DMZ ADM DP202 Review

Chistopher

malapterurus electricus tonewood instigator
I finally got my Al Di Meola bridge pickup installed in my EVH 78 Eruption. I had to custom order it with nickel poles and non-trembucker spacing. Unfortunately I neglected to order the EVH baseplate, meaning I had to drill into the body and it will never fit in a Wolfgang.

I really like the sound of it. Most people I've seen describe it as a Tone Zone Lite or a dark fat PAF. I can understand both interpretations, but compared to the EVH Wolfgang (CC clone) it replaced, the most immediately noticeable EQ differences were it had more sparkle and firmer bass. The mids were less nasally. It kinda feels like a Custom Custom and a P90 had a kid.

The biggest thing that makes this pickup worth it is the dynamics. I have never heard a pickup respond in such a varied manner depending on where you pick and how hard you pick. I can go from dark cleanish pseudo-neck tones to barking crunchy bridge sounds without touching any controls. If you were to have a single pickup guitar, I'd say this is the one. It would probably do well with a Bluesbucker in the neck if you care for a neck pickup though.

Back to the spacing. As you can see in the picture, the polepieces don't line up under the strings at all. This is the same spacing as stock, and a F-Space or Trembucker won't fit unless you route out the body a little bit. It doesn't make too huge a difference for string to string balance.

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Thanks for the review! I've never tried that pickup, but have been an Al fan for years. I wouldn't worry about the poles unless there was a volume imbalance, so I think it is fine.
 
Oh man, seriously this thing is great. Best I can describe it is that it's got the dynamics and treble content of a PAF, and the bass and midrange warmth of a Super Distortion.

With just my single volume control, I can play just about anything on it.
 
I saw that review. In fact, that's just about the only review I've seen on it. I'd say if you hadn't written that review, I probably would have never pulled the trigger on it.

Any updates as far as your opinions on them are concerned?
 
I'm really happy if I was able to be a part of your journey in getting a new pickup in any way :) As for me, my journey with the DP201 and DP202 is still going strong. They're both still installed in my guitar. In fact, I have a few pickups I need to test and write reviews about, but honestly, I’ll try them on another guitar because I really don’t want to mess up the ADM set. The only thing I occasionally wonder is whether the neck version could maybe have just a tiny bit more pronounced treble :) But seriously, I'm very satisfied.
 
A month and a half later: This pickup is sick. This is the only guitar I've been playing for the last month and a half. The three biggest words I can use to describe it are Articulate, Warm, Dynamic. Clean I can get it to sound between a Tele and a PAF with just my picking. Under medium gain I can get any sound I want from it without having to bump the amp. I can go from VH1 to Santana without even touching my volume knob.
 
Interesting.

So, technically, the DP-202 seems to be a Dual-Resonance model [...]

EDIT- No it isn't. I had misread the specs of the neck model as being those of the bridge one. Made my rambling above nonsensical so I've cancelled it. :-)

Hex poles don't appear to me as preventing eddy currents in this DP-202 design since they protude from under a brass baseplate (at least it's the case with production models, I don't know if it's the same with a custom shop pickup).

I'd probably attribute the qualities noticed in this case to the wiring as much as to the pickup itself: the absence of tone pot and the very short wires between coils, pot and output jack potentially exhibit a very low stray capacitance. Paired with a not too powerful magnetic field, this spec alone would at least partly explain the ability of the PU to clean up and to respond to picking dynamics - CarlosG, take note! :-P

Anyway: keep enjoying with your DP202! Nothing is worth a stimulating association between a guitar and a pickup, whatever are the reasons behind this harmony. :-)
 
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Ah, yep, you're right, the bridge model DP202 seems to have symetrical coils... which makes me wonder where the analogy to the TZ comes from. :-/
 
I think the Tone Zone comparison is just a classic case things getting parroted. Maybe one person heard it that way or thought they did, and everyone repeated it. The pickup I'd most compare it to would be a warmer 78, which is in a completely different category.
 
In post 3, you were also describing the DP202 as having "the dynamics and treble content of a PAF, and the bass and midrange warmth of a Super Distortion". Totally makes sense, since it now appears to me as technically half way between PAF Pro and Super-Distortion in the DiMarzio line...

Basically, the brand inspires me mitigated feelings for various reasons that I won't detail here. But it would be unfair to minimize their inventivity when it comes to passive pickups and the impressive number of tricks / recipes / parts concretized by their products. Their "Do you still make" page names 197 models in 53 years of existence. That's almost 4 models per year...

Thx again for sharing your experience with one of them: interesting and useful reading IMHO.

Indifferent side note - Reading more attentively the (excellent) article shared by nienturi made me understand that comparing TZ to DP202 was initially empirical more than technical. Now, this analogy remains technically understandable if we consider that any humbucker with 4-cond cable has capacitively mismatched coils and consequently illustrates to some extent the "Dual-Resonance" idea (using different gauges for the coils being a way for DM to aggravate this difference or to correct it, depending on the design involved and the wiring applied)...
 
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