« Used by many I loved, but not by me. »

I purchased this pickup to replace the bridge pickup in a Washburn guitar that seemed to be a touch anemic for playing the heavier music I was in a band for at the time. I chose this pickup because I had an axe with EMGs in it for metal and was looking for something a bit more organic sounding. Many guitar players I was a fan of had used this model over the years and I figured I would like it for myself as well. Well it was OK.

I found that as the name implies it was geared for providing distortion. It did that fine. I played this through two separate tube amp rigs and in both situations it seemed to just have too much high end for my taste. It was a very cutting sound and I have heard many players pull out great tones from this pickup but as we know we all sound different and this was a poor match for me.

I tried cutting the tone on the guitar, pedals, and amp in many different combinations and found that as I tried to reel in the harshness I was killing the parts of the sound I did like. I also like to play certain lead passages on the bridge pickup at times and that was not an option for me with the DP100. The sound was way to thin to be useful for any single note playing in the mid to upper registers of the guitar.

I did give this pickup a long chance with more than a few output options to show me why it has been used for many years by a lot of my guitar heroes but in the end we were not meant to be together. Its hard to slight a piece that has such a good history as this pickup does but not only would I not buy it again but if I found a guitar I really wanted with it installed in it I would be prejudiced against it and preplan its replacement.