« A 7 string neck pickup for smooth leads »

As more and more guitar makers make seven string guitars, they need the seven string versions of the pickups they love on their 6 string. Dimarzio has been providing their most popular pickups in 7 string versions. The need for a smooth seven string neck pickup led Dimarzio to convert one of their newest pickups to seven string. The Liquifire is the ideal neck pickup to go with a very hot bridge pickup. It takes care of the problems many 24 fret guitars experience on their neck pickups. Because of the 24 frets the neck pickup is placed farther back then it would be on traditional guitars like a Les Paul or Fender Stratocaster. This means the neck pickup picks up more high end frequencies than it would in the more traditional guitars. This means your neck pickup sound may not be as smooth as it should be. The Liquifire fixes this difficulty. John Petrucci of Dream Theater helped to develop this pickup with his new seven string Ernie Ball MusicMan guitars. When looking at a pickup designed by an artist you should look at what kind of guitar the artist would put it in and what kind of wood that guitar is made out of. In this case the pickup was designed for a seven string guitar with an alder body. Because of this pickups voicing it should work well in most woods some heavy woods may make the sound a little muddy though. This pickup is like a modified Dimarzio Air Norton or PAF pro. The Air Norton was also designed with Petrucci and was intended to be a fat neck pickup with dialed back high end, the Liquifire is an evolution of this concept. It can be used in the bridge but it is ideally suited for the neck position and for lead playing. The Liquifire produces a full and round sound and there is no unwanted high end on the neck pickup. This reduced high end may make clean passages a little undefined. So if you are looking for a modern sounding neck pickup to go on your modern guitar, and plan on playing modern heavy music this could be your pickup of choice.