Tweet
I always wanted to have one of my PRS SE Soapbar II's with humcancelling pickups, for whenever the single coil P-90's were just too noisy. I decided to go with the SD P90 Stacks which were deeper than stock P90's so I had to rout out the cavities a bit. The bridge pickup was no problem but after routing out the neck pickup to accommodate the P90 stack I discovered that I had weakened the neck tenon joint too much. Darn- I ruined another guitar!
Fast forward to last summer. I ordered some DiMarzio DP164 Deluxe 90 pickups to go in one of my brand new $279 ESP LTD EC256P's (thank you Hello Music!) and decided to order a pair to put in one of the SE Soapbar II's. The EC256P worked out great because the guitar came with the deeper cavities for P90 stacks but it looked like they would not work in the PRS because a deeper rout would weaken the neck joint. However further examination revealed that the basic pickup would fit in the PRS just fine- it was the cable that raised the height too much. So using my Dremel with a small router bit I was able to rout out a small channel for the cable without screwing up the neck joint. Hooray!
I had asked about humcancelling pickups which would replace a P90 and got many answers here. I decided to give DiMarzio a shot because of their 30 day exchange policy and also because I could order them through Guitar Center, getting an 18 month same as cash financing because I included an $8 set of Gibson strings with the order. I used that trick 3 or 4 times in September when you could get the 18 month financing if the invoice included a Gibson or Epiphone item. Heck I used that same trick a few months before to get 12 month financing by including a $32 Boss clip-on tuner on the invoice. Twice with the same tuner!
After reading many reviews I decided to order the DiMarzio Deluxe 90 for the neck and the Tone Zone 90 for the bridge which was a mistake because the Tone Zone was very middy and not very clear (good for overdriven but not clean sounds.) The DP164 Deluxe 90 sounded great for both neck and bridge positions. The bridge pickup was a little too bright so I added an additional .022uF tone cap and 500k series resistor for the bridge pickup. With the single tone control set to 10 it was like having a .022uF cap and 500k pot on the neck pickup and a .044uF cap and 250k pot on the bridge pickup. Perhaps someone can do the math for the intermittent settings of the tone control- I think it works great and I am leaving it like that. (That idea could be used to tame a too bright Strat bridge pickup- just add the tone cap and the appropriate series resistor right on the hot lead on the selector switch.)
If you look for the DP164 on the DiM site you probably won't find it; it is the page with the master list of all of the pickups that they have produced- with the note "Available from DiMarzio Custom Shop". However in talking to customer service at DiM they do keep it in stock so it really isn't a custom order (it just isn't listed in their current catalogs.) I guess that the DP169 Virtual 90 might have been a better choice for the neck pickup. BTW in ordering these double coil 90's the covers are removable but they are not available separately. And since there are 2 rows of adjustment screws its not like you can just pop on the cover from the existing soapbar pickup.
Do you still make? | DiMarzio
Steve Ahola
Fast forward to last summer. I ordered some DiMarzio DP164 Deluxe 90 pickups to go in one of my brand new $279 ESP LTD EC256P's (thank you Hello Music!) and decided to order a pair to put in one of the SE Soapbar II's. The EC256P worked out great because the guitar came with the deeper cavities for P90 stacks but it looked like they would not work in the PRS because a deeper rout would weaken the neck joint. However further examination revealed that the basic pickup would fit in the PRS just fine- it was the cable that raised the height too much. So using my Dremel with a small router bit I was able to rout out a small channel for the cable without screwing up the neck joint. Hooray!
I had asked about humcancelling pickups which would replace a P90 and got many answers here. I decided to give DiMarzio a shot because of their 30 day exchange policy and also because I could order them through Guitar Center, getting an 18 month same as cash financing because I included an $8 set of Gibson strings with the order. I used that trick 3 or 4 times in September when you could get the 18 month financing if the invoice included a Gibson or Epiphone item. Heck I used that same trick a few months before to get 12 month financing by including a $32 Boss clip-on tuner on the invoice. Twice with the same tuner!
After reading many reviews I decided to order the DiMarzio Deluxe 90 for the neck and the Tone Zone 90 for the bridge which was a mistake because the Tone Zone was very middy and not very clear (good for overdriven but not clean sounds.) The DP164 Deluxe 90 sounded great for both neck and bridge positions. The bridge pickup was a little too bright so I added an additional .022uF tone cap and 500k series resistor for the bridge pickup. With the single tone control set to 10 it was like having a .022uF cap and 500k pot on the neck pickup and a .044uF cap and 250k pot on the bridge pickup. Perhaps someone can do the math for the intermittent settings of the tone control- I think it works great and I am leaving it like that. (That idea could be used to tame a too bright Strat bridge pickup- just add the tone cap and the appropriate series resistor right on the hot lead on the selector switch.)
If you look for the DP164 on the DiM site you probably won't find it; it is the page with the master list of all of the pickups that they have produced- with the note "Available from DiMarzio Custom Shop". However in talking to customer service at DiM they do keep it in stock so it really isn't a custom order (it just isn't listed in their current catalogs.) I guess that the DP169 Virtual 90 might have been a better choice for the neck pickup. BTW in ordering these double coil 90's the covers are removable but they are not available separately. And since there are 2 rows of adjustment screws its not like you can just pop on the cover from the existing soapbar pickup.
Do you still make? | DiMarzio
Steve Ahola
Comment