One thing Ive noticed about Seymour Duncan>Dimarzios.......

Seymour Duncans or Dimarzios

  • Seymour Duncan

    Votes: 14 63.6%

  • Dimarzio

    Votes: 5 22.7%

  • Other

    Votes: 3 13.6%
  • Total voters
    22
The~Kid

The~Kid

Well-known member
Seymour Duncans give that sound in your head vibes....... don't know what it is but a familiar sound......



And Dimarzios are okay but offer no "sound in your head vibes"......



Being a WestCoast dude...... always initially tried to dig Dimarzios...... because that's what even my friends on the WestCoast would say is the best...... None in my circle really cared for Duncans and I always rotated around Dimarzios as the best...... even though the same WestCoast guys would pick Ernie Ball over Daddario..... they picked Dimarzio over Duncans for the most part.....



But in general and me personally not so much of a WestCoast thing but in general everytime I try a Duncan it provides that "sound in your head vibes" much like Gibson pups too.... just a real, familiar, classic tone and hard to explain.



Seymour Duncans simply get that vibe Dimarzios never can or could for me......


But YMMV :dunno:
 
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It's hard to explain but especially with the California SSL-1 sets........ or a Set of 59s right.......



Yeah that's the sound and in general Seymour Duncans get that familiar, sound in your head or just "the right sound" vibes vs Dimarzios......



I'm not saying they are the best exactly.....



But fuck me if they don't do a good job nailing what a pup should sound like and be like. Especially when put together with classic amps and guitars :dunno:
 
It's like grandmas chocolate chips cookies or the Oracles cookies........


Whatever the hell she makes them out of or however the hell she bakes and cooks them.


Seymour Duncan just makes those cookies just like grandma should make them and how they should taste too IMO ^_^
 
I'll explain how it is for me.

Seymour Duncans just work. It doesn't matter which Duncan, but they all work in the ballpark of the music they're advertised for. Gibsons too, like you just said. They just work and they work very well. I can put a JB, a Custom Custom, a Custom, a 59 or better yet a Seth Lover or a Pearly Gates in any guitar and I can expect it to work perfectly well in the genre or the style those pickups are generally advertised for, and in the best of guitar-pickup-rig matches, they'll work for even more styles than that.

With DiMarzios, unless I'm getting a classic and well used model like the Super Distortion or the PAF Pro, or my favorite, the EBMM Exclusive Axis, I find that I have to worry about matching the pickups to the guitars more, otherwise it sounds too "much", too hyped.

I put a Tone Zone in my Ibanez AZ, it sounds perfect. I put another Tone Zone in my ESP, it just sounds like a slice of midrange. I put it in my Tom Anderson and it's even darker and less inspired than the Breed in the same guitar

I put a PAF 36 in my RG, it sounds great. I put it in my Shijie and it's too fat and bloated

I put an AT-1 in my strat, it has zero cut but it sounds nice enough. I put it in an LP and it's honky and obnoxious

Stacked singles are a different matter, but for normal single coils, humbuckers and P90s, I'm taking Duncans over DiMarzios any day of the week. Same goes for EMG. I'll take an 85/ 2x SA set over any DiMarzio set.

But that's for me.
 
VonBonfire said:
Duncans=shrill top end, great for dudes who bitch about mud buckers but then have a muddy amp or sludge EQ setting

Dimarzios=toy robot mids for def leppard and boston covers

Gibson=Yes but now you're Mark Agnesi's bitch
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If you think duncans have shrill top end, you definitely havent played an SH-14 before
 
BlueParfait said:
or an SH-11
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Yeah, now that I think about it they have a bunch of different pickups that all sound wildly, completely different

Which is kind of funny, because part of what I don't like about dimarzios is they all have the "thing" except for like the 36th anniversaries., The super distortion high mid bump, and the palm mute sound that goes "scratch scratch ticky ticky" like you hear on old slayer records before they got EMGs.

Duncans really do sound completely different from one another, although they always do exactly what they advertise
 
DanTravis62 said:
If you think duncans have shrill top end, you definitely havent played an SH-14 before
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Noted. I haven't tried a lot of Duncans but those I have have been shrill.

I've had the Seths. Shrill on top and the bridge wouldn't honk good.

59n, thought it would be the Duncan 57 classic. Sterile with a shrill top end.

Sentient, very shrill

JB-compressor pedal with a pickup cover on it

Pegasus-I would've kept it but it was body mount.

Then I listened to the Sayce single coil set and sure enough, shrill on top.
 
VonBonfire said:
Noted. I haven't tried a lot of Duncans but those I have have been shrill.

I've had the Seths. Shrill on top and the bridge wouldn't honk good.

59n, thought it would be the Duncan 57 classic. Sterile with a shrill top end.

Sentient, very shrill

JB-compressor pedal with a pickup cover on it

Pegasus-I would've kept it but it was body mount.

Then I listened to the Sayce single coil set and sure enough, shrill on top.
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You need to try the
SH12 - (screamin demon) don't let the name fool you, it sounds like a classic T-top or similar
SH14 (Custom 5) - warmest, richest sounding middle output humbucker that you can get at the big box stores
SH6 (Distortion) - Most aggressive, most kerrang ceramic. Perfect for both punk and metal
Black Winter - Perfect modern metal pickup, straight up
SH-11 - Singing alnico II, very excellent for lead sounds and dumbly amps IMO
Phat Cat - The best p90 in a humbucker size that any manufacturer makes
 
DanTravis62 said:
You need to try the
SH12 - (screamin demon) don't let the name fool you, it sounds like a classic T-top or similar
SH14 (Custom 5) - warmest, richest sounding middle output humbucker that you can get at the big box stores
SH6 (Distortion) - Most aggressive, most kerrang ceramic. Perfect for both punk and metal
Black Winter - Perfect modern metal pickup, straight up
SH-11 - Singing alnico II, very excellent for lead sounds and dumbly amps IMO
Phat Cat - The best p90 in a humbucker size that any manufacturer makes
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What's weird is I thought I had a Custom 5 in my Edwards ES bridge when I bought it and it always seemed like a weak, gutless pickup. I got some 57 classics to replace the factory set and lo and behold when the tech handed me the old pickups they were seth lovers. Yuck. So I threw them in a dark Edwards LP and that neck was still shrill on top. It was shrill with the 59n that came in it.

That Custom 5 sounded badass in this video IMO but apparently the E-SA168 was a limited run with Seths and that's what I got.
 
VonBonfire said:
What's weird is I thought I had a Custom 5 in my Edwards ES bridge when I bought it and it always seemed like a weak, gutless pickup. I got some 57 classics to replace the factory set and lo and behold when the tech handed me the old pickups they were seth lovers. Yuck. So I threw them in a dark Edwards LP and that neck was still shrill on top. It was shrill with the 59n that came in it.

That Custom 5 sounded badass in this video IMO but apparently the E-SA168 was a limited run with Seths and that's what I got.
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The seth lovers are really close to a lot of vintage gibson pickups i've played, so you'd probaby hate those too - I don't like either.

Unpotted pickups make me roll my eyes lol
 
DanTravis62 said:
The seth lovers are really close to a lot of vintage gibson pickups i've played, so you'd probaby hate those too - I don't like either.

Unpotted pickups make me roll my eyes lol
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For how highly lauded they are I'd take a basic 490 set any day of the week over them. Blue Parfait is getting a nice tone from them but he's running darker with more gain than I would and as soon as he hits the higher notes in that demo I start hearing it lean towards that shrill top end, which might show through if his tone were cleaner. The Seths were a disappointment for me.
 
VonBonfire said:
For how highly lauded they are I'd take a basic 490 set any day of the week over them. Blue Parfait is getting a nice tone from them but he's running darker with more gain than I would and as soon as he hits the higher notes in that demo I start hearing it lean towards that shrill top end, which might show through if his tone were cleaner. The Seths were a disappointment for me.
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I don't like the 490, 498, or 500 pickups personally

I think the burstbucker and 57s are way, way better
 
I am a Duncan guy now but I think I had a Dimarzio in my guitar back in high school. I had someone put a Tone Zone in my guitar years ago and absolutely despised it. I was in a 7-String phase at the time though so maybe my ears are shot.
 
I live not too far from a music shop that has had a fairly close connection to Satriani - loaning amps, doing repairs or anything needed while he is in the area, etc.

I never forgot what the shop owner said - they were working on one of his guitars or something and were shooting the shit and the guy noticed his pickups were NOT Dimarzios....

He said, "Joe, these are Duncan's, I thought you always played your Dimarzios??"

The response was a finger pressed to the lips and a "shhhhhh".

This was quite some years back and who knows if the guy just made it up but idk why he would.
 
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