[Kurt R Kish]

can I combine half of a Tone Zone and half of a FRED to make a Norton?
Like perhaps the screw coil from the TZ with the higher output of the FRED?
(other than one of the FRED's coils having hex screws instead of slugs).

I know this might be possible- is it?

signed,
missing Norton

[corypheus]

Hi,

I've done similar things with Duncans before, specifically one JB and one coil of a Custom Custom yields an excellent humbucker which is both bright and silky smooth, powerful but soulful. Then again 59/Custom hybrid is probably the most famous of the "hybrids". Never done it with an DiMarzio. Some of the DiMarzios I have opened (Super 3, Super Distortion etc) have glued magnet, and you need a heating device (a hair fan works in a pinch) to make it weaker so that you can actually remove it... other then that, I don't see an issue, mechanically.

Soundwise, alot of DiMarzios have mismatched coils stock, I'm not sure about the FRED, but I know Tone Zone is one of them, the coil towards the bridge is wound hotter, with an 44awg, this is the reason TZone sounds slightly different if you orientate it differently - this could pose a problem, if there's a big enough difference in frequencies of the coils, the pickup might not be as good at hum cancelling... example of that is the DSonic which does get some hum through because grossly mismatched coils. And then, the resonance frequency might make the sound very peaky if there's a large difference between the coils (DSonic is again an example of this), which might not make the pickup very musical.

Should it work though? Absolutely. If you want try it out and have fun, then come back and tell us how it sounds. Do I think it's gonna sound like a Norton? Probably not, but in a ballpark similar.

HTH,
Cory

[Kurt R Kish]

Yeah, I've "modded" lots of 'buckers- mostly DMZs. A lot of Seymour Duncan users suggest the "glue" thing about DMZs (I think they think they're cheaper than Duncans?), but DMZ doesn't glue anything in their pick-ups. I've had dozens apart.
I'm not -sure-, but I think (in general) DMZ has the slug coil as the higher output coil when they design their mis-matched coiled p'ups.
Either way, it's fun talkin' bout modding p'ups.

From spending lot's of time on both forums, it's obvious though that Duncan users mod a helluva' lot more than DMZ users.

[corypheus]

DiMarzios do glue, I opened up two older Super Distortions, a Super 3 and an older PAF (not PAF Pro) from the top of my head and they all had their magnets glued in. It's a false statement that DiMarzio doesn't glue when, at least at one point in time, they did. This isn't only my experience, either.
That said, as I previously stated, that in itself isn't an issue really.

As far as I'm aware, both of the companies use the same manufacturer for bobbins, don't have a clue on manufacturer of wire, though I am sure different models use different ones (like Duncan Custom using "cheap" poly sourced from Japan, however as you can tell there's nothing cheap about it's sound), with the same going for magnets and baseplates. It's the kind of people that think they know something, when in reality they have little clue, that presume DiMarzios use inferior quality components.

You're looking at it the wrong way, there's (much?) more Duncan guys then DiMarzio guys, I'm affraid, so naturally they're modded more. Then there's the whole DiMarzio thing, you know, people buy DiMarzio for a specific sound - it's as if DiMarzio is made with an complete bluprint, you either like it for the specific guitar and music, or you simply get another DiMarzio. Duncans, on the other hand, tend to be more similar, and as such, it's naturally that people want to make things sound better, or at the very least, different, hence modding.

The furthest I usually go with mods, is quasy-air mode (plastic spacers), change of magnet type and sometimes switch from adjustable polepieces to hex if I want more clarity...nothing too extreme.