Thicker-sounding pickups for Strandberg Boden Standard 6: Dimarzio Breed?

[eclecticsynergy]

Dimarzio will make you a set of breeds however you like them. Order direct from them too. The online dealers can get them as well. You pay the same price, but it'll take longer to arrive.

I bought a set about a year ago directly from them. You can pick pole piece color and bobbin colors. Metal covers too. I put them in a brighter, thinner rg that a set of full shreds were harsh as hell in. Worked like a charm!

It takes about 2 weeks from order to delivery.


They do exactly what you are looking for. Plus, the neck pickup splits very well.

have you tried 250k pots yet? For a few bucks, the tonal shift of cutting the high end a bit often emphasizes the lows and mids more.

I knew Breeds are available from the DiMarzio custom shop, but I had no idea they still charge regular retail price for them.
Good to know, thanks!

 

[mcdolphinburger]

I usually hate high-DCR pickups (and generally, ceramic magnets), but the BW doesn't feel compressed as most of them...and doesn't have the annoying high end of ceramic-based models. Try one out in another guitar somewhere if you get a chance.

In my headless Steinberger, I have an APH-1 and a custom shop 59/Custom Hybrid (double screws). But I rarely use more than Tube Screamer-levels of gain, and I do a lot of dynamic hybrid picking.

The 59/Custom hybrid is another bridge pickup that caught my attention, but I assumed that given its obvious similarities to the 59 and the Custom 5 it would be too scooped for this guitar.

 

[mcdolphinburger]

Dimarzio will make you a set of breeds however you like them. Order direct from them too. The online dealers can get them as well. You pay the same price, but it'll take longer to arrive.

I bought a set about a year ago directly from them. You can pick pole piece color and bobbin colors. Metal covers too. I put them in a brighter, thinner rg that a set of full shreds were harsh as hell in. Worked like a charm!

It takes about 2 weeks from order to delivery.


They do exactly what you are looking for. Plus, the neck pickup splits very well.

have you tried 250k pots yet? For a few bucks, the tonal shift of cutting the high end a bit often emphasizes the lows and mids more.

Thanks for the input re: split-coil sound. I frequently use the neck split sound.

I'm really less interested in losing the high frequencies than I am filling out the low-mid frequencies.

 

[Synapsys]

Duncan Custom for the bridge, A2Pro for the neck.

Get the four-conductor version for the neck, and swap pots for push/pulls, and wire them so each pickup does series/parallel.

 

[mcdolphinburger]

Self-necro:

I bought the Gravity Storm set when Dimarzio was running a discount promotion over the Black Friday weekend. Allegedly descendants/derivatives of The Breed, but with more moderate output and a smoother character overall.

I just got these wired up last night and did the height adjustment this morning, but my initial impressions are that they sound great. They're voiced rather similarly across positions -- one of my principal complaints about the stock pickups was that they sounded very different from each other. They have a fuller, more balanced EQ (the neck pickup in particular is a significant improvement over the clucky, stringy-sounding stock pickup), but the bridge pickup still has a bit of upper-mid bite. Dimarzio's tone chart for these feels kind of a bogus: the high end isn't nearly as recessed as it would indicate. I probably wouldn't have been interested in the Gravity Storm if I hadn't found a fantastic-sounding and well-recorded YouTube demo. I did the wiring myself using one of Dimarzio's diagrams and using a push-pull tone pot for coil splitting.

On a side note, the Strandberg was a nightmare to work on. The pickups are direct-mounted with wood screws and foam for adjustment, and said wood screws would not fit in the new pickups without modification. I ended up having to take it to a tech, who had to plug and redrill the crumbling wood around the screw mounting holes. Maybe just a basswood problem? Still love the guitar, but something to be aware of. The alder- and ash-bodied models might not have the same problem.

 

[SweetClyde99]

Self-necro:

I bought the Gravity Storm set when Dimarzio was running a discount promotion over the Black Friday weekend. Allegedly descendants/derivatives of The Breed, but with more moderate output and a smoother character overall.

I just got these wired up last night and did the height adjustment this morning, but my initial impressions are that they sound great. They're voiced rather similarly across positions -- one of my principal complaints about the stock pickups was that they sounded very different from each other. They have a fuller, more balanced EQ (the neck pickup in particular is a significant improvement over the clucky, stringy-sounding stock pickup), but the bridge pickup still has a bit of upper-mid bite. Dimarzio's tone chart for these feels kind of a bogus: the high end isn't nearly as recessed as it would indicate. I probably wouldn't have been interested in the Gravity Storm if I hadn't found a fantastic-sounding and well-recorded YouTube demo. I did the wiring myself using one of Dimarzio's diagrams and using a push-pull tone pot for coil splitting.

On a side note, the Strandberg was a nightmare to work on. The pickups are direct-mounted with wood screws and foam for adjustment, and said wood screws would not fit in the new pickups without modification. I ended up having to take it to a tech, who had to plug and redrill the crumbling wood around the screw mounting holes. Maybe just a basswood problem? Still love the guitar, but something to be aware of. The alder- and ash-bodied models might not have the same problem.

I almost bought a Gravity Storm bridge on Black Friday too, but the upper mids on the tone chart scares me off. My setup is a little sensitive to upper mids and can get honky if I’m not careful. Sounds like I made the right call. The upper mids were the reason I too out the Breed too, for what it’s worth.

The Tone Zone and Super Distortion both work extremely wel in bright guitars.

 

[mcdolphinburger]

I almost bought a Gravity Storm bridge on Black Friday too, but the upper mids on the tone chart scares me off. My setup is a little sensitive to upper mids and can get honky if I’m not careful. Sounds like I made the right call. The upper mids were the reason I too out the Breed too, for what it’s worth.

The Tone Zone and Super Distortion both work extremely wel in bright guitars.

The Gravity Storm bridge is definitely a mids-forward pickup, but not at all to the extent that the chart suggests. Kind of a complex voicing — I’m still trying to figure out how to describe exactly what I’m hearing from it. FWIW, it’s less honky than the pickup it replaced, which was something closer to a JB in character. It’s definitely not scooped, and the high end is softer than a PAF-type.