Re: Pickups for Basswood (for shred)
I have DiMarzio Steve Special bridge and Air Norton neck in my basswood Ibanez JPM (pretty much an RG)....
The air norton is awesome, I think you might like it....it has a nice smooth, balanced warm tone but doesn't get muddy...even under high gain...it has wonderful dynamics, very expressive and responsive to your pick attack....
Now the Steve's Special...it's a good pup, with the right amp...it's VERY hot.....it has a mid range scoop, so when soloing if you don't have a mid heavy amp or a way to boost your mids the Steve will sound too thin IMO... but with the right set-up it rocks:headbang: It's very good for heavy riffing as well, but I think it's more of a lead player's pickup... It has kind of a uniqueness to it... It was designed for John Petrucci and he uses Mesa amps...here's the description from dimarzio:
"Steve's Special™ is a non-traditional approach to high-output bridge humbucking pickup design. Hot humbuckers usually concentrate most of the pickup's power in a narrow frequency bandwidth for maximum impact. Using our patented dual-resonance design, Steve's Special™ takes the opposite path, spreading the sound over a broad range. Bass and treble frequencies are boosted while the mids are pulled back, so the pickup's power doesn't kick a high-gain amp into overdrive as easily. This makes Steve's Special™ a good choice for both fast soloing and clean chords, because individual notes won't smear together with heavy overdrive, and clean sounds have an almost "hi-fi" quality. Tech Talk: Clean overdrive with high-gain amps. Very effective in Dual Sound¨ and coil splitting clean modes. For soloing, this is a very good pickup to play with a midrange-heavy amp: the mid-scoop in the pickup's sound keeps the initial pick attack clean, and the notes don't run together as much with legato playing, even with heavy overdrive."
Both these pups sound great when split as well...especially the 2 inner coils in parallel...
wait a minute...have I been supporting dimarzio. :nervous: ..... :wall:
