Masta' C
Well-known member
Just saw this on the DiMarzio site: LINK
Thought the section on the development of Eddie's signature MusicMan pickups was interesting:
Steve Blucher:
The first thing I heard at the studio was a track
using the neck position in one of the Music Man
prototypes. Ed said he really liked the sound.
The sound was very processed (chorus and delay)
and the actual sound quality of the pickup
was hard to discern. The pickup was a Duncan
Custom Custom (medium output, very warm
sound, Alnico 2 magnet). My initial idea of the
neck pickup sound Ed wanted immediately
went out the window.
I still thought it might be useful to install a prototype
f what eventually became The Humbucker From Hell
in one of the Music Mans. It was a lot brighter
and cleaner than the Duncan, and a lot different
from anything I’d previously heard of Ed’s playing. It
also cut through the effects better. Ed shook his
head and said, “Nah.” I also brought a bunch
of capacitors, to use as high-pass filters on the
neck pickup to cut down on mud, and a PAF
Pro for reference and a Double Whammy for
the bridge.
Ed had commented in several interviews that
he had avoided using a neck pickup because
EQing an amp for the bridge pickup always
made the neck pickup sound like mud. That
caused me to assume (incorrectly, it turned
out) that the neck pickup needed to be very
bright.
Ed liked the sound of the Custom Custom in the
neck position of the Music Man prototype and
was reluctant to change it. He suggested that
the production guitar could have a Duncan in
the neck and a DiMarzio in the bridge. Sterling
said that DiMarzio should be given the opportunity
to supply both. I think he liked the fact that
we wanted to go the extra mile to make Ed
happy and not just pull something off the shelf.
Ed plugged in his main touring guitar, the
striped 5150, so we could hear the bridge pickup
as a reference. The guitar had a damaged
Duncan JB in the bridge and a Kramer neck.
This became the starting point for the bridge
pickup sound he wanted.
Ed told me the pickup changed after the high
“E” string had caught under the lip of one of
the coils during a show. The sound changed in
a way he liked, and this became his favorite
pickup. When we compared it with a stock JB in one
of the Music Man prototypes, Ed didn’t like it
as much. The damaged JB sounded more solid
and focused, especially in the mids, and the
highs were fatter. Ed wanted me to make the new
DiMarzio bridge pickup to be as good or better than
the damaged JB.
After assuring him I wouldn’t change or damage it,
I asked Ed if he would let me remove the
pickup to measure it. The DC resistance of a
JB reads about 16.4K Ohms. Ed’s pickup measured
180K Ohms! Measuring the coils individually produced
a normal reading on one coil (8K Ohms) and about
160K Ohms on the other. (Something peculiar happened
when they were connected.) I think the 160K coil, being
neither open nor shorted out, was functioning
as an inductor as well as a standard coil. The
damaged coil was clearly functioning, as the
pickup still cancelled 60-cycle hum as well.
Larry DiMarzio:
When Steve told me that the pickup still worked but was
reading 180K, I said, “Great, we’re going to build Eddie
Van Halen a broken pickup?”
Steve Blucher:
At some point in the afternoon, everyone in
the studio took a break and went outside. (I remember
some talk about doing wheelies in the parking lot.)
I stayed in the studio and took the opportunity to
check out the red striped guitar. What struck me
immediately was how easily it played and how good it
sounded acoustically; and the guitar had great sustain
up and down the neck.
The neck was very straight, and the action was
low. The frets were pretty worn, but there was
no pitting and no string buzz. Acoustically, the
guitar had a very even balance both across
the strings and all the way up the neck.
This kind of response generally only happens
when a guitar has been played for a long time.
The studio day ended when Valerie came over
from the house, telling Ed that dinner would be
ready soon.
Larry DiMarzio:
When Steve got back to New York, all new
prototyping got underway. We ended up with
5 bridge prototypes and 6 neck prototype
pickups, and everything was rushed to Music
Man as soon as they were finished. Within a
few days, one of the new neck prototypes hit
the mark displacing the Custom Custom. I felt
Duncan was using AL2 to mimic old demagnetized
Gibson pickups, but every time Eddie got
a drill near it, the pickup died. The new DiMarzio
neck pickup incorporated an invention that
Steve devised to reduce string-pull and soften
the magnetic field.
Steve Blucher:
Ed was happy with the softer and quieter
sound of the Alnico 2 in the neck position. My
thinking was AL2 was unstable, and when Ed ran
a power drill or Ebow over the guitar, the pickup
would begin to demagnetize.The solution was
to use a fully charged AL5 magnet but create
air gaps to separate the magnet away from the
pole pieces. This new design yielded the same
gauss at the pole piece as AL2 while producing
a stable magnetic field at the same time.
The air gap pickup had another benefit, it was
clearer and more open than an AL2 pickup.
I felt that would be a better choice for Ed’s
neck position and DiMarzio got a patent for
the new invention. (US5399802A.)
Side note: We’ve continued to use the same
or additional patent technology on lots of
other DiMarzio designs over the years:
better, Ed still preferred the damaged pickup.
Larry DiMarzio:
Steve got to work on two new bridge designs. One
included an idea he had for unbalancing the coils
(pickup A) and the other was a more traditional
winding style (pickup B). Both had more of the mids
and warm highs that Ed wanted, and magnetically
both used fully charged AL5 without an air gap.
DiMarzio had a test guitar that let you pull
pickups in and out quickly and we compared
them before sending them to Eddie. I thought
Steve’s new designs were the best that I heard
and much better than the JB that was also being
considered. I liked the “E”, “B”, and “G” strings on
the JB but the wound strings got too muddy for my taste.
Both of Steve’s new designs kept the wound strings
pristine by comparison. I preferred the mixed coil version
(pickup A) and bet Steve that would be Ed’s choice.
Sterling told me that both of the new bridge
pickups were loaded into Music Man guitars and
Ed really liked both of the new pickups. Dudley,
Sterling, Eddie and Steve Lukather were all playing
the guitars. They were stuck and Ed couldn’t
make up his mind which he liked better. He was
switching back and forth and Luke said “One,
that one” pointing at the the guitar with Pickup B.
So pickup A was rejected by a hair and it was
Steve Lukather who made the final call. (Luke
still has the number 3 Music Man Van Halen.)
I loved pickup A, the one that wasn’t chosen,
and released it as part of the DiMarzio line later
that year naming it The Tone Zone.
Steve Blucher:
The Tone Zone is louder, but the pickup
in the Music Man has warmer, more focused
mids, pretty similar to the damaged pickup I
heard at the studio.
----
The Tone Zone
Bass: 8.5 Mid: 8.5 Treble: 5
Output: 375 DC Resistance: ~17.3K Ohms
US Pat. 4,501,185 (<--dual resonance, aka: mis-matched coils)
MM/EVH Bridge
Bass: 8.5 Mid: 8 Treble: 5.5
Output: 345 DC Resistance: ~17K Ohms
US Pat. 5,39,9802 (<-- "air" technology, aka: gaps between the magnet and pole pieces)
Thought the section on the development of Eddie's signature MusicMan pickups was interesting:
Steve Blucher:
The first thing I heard at the studio was a track
using the neck position in one of the Music Man
prototypes. Ed said he really liked the sound.
The sound was very processed (chorus and delay)
and the actual sound quality of the pickup
was hard to discern. The pickup was a Duncan
Custom Custom (medium output, very warm
sound, Alnico 2 magnet). My initial idea of the
neck pickup sound Ed wanted immediately
went out the window.
I still thought it might be useful to install a prototype
f what eventually became The Humbucker From Hell
in one of the Music Mans. It was a lot brighter
and cleaner than the Duncan, and a lot different
from anything I’d previously heard of Ed’s playing. It
also cut through the effects better. Ed shook his
head and said, “Nah.” I also brought a bunch
of capacitors, to use as high-pass filters on the
neck pickup to cut down on mud, and a PAF
Pro for reference and a Double Whammy for
the bridge.
Ed had commented in several interviews that
he had avoided using a neck pickup because
EQing an amp for the bridge pickup always
made the neck pickup sound like mud. That
caused me to assume (incorrectly, it turned
out) that the neck pickup needed to be very
bright.
Ed liked the sound of the Custom Custom in the
neck position of the Music Man prototype and
was reluctant to change it. He suggested that
the production guitar could have a Duncan in
the neck and a DiMarzio in the bridge. Sterling
said that DiMarzio should be given the opportunity
to supply both. I think he liked the fact that
we wanted to go the extra mile to make Ed
happy and not just pull something off the shelf.
Ed plugged in his main touring guitar, the
striped 5150, so we could hear the bridge pickup
as a reference. The guitar had a damaged
Duncan JB in the bridge and a Kramer neck.
This became the starting point for the bridge
pickup sound he wanted.
Ed told me the pickup changed after the high
“E” string had caught under the lip of one of
the coils during a show. The sound changed in
a way he liked, and this became his favorite
pickup. When we compared it with a stock JB in one
of the Music Man prototypes, Ed didn’t like it
as much. The damaged JB sounded more solid
and focused, especially in the mids, and the
highs were fatter. Ed wanted me to make the new
DiMarzio bridge pickup to be as good or better than
the damaged JB.
After assuring him I wouldn’t change or damage it,
I asked Ed if he would let me remove the
pickup to measure it. The DC resistance of a
JB reads about 16.4K Ohms. Ed’s pickup measured
180K Ohms! Measuring the coils individually produced
a normal reading on one coil (8K Ohms) and about
160K Ohms on the other. (Something peculiar happened
when they were connected.) I think the 160K coil, being
neither open nor shorted out, was functioning
as an inductor as well as a standard coil. The
damaged coil was clearly functioning, as the
pickup still cancelled 60-cycle hum as well.
Larry DiMarzio:
When Steve told me that the pickup still worked but was
reading 180K, I said, “Great, we’re going to build Eddie
Van Halen a broken pickup?”
Steve Blucher:
At some point in the afternoon, everyone in
the studio took a break and went outside. (I remember
some talk about doing wheelies in the parking lot.)
I stayed in the studio and took the opportunity to
check out the red striped guitar. What struck me
immediately was how easily it played and how good it
sounded acoustically; and the guitar had great sustain
up and down the neck.
The neck was very straight, and the action was
low. The frets were pretty worn, but there was
no pitting and no string buzz. Acoustically, the
guitar had a very even balance both across
the strings and all the way up the neck.
This kind of response generally only happens
when a guitar has been played for a long time.
The studio day ended when Valerie came over
from the house, telling Ed that dinner would be
ready soon.
Larry DiMarzio:
When Steve got back to New York, all new
prototyping got underway. We ended up with
5 bridge prototypes and 6 neck prototype
pickups, and everything was rushed to Music
Man as soon as they were finished. Within a
few days, one of the new neck prototypes hit
the mark displacing the Custom Custom. I felt
Duncan was using AL2 to mimic old demagnetized
Gibson pickups, but every time Eddie got
a drill near it, the pickup died. The new DiMarzio
neck pickup incorporated an invention that
Steve devised to reduce string-pull and soften
the magnetic field.
Steve Blucher:
Ed was happy with the softer and quieter
sound of the Alnico 2 in the neck position. My
thinking was AL2 was unstable, and when Ed ran
a power drill or Ebow over the guitar, the pickup
would begin to demagnetize.The solution was
to use a fully charged AL5 magnet but create
air gaps to separate the magnet away from the
pole pieces. This new design yielded the same
gauss at the pole piece as AL2 while producing
a stable magnetic field at the same time.
The air gap pickup had another benefit, it was
clearer and more open than an AL2 pickup.
I felt that would be a better choice for Ed’s
neck position and DiMarzio got a patent for
the new invention. (US5399802A.)
Side note: We’ve continued to use the same
or additional patent technology on lots of
other DiMarzio designs over the years:
- Air Norton
- Air Zone
- Air Classic
- PAF 36th Anniversary
- PAF Bridge model (DP103 & DP223)
- Fortitude Bridge
- LiquiFire
- Pandemonium Neck
- AT-1
- Ibanez Kiko Loureiro signature guitar pickups
better, Ed still preferred the damaged pickup.
Larry DiMarzio:
Steve got to work on two new bridge designs. One
included an idea he had for unbalancing the coils
(pickup A) and the other was a more traditional
winding style (pickup B). Both had more of the mids
and warm highs that Ed wanted, and magnetically
both used fully charged AL5 without an air gap.
DiMarzio had a test guitar that let you pull
pickups in and out quickly and we compared
them before sending them to Eddie. I thought
Steve’s new designs were the best that I heard
and much better than the JB that was also being
considered. I liked the “E”, “B”, and “G” strings on
the JB but the wound strings got too muddy for my taste.
Both of Steve’s new designs kept the wound strings
pristine by comparison. I preferred the mixed coil version
(pickup A) and bet Steve that would be Ed’s choice.
Sterling told me that both of the new bridge
pickups were loaded into Music Man guitars and
Ed really liked both of the new pickups. Dudley,
Sterling, Eddie and Steve Lukather were all playing
the guitars. They were stuck and Ed couldn’t
make up his mind which he liked better. He was
switching back and forth and Luke said “One,
that one” pointing at the the guitar with Pickup B.
So pickup A was rejected by a hair and it was
Steve Lukather who made the final call. (Luke
still has the number 3 Music Man Van Halen.)
I loved pickup A, the one that wasn’t chosen,
and released it as part of the DiMarzio line later
that year naming it The Tone Zone.
Steve Blucher:
The Tone Zone is louder, but the pickup
in the Music Man has warmer, more focused
mids, pretty similar to the damaged pickup I
heard at the studio.
----
The Tone Zone
Bass: 8.5 Mid: 8.5 Treble: 5
Output: 375 DC Resistance: ~17.3K Ohms
US Pat. 4,501,185 (<--dual resonance, aka: mis-matched coils)
MM/EVH Bridge
Bass: 8.5 Mid: 8 Treble: 5.5
Output: 345 DC Resistance: ~17K Ohms
US Pat. 5,39,9802 (<-- "air" technology, aka: gaps between the magnet and pole pieces)
