I had always wanted to try the bridge pickup since it came out. So when a set popped up on the bay I purchased it. I put them in a dual humbucker "Frankenstein" tele partscaster with a poplar body (which was sold as alder - thankfully so since I may not have bought it had I known it was poplar but I am glad I did), a maple neck w/ rosewood board that was left over from a parted out strat (but magically it fit the tele body) and a Callaham Amercian Standard Hardtail bridge. Electronics are two 500k log pots for volume and tone, a 0.0015uf tone cap and a 3 way toggle switch to give b, b+n and n - no splits, series, out-of phase, local parallel selections whatsoever.
I was surprised to see quite a lot of negative comments about these pickups, mostly saying that these are rather bland pickups and are there just for the sake of being there. Well - I have not yet tried any other pickups in that guitar, and I am not sure why I should. The guitar sounds great with them. So far I tested it through two self-modded Marshalls for higher gain, a Bassman modified to a *umble style circuit and a Bandmaster for the Fender clean tones plus various overdrive pedals.
The bridge pickup is powerful, yet tight in the low end. Don't let the relatively low DC resistance of 9.5k fool you, this one is really loud - I guess it's due to the strong ceramic magnet. The pickup has a strong mid peak but at the same time it has a certain element of spank to it. It's a tonal combination that I never heard from any other pickup. The closest thing I can think of would be a wide range humbucker but the Morse bridge is more powerful. High notes sound fat, low notes sound articulate and clear. It sounds good clean (for a bridge humbucker which is not my preferred choice for clean tones) and can take any gain I throw at it. I am sure this pickup will cut through easily in a band mix.
I was not sure whether I would like the neck pickup given the fact that I find most neck humbuckers too muddy. But I had to take it to get the bridge pickup, thinking I can always swap it for something else if I don't like it. At a DC resistance of over 20k one would guess that it's a very loud pickup but it isn't. Probably DiMarzio used a very thin wire for this one - AWG 44 or even 45, I don't know. Whatever - this pickup in this guitar is giving me some of the fattest neck tones I ever had. On the high notes it is a thing of beauty - fat and fluid. Sure it can get muddy in the lower register, especially when the gain goes up but not really worse than most other neck humbuckers.
The middle position (both humbuckers together in parallel) sound very good as well, both clean and dirty. It's a sound I don't use too often but it's a nice extra.
Since both pickups are bright enough I don't really miss extra pickup combinations.
It took a while to dial them in to get them balanced since the bridge pickup is a good deal louder than the neck. I have backed off the bridge pickup a little farther than I usually set them (which is very close to the strings) and adjusted the neck pickup as high as it reasonably went (which is higher than I set them usually) but I achieved a suitable balance in the end. The bridge pickup benefitted from setting it a bit lower as that tamed any excessive brightness.
As I said I used a 500k volume pot, knowing that Steve Morse uses 250k pots in his signature guitar. I can imagine that the bridge pickup would get more warmth with the lower pot value but the neck pickup would definitely suffer so I will keep the 500k. Maybe I will experiment with additional resistors to check lower impedances for the bridge pickup but at the moment I am happy with the tone at 500k for both pickups.
I have not put a treble bleed on the volume control. I tend to like this on guitars with single coils but don't care much for it with humbuckers. So far I am satisfied with my choice - both pickups clean up beautifully.
For the tone control I started out with a 0.0022uf cap but surprisingly that made the neck pickup sound too dark and the bridge pickup too much like a cocked wha. 0.0015uf did the trick on both pickups, making them even warmer and fatter than they are already.
In conclusion I can say I am very happy with the guitar and pickups. I have read that these pickups were designed to work in guitars with poplar bodies. If so, then the designer succeeded.
Cheers Stephan
