Dimarzio Super Distortion and SD Invader orientation

[freefrog]

Re: Dimarzio Super Distortion and SD Invader orientation

Hi Dale, sunday morning answer:

@freefrog

I don't have resistors per se lying around so I soldered/wired a 500kΩ tone pot across hot and ground. I can only assume this is the same as having a tone control though not??? Must say it did make a BIT of a difference i.e. even with it wide open it tames the shrillness a little. But a LITTLE is all.

Have you tried to decrease the resistance to 250k by lowering the pot to 6/10 or 5/10?

Anyway: until we lower a tone control below 3.5/10, its influence has not much to do with the cap connected to it and is mostly due to the resistive load involved. And I wouldn’t describe a tone pot @ 5/10 as making a little difference.

This pic shows what I’m talking about: https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/ToneControlGraph.jpg

Now, that’s independently of the sonic "standardization" due to any high gain chain (and/or to digital modeling, which tends IMHO to cancel the differences coming from “passive electronics”, as I've already stated)...

FWIW (my 2 cents just about this question of resistance).

ODD thing is this: the white Jackon is VERY light (as in weight) compared to the other two. The black Jackson is a heavy (as in weight) guitar and the Blaze even heavier (as in weight) (and these are my "dark" guitars). When I ordered the white Jackson I was told that it has an ALDER body (but the specs. on Jackson's website say different so who the hell knows). Not sure if this means anything. (Maybe they ran out of wood and used PINE!!! LOL!!!). The other funny thing is that the white Jackson was held up for a few weeks by CITES. This never happened with my other two guitars.

Pine is/was used to build some Telecasters and is an excellent tonewood - albeit a bit too soft to resist to dings.

Now and about this question of woods, two other cents of mine...

I've buit myself a few guitars. Their tremolos units have more influence IMHO/IME than their woods when it comes to the overall EQing curve (the global amount of bass and treble; IME, woods have most of the time a more subtle influence, on dynamics and mid "comb filtering").

I remember a guitar made in my country that I had in maintenance: Lag Roxane, premium tonewoods (mahogany body and neck, maple top). It was fitted with a JB but sounded incredibly bright and thin... because of the Floyd Rose trem.


Hey, this morning, I've posted 4 CENTS of rambling! It's surely worthless in your quest of sonic gold but at least I'll have tried to share something.

Have a nice day and may the force be with you.

FF

 

[dpaterson]

Re: Dimarzio Super Distortion and SD Invader orientation

Good (Sunday) morning.

Yip. I turned the pot. to 50% and lower (and higher). Definitely makes a difference. Not by much though. Seems the parallel vs. series wiring of the pickup makes the biggest difference.

I agree about the tone pot. at 5/10 making a big difference i.e. just not on this guitar and with this experiment is all.

Cannot comment on any of this stuff re: electronics and digital modelling i.e. don't know enough about it.

I was JOKING about the pine!!! LOL!!! Didn't know it was ever used for guitar bodies!!! But all I do know is that the white Jackson is a LOT lighter in weight than the other two. And that's the guitar with "body" (and mids.). Just seems interesting to me that the HEAVY guitars are suffering from this "affliction" of "scooped" tones and not the white one.

Interesting that you mention the Floyd. I replaced the Floyd on this black Jackson with a genuine Floyd and with a brass sustain block not too long ago. The sustain block is larger than the original (alloy) sustain block that is stock with the Jackson Licensed Floyd. I WONDER!!! Maybe certain guitars are designed with a very specific spec. in mind and don't take kindly to being modded in a drastic way??? Maybe I should just put this black Jackson back to all its original parts and get another Jackson (maybe the Pro Series this time with Alder body FOR SURE and Maple fretboard). Doesn't explain why the Blaze sounds the same as the black Jackson and very different from the white Jackson though.

But THANKS (for your 4 CENTS!!! Worth a lot more to me than that I assure you!!!).

Regards,

Dale.

 

[Jack_TriPpEr]

Re: Dimarzio Super Distortion and SD Invader orientation

Hello again everyone.

Thanks (as usual).

@Dave Locher

Nope. New pickup (from Amazon). All nicely boxed and sealed upon arrival.

As I said: too many good things said about this pickup for it to be the pickup. It's this guitar (black Jackson) I reckon. That being said: I don't have the experience (guitars are the one thing I've STAYED AWAY from modding up until now) BUT I don't know if it's possible to get a guitar that in and of itself distorts EVERYTHING. As I noted and truth be told: this is actually my favorite guitar (for many a reason) but it's always been "heavy" and "overpowering". I used to joke and say "it has a life of its own". I thought this DM SD would "clear" things up a bit but it's WAY "more" now (especially with the pickup in series). When I first got my Blaze we tested it side-by-side with my black Jackson on a Kemper. Had to take the gain down a LOT with the black Jackson i.e. it just blew everything away (and that was with the stock pickup at the time). But it's weird: it's "bright" and "dark" at the same time.

Anyways. The pickup is now wired in parallel and I'm going to record some little snippets today and will post them on SoundCloud. Try as I might I don't seem to be able to describe what's going on. Soldering is fine I think (although as I noted above: these Alpha pots. are not filling me with confidence at this time) (but even wired direct to the instrument jack with no volume pot. things sound the same).

@kingswebe

Well I was hoping anyway (about the "odd" wiring scheme in my white Jackson).

Black Jackson has a Poplar body with Maple neck and Rosewood fretboard.

White Jackson has a Poplar body with Maple neck and Maple fretboard.

Blaze has Honduras Mahogany body with Maple neck and Ebony fretboard.

ODD thing is this: the white Jackon is VERY light (as in weight) compared to the other two. The black Jackson is a heavy (as in weight) guitar and the Blaze even heavier (as in weight) (and these are my "dark" guitars). When I ordered the white Jackson I was told that it has an ALDER body (but the specs. on Jackson's website say different so who the hell knows). Not sure if this means anything. (Maybe they ran out of wood and used PINE!!! LOL!!!). The other funny thing is that the white Jackson was held up for a few weeks by CITES. This never happened with my other two guitars.

Regards,

Dale.

As i suspected, the guitar that seems to be cloest to the sound you after - the white one - is made of alder. Most superstrats in the early 80s era were made of alder, so alder is most likely what that guitar in that Dio live concert video link that you provided and are referencing, is made of. While some people hold that the type of wood that a guitar is comprised of has no significant impact on the sound of the guitar, there is a large number of guitarists -inckuding luthiers - that feel it does. I myself am one of them. When i was on my own tone hunt a few years back, i found that a guitar made of mahogany best produced the particular tone i wanted. I recommend you - at least for now - concentrate your efforts on the white jackson or at least a superstrat that is made of alder.

https://blog.andertons.co.uk/learn/electric-guitar-tonewood-guide

 

[freefrog]

Re: Dimarzio Super Distortion and SD Invader orientation

Seems the parallel vs. series wiring of the pickup makes the biggest difference.

You were asking elswhere what parallel wiring is actually doing...

My answer: it divides (roughly by FOUR) the inductance of any humbucker. Hence a weaker output and higher pitched resonant peak... The difference looks a bit like this: http://guitardesignreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Tone-chain-pickup-chart.png

But with any passive pickup, the "lack" of stray capacitance ALSO causes a higher pitched resonant peak, as shown by the fig. 8 & 15 in this page: http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/

Hence my initial explanations in you other thread about cable capacitance, that a radio transmitter might erase with an unexpected brightening effect (sorry to ramble about that).

Have a nice day,

FF

EDIT:

Maybe certain guitars are designed with a very specific spec. in mind and don't take kindly to being modded in a drastic way???

BTW and FWIW, I've passed hours to "tune" acoustically electric guitars thanks to the hardware involved... and there's no magical recipe IMHO/IME.
While each "tonewood" has certainly a generic tonal profile, each bit of wood is necessarily unique and cooperates (or not) in a singular way with the other components of the guitar...
I've been in situations where a maple neck + an ash body sounded dead together, while the same neck with another ash body was tonally alive...
And in many cases, I've found that a given combination of hardware was the cure needed for this or that guitar... but this combination is different in each case (an aluminium tailpiece aleviating nicely the heavy bassrange of a Les Paul might be the worst solution for the next LP, for example).

 

[dpaterson]

Re: Dimarzio Super Distortion and SD Invader orientation

As i suspected, the guitar that seems to be cloest to the sound you after - the white one - is made of alder. Most superstrats in the early 80s era were made of alder, so alder is most likely what that guitar in that Dio live concert video link that you provided and are referencing, is made of. While some people hold that the type of wood that a guitar is comprised of has no significant impact on the sound of the guitar, there is a large number of guitarists -inckuding luthiers - that feel it does. I myself am one of them. When i was on my own tone hunt a few years back, i found that a guitar made of mahogany best produced the particular tone i wanted. I recommend you - at least for now - concentrate your efforts on the white jackson or at least a superstrat that is made of alder.

https://blog.andertons.co.uk/learn/electric-guitar-tonewood-guide

Well I myself only SUSPECT it's made of Alder because that's what I was told when I ordered it (and the reason why I ordered it i.e. Alder body and Maple fretboard). But Jackson's own website and specs. for this model say different. All I know is that it's much lighter in weight than the other two guitars (is Alder lighter in weight than say Mahogany)???

@freefrog:

Some amazing info. and thank you.

Cannot comment because I don't know enough about the subjects at hand. But the recent posts on this thread, including yours obviously, explain a lot.

At this point: I reckon I'll wait for the SD Invader to arrive and see what that's like. As noted: I doubt very much (as noted on my other thread) that given my current setup I'm not going to hear any major difference or improvement in tone with the black Jackson regardless of pickup. But at least I can say I've done the experiment(s) and testing (and if nothing else: I now know how to change a pickup!!! LOL!!!).

Again (as noted on my other thread too): MUCH EXTREMELY worthwhile and valuable information on BOTH threads.

And I thank you all.

Regards,

Dale.

P.S.

Just found a whole bunch of info. on the different woods (was looking for weights). And the winner is??? ALDER!!! Both Poplar and Mahogany are heavier in weight than Alder!!! Guess I got lucky or Jackson changed the specs. after I got my white Jackson. And everywhere I look: the characteristics of Alder as described fit 100% perfect to my white Jackson's tone.

 

[Jack_TriPpEr]

Re: Dimarzio Super Distortion and SD Invader orientation

Dale, i saw this product news announcement and thought of you - cheers.

https://www.premierguitar.com/articl...diver-les-paul

Well I myself only SUSPECT it's made of Alder because that's what I was told when I ordered it (and the reason why I ordered it i.e. Alder body and Maple fretboard). But Jackson's own website and specs. for this model say different. All I know is that it's much lighter in weight than the other two guitars (is Alder lighter in weight than say Mahogany)???

@freefrog:

Some amazing info. and thank you.

Cannot comment because I don't know enough about the subjects at hand. But the recent posts on this thread, including yours obviously, explain a lot.

At this point: I reckon I'll wait for the SD Invader to arrive and see what that's like. As noted: I doubt very much (as noted on my other thread) that given my current setup I'm not going to hear any major difference or improvement in tone with the black Jackson regardless of pickup. But at least I can say I've done the experiment(s) and testing (and if nothing else: I now know how to change a pickup!!! LOL!!!).

Again (as noted on my other thread too): MUCH EXTREMELY worthwhile and valuable information on BOTH threads.

And I thank you all.

Regards,

Dale.

P.S.

Just found a whole bunch of info. on the different woods (was looking for weights). And the winner is??? ALDER!!! Both Poplar and Mahogany are heavier in weight than Alder!!! Guess I got lucky or Jackson changed the specs. after I got my white Jackson. And everywhere I look: the characteristics of Alder as described fit 100% perfect to my white Jackson's tone.