thank you for your reply
Currently the guitar is sent to my tech and i planned to have air norton that i have lying around fitted. My only gripe is, the color, its red and black, no doubt it'll look terrible
yeah, when i listened to paf pro demos again, i think it will still be too bright for this guitar, although it might add some thickness to it. I heard Paf joe is quite bright as well, some say its one of the brightest although the attack is dull/warmer. the bluesbucker is a good concept but in the end like you said, its sounds like a single coil, i need a humbucker sound.
I dont actually like Vai type of sound, and dont really care for vai's pickup prior to reading its specs. But ater reading that its actually PAF based, im somewhat intrigued. My worry is it'll be too dark/mushy, but then i never tried the pickup nor arethere a decent demo out there (of other people except vai)
Transition and air classic are interesting (though air classic might be too low of an output for me/thin, it does sound single coil "ish"). I've tried steve morse PU b4. Its ok, not impressed, very round, not for me.
other than mentioned above what about the other modern offerings? like titan, imperium, rainmaker, gravity storm etc?
If you think the Breed will be too mushy, the Dominion set (Mark Morton's sig) is based on the Breed but with a ceramic magnet, a little tighter, and a little more push and output.
The PAF Joe is bright in the sense that it's not a super low-end heavy pickup, but when you mentioned tubular that's the first one I thought of. It'll be bright enough to be articulate, but it's made for a smooth lead tone.
If you don't want bright, you probably don't want the Titan or Imperium. The Titan is really bright and clear, with a super focused upper midrange, and is really good at that modern prog djenty vibe. I like them, but I like brightness. The Imperium is made for Drop C and lower and is a very particular pickup in that it just plays kinda weird, really elasticky and bouncy. The folks over at sevenstring.org weren't super impressed with it, and I haven't heard much about it outside of there.
The Gravity Storm set is actually one of my favorite Dimarzio combos, but again, it's a very particular pickup. If you can get your hands on one of the blue floral JEMs to try, they come with a GS set. The bridge is super fat and muscular, and the neck is a lot brighter but in a way that just compensates for the neck position, so switching between the two works really well in that whatever tone sounds good with one will also sound good with the other. They're definitely not 22-fret sounding, though, really modern, articulate, and snappy.
The Rainmaker is kinda meh to me to be honest. All of the JP pickups have been different spices on the same basic dish - they sound killer in his EBMMs through a Mesa or a similar amp, but I've been incredibly unfazed and underwhelmed when I've tried them in any other setup. In an EBMM through a Marshall they're boxy and nasal (Illuminators or the Sonic Ecstasy set), through an H&K like mine they're flat and lack punch (Illuminators and Crunch Lab/Liquifire), and the set of Illuminators a buddy had in a mahogany/walnut tele was too tubby through basically everything. JP's got a very dialed-in rig so it all works really nicely (and a Majesty through a Mark V is crazy good) but when you start messing with the variables it gets weird and unpleasant pretty fast IMO.