian May had his guitars wired so that he could turn multiple coils on... really easy mod, also great for neck pickups. Quieter, smoother midrange, still noiseless but it seems to be a 'middle ground' between humbuckers and single coils in the best way possible. If you need wiring diagrams or pictures I can send them your way.
Jeff
As for the parallel wiring, it is a different sound - all I can say is 'different'... just try it. Paul Gilbert did it to his Tone Zone pickups when he used those in high-gain stuff, Brian May had his guitars wired so that he could turn multiple coils on... really easy mod, also great for neck pickups. Quieter, smoother midrange, still noiseless but it seems to be a 'middle ground' between humbuckers and single coils in the best way possible. If you need wiring diagrams or pictures I can send them your way.
Jeff
- Oct 31, 2006
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are the dimarzios coil tappable? I have a push/pull tone knob on my guitar that makes my stock duncan designed pickups single coil. Would I be able to do the same with a dimarzio such as the deactivatorx?
Hmm, maybe that explains why Paul Gilbert's tone always sounded so single-coil to me even though he uses humbuckers - thanks dude, but I think I'll pass on the parallel, cuz I don't think there are any redeeming qualities of a single coil in the bridge, and I assume you can't just wire one pickup in parallel. Does anyone have any thoughts on the Dimarzio Breed, by the way?
Oh, and isn't any 4-conductor pickup coil-tappable?
Oh, and isn't any 4-conductor pickup coil-tappable?
- Oct 31, 2006
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that's what I think. I know it says you can wire it so the middle position makes it a single coil so I imagine there is a way to make it single coil by a push/pull knob. Well i'm taking a trip to guitar center today. I can return the emg pickup I got from guitar.com to the store i'm going to if I do an exchange. It would be more convient that way instead of shipping the pickup back to where it was sent from. I think i'm going to go for the deactivator or the deactivator X.
Okay, once and for all...
Coil tapping is not coil splitting. Coil splitting is activating only one coil of a humbucker to get a clean sound, coil tapping is switching a section of wiring on and off so that one pickup can have a 'quieter' and a 'hotter' mode with different turn counts in the same pickup. Coil tapping is all sorts of useful but nobody uses it, and it is most certainly *NOT* coil splitting. Just had to get that out of the way...
That aside, any four-conductor humbucker (which is pretty much everything DiMarzio makes, and almost everything Seymour Duncan makes with the exception of attempts at having 'true' vintage one-conductor-and-braided-shield wiring, which I know you're not going to be interested in) is capable of coil-splitting. The way it works is that in a single coil you have a ground and two leads, one coming from each end of that coil. A humbucker will either have a ground and one lead, where one coil's lead has already been grounded and the humbucker has already been wired in series, a ground and two leads, where you have to ground one lead yourself and the humbucker is still wired series by default, or a ground and four leads, where you can use a switch (or reach into the guitar and tie things by hand, as I do when I'm lazy) to turn on each coil on its own, and to wire them both in series (where one coil's negative goes to ground, its positive goes to the other coil's negative, and the other coil's positive goes to the knobs/switches - the usual wiring) or parallel (where both coils negatives go to ground together and their positives are wired together and to the volume pot/switch/whatever - the other hum-cancelling option) as needed.
Metaltastic, you can wire one pickup in parallel. You can put a switch up for that sort of thing, you can leave one pickup parallel, you can even switch both pickups with one DPDT switch (like a toggle switch or push-pull pot)... you don't need to have both humbuckers wired the same way, they aren't dependent on each other at all.
Jeff
Coil tapping is not coil splitting. Coil splitting is activating only one coil of a humbucker to get a clean sound, coil tapping is switching a section of wiring on and off so that one pickup can have a 'quieter' and a 'hotter' mode with different turn counts in the same pickup. Coil tapping is all sorts of useful but nobody uses it, and it is most certainly *NOT* coil splitting. Just had to get that out of the way...
That aside, any four-conductor humbucker (which is pretty much everything DiMarzio makes, and almost everything Seymour Duncan makes with the exception of attempts at having 'true' vintage one-conductor-and-braided-shield wiring, which I know you're not going to be interested in) is capable of coil-splitting. The way it works is that in a single coil you have a ground and two leads, one coming from each end of that coil. A humbucker will either have a ground and one lead, where one coil's lead has already been grounded and the humbucker has already been wired in series, a ground and two leads, where you have to ground one lead yourself and the humbucker is still wired series by default, or a ground and four leads, where you can use a switch (or reach into the guitar and tie things by hand, as I do when I'm lazy) to turn on each coil on its own, and to wire them both in series (where one coil's negative goes to ground, its positive goes to the other coil's negative, and the other coil's positive goes to the knobs/switches - the usual wiring) or parallel (where both coils negatives go to ground together and their positives are wired together and to the volume pot/switch/whatever - the other hum-cancelling option) as needed.
Metaltastic, you can wire one pickup in parallel. You can put a switch up for that sort of thing, you can leave one pickup parallel, you can even switch both pickups with one DPDT switch (like a toggle switch or push-pull pot)... you don't need to have both humbuckers wired the same way, they aren't dependent on each other at all.
Jeff
- Oct 31, 2006
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what's the difference beween F spaced and normal? Dimarzio has that option for all of their pickups.
They are for different string spacings. The DiMarzio site explains it... either take measurements and go with that or go F-spaced to be safe. I'd strongly recommend just taking measurements.
Jeff
Jeff
- Oct 31, 2006
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Fender, actually, but close enough (who the fuck put Floyds on Gibsons?) if it helps you remember things.
Jeff
Jeff
Take measurements!
My 98 Les Paul requires an F-Spaced pickup. I was surprised since I though most Tune-O-Matic bridges were normal spaced.
My 98 Les Paul requires an F-Spaced pickup. I was surprised since I though most Tune-O-Matic bridges were normal spaced.
