DiMarzio Super Distortion old vs new. How are they different?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JohnnyGtar
  • Start date Start date
SD's sound different in different guitars just like every other pickup. I like them in thinner sounding bolt necks but they're muddy in warmer sounding guitars. Your amp makes the most difference. Super distortions do NOT sound good through super high gain amps. They weren't designed for that. They were made to push old Marshall's.
 
Bloodrock said:
SD's sound different in different guitars just like every other pickup. I like them in thinner sounding bolt necks but they're muddy in warmer sounding guitars. Your amp makes the most difference. Super distortions do NOT sound good through super high gain amps. They weren't designed for that. They were made to push old Marshall's.
Click to expand...
I don’t agree at all. The Super D is my favorite pup for metal. I actually like the Pariah Destruction 70 even better. As already mentioned, the key is to run them lower with high gain amps.

The Super D was all over the early-mid 80’s metal scene with people using heavily boosted or modded Marshalls.
 
EyesOfTheSouth! said:
I don’t agree at all. The Super D is my favorite pup for metal. I actually like the Pariah Destruction 70 even better. As already mentioned, the key is to run them lower with high gain amps.

The Super D was all over the early-mid 80’s metal scene with people using heavily boosted or modded Marshalls.
Click to expand...
I agree. It's not a bad pickup for Metal at all. It's just really fat with a hint of Ceramic raspiness in them. I mean, after all a JB wasn't designed for downtuned Metal on high-gain amps either, and it seems to do fine on the Arch Enemy stuff.
 
Love my old SD in my Gibson V. I think it’s early 80’s. When I tried a guitar build in the late 90’s I got a SD in it and just hated it. Had a really quacky, peaky midrange to it. Was getting an amp looked at in the 2000’s and they demo’d with a LP and I was like “what is the pickup in that, it sounds great”. It was the older SD. They sold it to me and I put it in the V. No quacky weird peaks, just a hotter meaty sound than a PAF without going too far on output. To me it’s the perfect hard rock, old school metal pickup. Usually ceramics have a cold quality to them I don’t like but this older SD is a lot less like that. You hear the ceramic quality with volume roll off vs. the PAF style Marshallheads in my other V but it still sounds pretty good rolled off. I can’t imagine replacing it.
 
been run ning this pair for 43 years.. not all crazy about them. but they do sound nice clean and work nice in the neck
ie: no mud

I put them in when i was 16. wouldn't change them for old times sake

yur6bFC.jpg
 
One time in the early 2000s I found myself buying a silver burst Les Paul custom that had been loaded with two super distortion pick ups in the neck and bridge. It was the one thing about this guitar that I thought needed to be fixed. Otherwise, I thought it was a really cool guitar—thing is though, when I plugged it into an amplifier it sounded amazing. Why I went ahead and tried to fix the pick up “problem”, I can’t figure out.
Nowadays I sure do miss that guitar. To fix the pick ups by replacing them with Seymours or something, I took it to my luthier and had him put a pearly gates in the Neck & a Seymour JB in the in the bridge position and I also had him put a coil tap switch on there; however no matter what I did or what I had him do to it, it always sounded progressively WORSE—then, finally not being on my toes I just sold the guitar. Looking back I should’ve Kept those super distortion pick ups but I ended up selling the guitar not too long afterwards I realized that it was a huge mistake.grass is never greener. Somebody had made the correct decision and putting those super distortions in that guitar it sounded awesome when I first got it and ever since I started tampering with it trying to get different pick ups to sound better It never sounded the same.

Anyway I’m interested in this topic because I would like to know whether or not the new ones sound the same as the old ones because This Epiphone Les Paul custom can use an upgrade from the stock pick ups, and I think the super distortions might be doing the trick.
 
I currently have an old (maybe '80) BC Rich Eagle with stock Super Distortion. It sounds awesome, with a lot of zing, almost like a single coil. I also have a 2016 Gibson V Pro T with a modern Super Distortion in the bridge. Sounds totally different. Great in its own right but much more generic, nothing special in the high-end. Powerful but generic. Just a standard humbucker with generic humbucker tone.
 
I'm a fan too and I have them in the bridge of two almost polar opposites of guitars; a super strat and a Les Paul Custom.
Also had a few in the past in a Hamer Vector Flying V, both an 80's Dual Sound and a Super D. Currently I still have a double cream original 70's one waiting for some Ace Frehley-ish Greco/Orville/Burny Les Paul, should I ever come across the right one.

A while ago I bought one that for some reason sounded a bit lacklustre...a bit bland maybe. I sold that one.
Interestingly enough, as bold/thick and ceramic as it is, it actually sounds better when used clean than a JB would. It remains more open, brighter and with better definition.

Check out this video (he starts out with a clean comparison):

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top