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The Pickup Place / Re: pup recommendation for new strat build

« on: December 14, 2022, 12:36:08 AM »

The Chopper makes for an excellent neck pickup, though it sounds nothing like a PAF.

I agree with you on the LiquiFire. It’s probably one of my favorite neck pickups, but I don’t like the style of bridge pickup that can keep up with it. I don’t care for the FT2 either for a similar reason. I like the BC2 though. I kinda wish I still had mine but I’d rather get that kind of tone from a full-sized humbucker. That guitar now has the Chopper in the bridge. Though that is somewhat tangential.

thank you, would gravity storm set work better you think, why not! Vai is cool!

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The Pickup Place / Re: pup recommendation for new strat build

« on: December 14, 2022, 12:34:02 AM »

I never played a Chopper in the neck position but I played tons of PAF style pickups in various guitars, and the Liquifire does not sound like that. While the lows are fat but still somewhat tight and the midrange is strong, the high end is a bit muted, and that is something I never found with any PAF style pickup.

Cheers Stephan

Thank you Stephan. I will keep searching. I'd like something "malmsteen"-y just hotter. Believe it or not, the current Seymour Duncan livewire neck does fantastic clean/distorted tones.

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The Pickup Place / Re: pup recommendation for new strat build

« on: December 12, 2022, 11:49:46 AM »

I love the LiquiFire but I think the Gravity Storm neck is closer to the Chopper. It has a similar EQ and also has a single coil quality to it as well.

Not the most comprehensive demo but I think it’s worth checking out:

https://youtu.be/D-PAFIjf21A

tough call!! thanks both for your suggestions!

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The Pickup Place / Re: pup recommendation for new strat build

« on: December 12, 2022, 11:45:29 AM »

I would consider crunch lab and liquifire set.

exactly my thoughts as well!

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The Pickup Place / Re: pup recommendation for new strat build

« on: December 11, 2022, 11:49:05 AM »

I would consider crunch lab and liquifire set.

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The Pickup Place / Re: pup recommendation for new strat build

« on: December 11, 2022, 11:46:03 AM »

I have an FT2 and a Chopper. 

While I don’t own Gravity Storm set, I’m familiar with the tone and think it might work for you.

Thank you! this seems like a great set!

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The Pickup Place / pup recommendation for new strat build

« on: December 09, 2022, 02:49:18 PM »

Dear All
my new strat build (HH) is currently wearing a SD livewires set, first generation 18V, 100k pots, classic in the neck, modded metal in the bridge, I added a 100k mini pot in the bridge output at about 25% of the volume. As is now it sounds balanced and nice overall. However compared to my other strat HSH (Dimarzio fast track 2, fast track 1, the chopper) it sounds poor.

So, what the closest DMZ set to Dimarzio Fast Track2 / Chopper , but in full humbucker size? I play rock/metal.  I dont want torching high output, I want nice balanced tone, close to the Fast Track 2 / Chopper, I remember when I had Fast track 1 in the neck it was even nicer, but not too balanced with the bridge.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Disagreement with my tech : very simple question : is HB ground wiring needed?

« on: December 22, 2020, 02:11:36 AM »

Hello Budd!
the question is theoretical, I have no noise issues any more, I have been struggling with this for 10 years.
Without bridge ground, there are times, like when approaching the wall or the laptop that I get severe hiss (especially with Dimarzio Super Distortion). Also by having the bridge grounded but without the me-25 output plugged into the amp I get the same effects.

So the question is : if the noise in case of no bridge grounding comes from strings/bridge/body how can a humbucker cancel low freq EMI coming from the mains (50Hz in Greece, 60Hz in USA), but *not* EMI/EFI coming for the strings/bridge/body? Shouldn't the humbucker principal work in this case as well?

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The Pickup Place / Disagreement with my tech : very simple question : is HB ground wiring needed?

« on: December 21, 2020, 04:15:18 AM »

Yesterday for no reason, (yes in Athens you have to have a reason) I paid the tech a visit to his shop, as I was around the block spying on my Son and his behavior (long story).

The tech's work is perfect, however we got into a debate . He claims that humbuckers dont need no bridge grounding. When he did my Carvin, transformation from left --> right and he did an absolutely fantastic job beyond belief, he didn't ground the bridge. The guitar has HSS : dimarzio super-distortion bridge/generic carvin middle/air norton S neck. I realized this right away. My rig basically consists of :
guitar --> boss me-25 --> headphones, so this was pretty audible. I tried with other DMZ guitars I have and they were dead silent.
So I conencted the bridge ground and I noticed that :
a) when playing via the me-25 with the amp unplugged the noise was there : not hum, more like a high freq bzzzz / hiss
b) when playing via the me-25 with the amp plugged (regardless of the amp being on) the noise was gone

I know there have been ages since I moded any guitar, but according to the theory should HB also cancel high freq hiss besides regular hum? Why does grounding the bridge actually works?
Again sorry for forgetting all the old classic original GN theory ... I am getting old, can you pls shed some light to this question?

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The Pickup Place / Re: An Injector Bridge model for an Yngwie tone?

« on: January 20, 2019, 01:55:38 AM »

imho yngwies tone is nothing hard to get. Just a plain good classic alnico single coil in the neck would do the trick. And with the appropriate shielding/correct direction, being a little lean on distortion, noise gate, would help deal with the noise.
I got some cheap pups set from aliexpress, and I managed to get better tones than with the HS-3. Depends also on the rig heavily.

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The Pickup Place / Re: Super Distortion noise?

« on: January 18, 2019, 06:19:17 AM »

Hello,

this happens during the evenings mostly and with a fair amount of distortion, not so much a computer thing. The hum is directional. Much more annoying in series wiring rather than in parallel. In parallel it is almost 100% noiseless.

My bet is that there is something asymmetrical in this pup! Same like with EMGs. At certain orientations they hum. But no biggie.

I wonder if redoing all the wiring, new simple/normal pots (in contrast to push/pull that I have now), etc, would remedy this. I am not a particular fan of parallel wiring for super distortion or Air Norton S : complexity with just a slightly lower output, not worth it.

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Center Stage / Iron Maiden - flight of icarus cover

« on: January 10, 2019, 12:12:20 PM »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7zEXGaPPuc&feature=youtu.be

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Guitar Lounge / Re: Schaller, Gotoh or Original Floyd Rose?

« on: January 10, 2019, 07:40:56 AM »

my gotoh nut is rock solid for some years now, whereas the previous Schaller gave me constant "sitar" sounding open notes which killed sustain and natural harmonics (which meant no more pantera  ).
I dont have a Gotoh bridge but I know they make all the high end Ibanez staff. Heck my "indo-MIC" edge zero II has been solid for 4 years, i cannot see why Gotoh should score any lower.

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The Pickup Place / Super Distortion noise?

« on: January 08, 2019, 10:07:13 AM »

Hello,
as I was doing this vid : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzfkxKkhb-A

I was between :
- my strat with fast tracks/chopper
- my Ibanez universe with blazes
- my carvin with Super Distortion / Air Norton S
- my kramer with EMG 81/85

I had to record in front of the laptop. And you can see there is a fairly high amount of gain. I noticed that with the Ibanez (blazes) there was no noise at all in front of the laptop, even with the noise gate set to minimum (2/10). Same with Air Norton s - no noise at all. Miraculously the EMGs were silent as well, although at the standing position - and away from the laptop- normally they are the noisiest (it happens with all 4 of my EMGs but its another story). However with the Super Distortion I had to raise the noise gate to 5 to be able to record this song, which has a lot of pauses especially at the beginning.

When standing away from the laptop the Super Distortion is quite silent. I will do more tests and measurements in the evening.

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Center Stage / Iron Maiden : The prisoner : cover

« on: January 08, 2019, 10:01:12 AM »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzfkxKkhb-A