Review of Dimarzio's Occult Classic 7-String Set

[Mr. B]

I have had the set installed for a month or so, so I thought I would post my review of the pickup set.
I have the Occult Classic set in a 26.5 scale Ibanez RG with Swamp Ash body and Maple neck.
I had the Ionizer set in the guitar previously and thought they were great, but maybe a bit too clinical and precise for that guitar, which is already bright and clean sounding.
Keep in mind that I play mostly old-school metal, Hair Metal, and Nili Brosh / Guthrie Govan / Andy Timmons / Marco Sfogli shred kinda stuff. I don't really have a good feel for how well these pickups would work for death metal chugging or Djent.

 

[Mr. B]

Dimarzio Occult Classic 7-string Pickup Set:

Bridge: Sounds and feels like a more overall-balanced Super Distortion with a slightly tighter bass end. It thrives on higher gain, and has a bit of hair to the tone like the Super D. Every string has good balance in the overall sound of a chord. Often the middle few strings on a 7-string can sonically blend together and lose their individuality, especially in chords, but that is not the case here. The output readings that Dimarzio publishes for this set is accurate. The bridge is noticeably more powerful than the Neck. If you like the old-school "Dimarzio Thing" that a lot of their pickups have (think Super-D, Tone Zone, Fred, Air Zone) then you will probably like this pickup. If you hate every one I just mentioned, then it may not be for you.

Neck- The neck sounds and feels like the Dimarzio PAF Pro and Humbucker-from-Hell had a baby together, and it is this pickup. It keeps the tighter low-end of the Humbucker from Hell, but has some of that glassy single coil character of the Paf Pro on the top end. Chugging on the low end of my 7-string, if you switch from the bridge p'up to the neck p'up it sounds like you just switched from running series to parallel on the same pickup. Very similar, with just a bit of the tonal edge sanded off. Playing solos on up toward the higher end of the fretboard, the neck has a very different tone than the bridge. Up high, the bridge pickup is more like a Super-D or a hairier grittier Tone Zone, but the neck has that brighter glassy strat like tone, like the Paf Pro. The neck pickup is also very chimey clean, and kinda makes me think that is what it was mainly designed for. I don't play a lot of clean stuff on my Ibanez, but it works well for that sort of pristine chimey clean setting.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

What you’re saying makes a lot of sense, considering the signature artist. I used the Imperium bridge in my 7 string RG, loved it.