Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

[Masta' C]

The Demon/JB hybrid has been rumored throughout the forum's history, but I can't find any accounts from someone who has actually seen and experienced this elusive beast.

Here's the deal:

I love the Demon for its chunky and percussive bottom end, screaming harmonics and snappy single-coil openness, but it can come off a bit shrill and thin up top and I always wished it had 10-20% more output.

I love the JB for its fluid soloing voice, full-bodied harmonics and high-output rock tone, but the bottom end can become a little muddled on some guitars and, while the upper-mids are fairly strident, they don't breathe like the Demon does.

Seeing as how they are both built around the same A5 magnet to begin with (as opposed to something like the 59/Custom), a hybrid of the Demon and JB sounds like the perfect pickup!

Has anyone here been lucky enough to try one?

 

[\m/(00)\m/]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

Oooh this does sound interesting! I’d love to try one


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Clint 55]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I love my Super D/JB hybrid. Kind of similar.

 

[Masta' C]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I love my Super D/JB hybrid. Kind of similar.

That sounds like a truly interesting combo!

However, I doubt it's very close to the JB/Demon hybrid. The Super D has different coil geometry and uses a thinner gauge wire (43.5-44 AWG vs 43 AWG on the Demon)

 

[Clint 55]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

Yeah the Super D is pretty different than the Demon. The similarity of the hybrid is the Super D is cooler than the JB and the Super D also has allen screws. I don't see any way a JB/Demon could sound bad if you were to make one.

 

[Masta' C]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

Many people have mentioned or suggested a Demon/JB hybrid, but it seems virtually no one has put one together

Hoping someone out there secretly has and is willing to step out of the darkness to give us some insights!

I'd love to know how the hybrid compares to each pickup on its own...

 

[Aceman]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I am not feeling the Demon/JB hybrid. I just can't say why...no idea.

A hotter Demon - now that I could dig!

 

[chadd]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I am not feeling the Demon/JB hybrid. I just can't say why...no idea.

A hotter Demon - now that I could dig!

The OG El Diablo at less than custom shop pricing would be nice

 

[orpheo]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I have tried it once but I didn't like it. It was a fairly honky pickup. The Demon works so well because it is an underwound 43awg coil; that gives it its tight bottom end and glassy voice. The Demon hybrids I tried which work really well are:

Demon + Sh6N (a5 and double ceramic). The A5 is biting, crunchy, lots of treble and a lot of cut, percusiveness. like a pegasus but more open, more organic. Not really fluid. The ceramic made it more fluid, more chunky in the bottom end and a lot more powerful.

Demon+Seth Lover (a5 and A2). Glassiness, superresponsive to the tone pot, more open than a 59, not nearly as honky. great in a V or SG. Felt like instant Michael Schenker mojo. The A2 version is sweeter and fatter. It felt like the Air Norton by Dimarzio, but with a (tonal) muffin top. Just a bit fatter around the edges without losing articulation. Makes sense because the Seth is GREAT in the neck for vintage voices, the Demon is great in the neck when you want to go a bit more modern and hotter.

But with the JB? Not so much. The inducances differ too much. IMHO.

Demon hybrids on my bucket list?

demon + pegasus
Demon + perpetual burn

(conversely, pegasus+perpetual burn seems to be a great match too; on paper...).

 

[Masta' C]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I have tried it once but I didn't like it. It was a fairly honky pickup. The Demon works so well because it is an underwound 43awg coil; that gives it its tight bottom end and glassy voice...But with the JB? Not so much. The inducances differ too much. IMHO.

Hmm, that's an interesting observation!

We know that the 59/Custom combo works well. According to the best sources I can find, the Custom is in the ballpark of 8.5H and the 59 is around 5.0H. That's a difference of ~3.5 Henries.

The JB is just above the Custom at around 8.6H, but the Demon is only 4.4H or so, which surprised me! Perhaps that gap, which is around 4.2H if the various sources are correct, is simply too great, as you discovered!

That makes me think a JB/SH-6n hybrid might be a better target in this case. The SH-6n is around 5.5H, so the difference is just over 3H. I bet that's a sweet spot! Black Winter neck might be another option...Too bad neither are available in trem-spacing! :disappoin

 

[orpheo]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

The SH6N/JB might work well, but I'm not sure, to be honest. I have a billion hypotheses as to how this works but I only know that you don't want to match coils that are too far off the sweetspot of the wire gauge you use (for example: 44 awg has a sweet spot of approximately 8K per coil, 43 awg 7K, 42awg 4K). veer off too far from those numbers when matching and you get weird stuff. 42 + 44 awg yields weird results, same as using one overwound and one underwound coil with different wire gauges.

1 coil overwound (say, a custom but with 200 more turns or so) and 1 underwound coil (like a Demon), will sound great actually. that's fine.

 

[Discharged]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

The Demon is a 5,000 turns of #43AWG per coil. Wound pretty close to a T-Top specs-wise, just with thinner wire.

The Custom and Full Shred Bridge is 7,000 turns of #43AWG per coil.

/Peter

/Peter

 

[Masta' C]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

...Wound pretty close to a T-Top specs-wise, just with thinner wire.

So, in truly technical terms, not the same at all...ha ha!

 

[blueman335]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

Since a HB's tone comes from both the individual coils, and how they react with each other, when they're unbalanced some of the stronger coil's individual characteristics leak thru. There's a lot going on with the humbucker effect merged with a certain amount of uncancelled single coil tone. The hybrids I've made have been brighter and thinner than either parent HB. For me that's ideal in the neck slot. When the difference between coils is large enough, the hybrid will be brighter than the weaker parent HB, even though the hybrid technically has a higher resistance, because the humbucker effect of matched coils has been reduced.

In the bridge slot, hybrids may not give what you expect, or even want. They may lose some desirable characteristics that came from matched coils. Combining coils from a Demon & a JB doesn't mean you're going to get something in between, because you've altered a key part of why they sound like they do: balanced coils. The only way to be sure is to try it yourself. Like with any PU, what works for one player may not for another for a variety of reasons.

 

[Masta' C]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I have a white TB-4 ripe for some hacking into a pair of black/white zebra hybrid goddesses...Just have to figure out what I would mate it with.

How 'bout a JB/ToneZone hybrid? :laughing: I swear I've heard of that being done at some point

Clint 55, what was the process like for mounting the Super D coil on the same baseplate as the JB?

Still like the idea of pairing the JB with something like the SH-6n, though. Has anyone mounted a reg-spaced coil on the Trembucker baseplate or vice versa?

 

[jeremy]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

i dont know if you can mix trembucker and reg spaced coils on the same baseplate. obviously the screw coil will only fit on its proper plate but i think the screws that hold the coil to the plate would be in the wrong place for the stud coil

 

[Clint 55]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

Clint 55, what was the process like for mounting the Super D coil on the same baseplate as the JB?

The Dimarzio matched up fine with the Duncan baseplate. I had to do some doctoring because the Duncan coil is shorter than the Dimarzio so I put pieces of a pick between the mag and JB to raise it to sit flush with the Super D.

 

[Masta' C]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

Were you using Trem/F-spaced pickups or Reg spaced? I'm assuming Regular

 

[Clint 55]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I used trem spaced. The JB bobbin is wider and the screws are farther apart even though they're both trem spaced.

 

[SweetClyde99]

Re: Demon/JB Hybrid...I know you're out there!

I’ve got a JB/Full Shred hybrid in the bridge of an Epiphone Les Paul that I think sounds really good, if you’re looking for ideas.