De-Airing a Dimarzio Air Norton

[SweetClyde99]

I have an Air Norton lying around that didn’t do much for me as a neck pickup, and I’ve been thinking about converting it to a regular Norton to try in the bridge of another guitar. I couldn’t find much info on de-airing one of these online, but I opened up the pickup, and it looks like the air technology is just some narrower slugs, no keeper bar around the screws, and some plastic rings around a few of the slugs and screws so they don’t touch the magnet. I had a torn apart Duncan Designed neck humbucker in my parts box, so I pulled the keeper bar and slugs out of that and plan to put them in the soon-to-be Norton. That should be all I need to do, right? Is there anything I’m missing?

Thanks in advance.

[freefrog]

Is there anything I’m missing?

No, that's it, at first glance. Just be sure that magnetic poles + mag can't vibrate against each others or on the baseplate because of some micro gap and it should work fine. As the added keeper bar will rise a bit the inductance in the same time than surface magnetism will become stronger, the pickup should gain some muscle in this mod.

Let us know how it sounds once modified. Good luck!

[Supernautilus]

I don't know anything about Dimarzios so I looked up this "air technology". Fascinating. I didn't know that was a thing. I imagine you're correct that replacing the keeper bar and the slugs should do the trick but I'm not sure. I'd like to know your results though. I'm still learning about pickup construction myself and I'm just curious.

[skelt101]

I’d be surprised if you can re-use the Duncan keeper bar in the DiMarzio. Pretty sure the pole spacing is different between the two. Cool if you can though!

[freefrog]

Ah yep, poles spacing... had forgotten this one in my message of before my morning coffee. :-P

That said, misaligned screw poles might fit if the holes in the keeper bar are large enough, as it can be the case with such parts ... let's see if it's the case here. :-)

[SweetClyde99]

Good call on the screw spacing. That should have occurred to me as well. The Dimarzio screw spacing is indeed just a bit wider than the DD pickup’s keeper bar. I checked the screw spacing on the matching DD bridge pickup, and it’s trem spaced, so it’s even farther off. I’ll have to see if I have a file I can fit into the keeper bar to expand the last few screw holes.

[JB_From_Hell]

I put the magnet against the screws and a length of really fat guitar string between the magnet and slugs.

[SweetClyde99]

I did a little filing on the keeper bar, and it fits great. No trouble popping out the narrow slugs and putting in the full-thickness ones either. There is still a very narrow gap between the magnet and the slugs, so I might still try the guitar string trick mentioned above.

The only real problem is I’ve got a short somewhere. With the pickup apart all the coils measure right. When I screw everything together, I’m only getting a reading from one coil. Hopefully I can track down the problem without too much trouble, because I can see this getting tedious fast, and I’ve only got so much free time at the moment.

Thanks for all the replies.

[SweetClyde99]

i took the pickup apart and put it back together, and everything reads right with a multimeter now. Not sure what was going on before, but all the coils are working now. I didn’t have a spare section of string to close the gap between the magnet and the slugs, but I found a paper clip and straightened it out, and that worked great. I’ve got the pickup installed, and I’m impressed with it so far. I’ve only had time to play it through headphones in my recording setup so far though. I’m looking forward to trying it loud through an amp sometime this week.

[Demanic]

Refresh me, what does a Norton bridge sound like?

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