continuing the vampire thread.....I'm going to put a Bluesbucker in the neck of an SG. I'm interested in any and all reactions to the following bridge possibilities:
1) Super Dist.
2) Fred (very intrigues with this choice, especially because Michael Thompson apparently uses one)
3) Air Norton(had a reg Norton in this guitar once, liked it, but less might be more)
4) Air Zone (Had a tone zone in an 80s brick of an LP year ago...ballsy but very dark, air zone maybe less so? ...dark that is.)
I'm a typical dinosaur, Blues Rock guy....Cream, Beck, Hendrix, Allmans, the usual suspects. I also dig old school metal and hard rock...Montrose, Hunter/Wagner, Dio, AC/DC etc. Plexis and tweeds thank you. Very intrigued by these pups. May have to try them all. Had Super D's back in the 70s in....gasp...a 335. Worked pretty well as I recall. Never tried the others. But it's been a long time. Your reaction? Any other ideas? Let the fun begin.
Hi,
I won't be much of a help regarding the Bluesbucker (I understand the irony of posting in this thread about it), because I never tried one, but I had all the others mentioned in the bridge, so I'll strictly speak of the choice of bridge pickups here, from my experience. I'm not primarily a blues player, but I do all sorts of covers and I do play in a club regularly (as much as health allows).
Super Dee's been my favorite for years, although I started digging Evo2 last year a bit more. Can't ever go wrong with Super Dee. If you're guy that likes to fiddle with volume and tone, you can get any kind of sounds out of Super Dee. It never has issues cutting through the mix, it's loud and has enough presence - and it has tons of mids so it's actually great for thickening single note solos, bends ring longer - it's compression prolongs sustain (of course, it was one of the reasons it was made the way it was made, back at 70s). If you find it is not expressive enough for you, take some of the mids down, or take it away from the strings, you will find almost a totally different beast of a pickup with it.
With that said, I wouldn't necessarily take Super Dee primarily for blues - not that it can't do it - it certainly can, it just doesn't excel at it as some other pickups in DMZ line up do.
Fred is a very peculiar pickup, in essence it's done as a big modern PAF, it has a very vocal quality to its mids (it also has alot of high mids), and it's low enough output to make it very expressive with different picking techniques. It's great rock pickup, for sure, but it's equally as great blues pickup.
It does have a waah kind of midrange of some other DMZs, a kind of sound you either dig or you don't, so something to have in mind about it.
Air Norton is, obviously, Norton with air technology, you can mod the one to be the other and vice versa. The airing makes the pickup sound weaker, and by proxy - more vintage in character. I love AN in the neck - in the bridge, I feel it can sometimes sounds too squishy, and compressed. It's bass can sometimes sound blurry and lack articulation to my ears, which is why in general I prefer it in neck as solo pickup and never used it as rhythm.
Air Zone is something I tried in both bridge and neck, and could never gel with the pickup. Possible reason is that, unlike Tone Zone that punches with power and presence cut, Air Zone had it's presence lowered thanks to airing technology, which to my ears accentuated some of the negatives of the design (depth of bottom end, flabby bass, really fat lower midrange), while not doing much in terms of highs. It does have a waah vocal quality to it, though, and I can see it working for a certain kind of solos, but again I wouldn't pick it for rhythm.
What I'd also consider is 36th anniversary bridge model, while it's a PAF design it's still more then powerful enough for any kind of metal as well and unlike PAF Master, generally doesn't turn into flabby mush for power chording with a high gain amp. It's an excellent blues and blues rock pickup, it's very expressive and has enough mids and presence to cut through any kind of mix. This pickup will also balance volume wise with Bluesbucker excellently as well.
Mo'Joe is another one of those open-sounding vocal pickups from DMZ, a variation of the Fred, if you will, which makes it a bit more punchier and modern sounding, imho, but doesn't take away anything of it's melodic quality. It's very versatile, and will happily do everything from funk, blues to rock and metal.
AT-1, Andy Timmons has a specific playing style and specific sound, but it's definitely an expressive and warm, pleasant sounding one, and my experience with AT-1 is that it captures that sound very nice, it's warm on the bottom end, have a push in the middle and have open highs. It's a nice sounding pickup, specially for softer playing and it's thick enough for simpler but more expressive solos.
Personally, as a safe bet, I'd take 36th anniversary, or either the Mo'Joe or Fred on the bridge, with a Bluesbucker on the neck. Those combos will do everything you want them do, and more.
HTH
