« John Petrucci used this at one time »

One of my biggest influences in guitar playing was seeing John Petrucci play. I remember thinking that he was so unique in his playing style, and this was quite a surprise because I was still more into the older hard rock kind of music given my age. He just blew me away with his chops and his tone. I started researching the gear he used, and at one point, he started using this pickup. I believe it was around the Awake period when he started using this, but my memory is a bit hazy these days. The pickup itself actually takes the exact opposite approach to most conventional logic. Instead of boosting midrange like so many other pickups do, this pickup takes away midrange. For those who know anything about guitar, you’ll know that midrange is the main frequency that is needed to be heard. That means that you need a guitar and an amp with lots of midrange. It just so happens that John Petrucci was running a basswood body, and basswood has a ton of midrange. John was also running a Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+, and those amps have so much midrange that you have to scoop it out through the onboard EQ that they have. That is the secret to his old tone, and that is what makes this pickup work. For those of you who have even sounding, bass heavy or even bright guitars, this probably won’t work out for you. However, once you throw this into a basswood Ibanez and put that through a Mesa/Boogie Mark amplifier, you got that instant Petrucci tone that’s smooth sounding and very dynamic. The pickup responds nicely to your volume knob, so you can get some really chiming clean tones, hard rock and even metal tones out of this thing. Petrucci actually uses a three way switch with this, and the middle position has this and the neck humbucker split. Give it a try for three very distinct tones.