« Bright. Very, very bright »

DiMarzio went ahead and delivered a very unique pickup back in the day. They had this strange name called the Humbucker From Hell. It was something that nobody had ever tried before. They made a pickup that had tons of treble and almost had this single coil kind of quality to it. However, since it was a humbucker, it didn’t have that issue of hum and buzz. A lot of shredders started using this because of how clear it is. However, they used it in the neck position. This is not a bridge pickup, and I can’t stress that enough. It’ll just be too bright and thin in the bridge. It’s solely meant to be a neck pickup. In the neck, it’s actually a quite low output pickup. You wouldn’t expect that from the name they gave this. The clarity of this pickup is pretty outrageous. If you thought the PAF Pro was bright, you should hear this thing. Personally, I prefer smoother and fatter lead tones. I also prefer a bit more output, so I never truly got along with this pickup compared to the other pickups that DiMarzio has to offer. To me, it was just too bright and didn’t offer what I was looking for. Some guys really like this though, and I find that it sounds best in basswood bodies more than anything else. It seems to really suit the natural warmth of basswood, combined with the heavy midrange basswood tends to have. In other body woods, it doesn’t seem to really get along too well. These days, this pickup has kinda been moved to the back burner because of how it doesn’t really fit today’s amps. The amps back then were different than today, and people were battling a huge loss of treble due to the huge racks they used to run. That’s why this pickup was used so much. Since the rack days are kinda gone, more people look towards fatter pickups and get treble from the amp.