Help! Pickup choice in a JP6

[MJL]

Hi guys,

I'm after some advice on pickups. I have an original JP6 (D-Sonic and Custom "Norton style" pickups standard), and I'm looking to swap them out for some new dimarzios.

I play through a Cornford Hellcat amp, it's a boutique amp, two channel but the 2nd channel is high gain so it does a brilliant Vai-esque crunch as well as a smooth, bright clean channel.

I'm after a very defined sound with the bridge pickup. I want to have clarity of every note in a chord when on the gain channel, with harmonics that scream, and a good sustain, and something that cleans up well for the jazz/fusion moments. I have used the pickup selector on Dimarzio's website and the 3 that keep coming up are:

*Tone Zone Treble 5 Mid 8.5 Bass 8.5 Output 375
*Breed Bridge Treble 6.5 Mid 9 Bass 8 Output 356
*Evolution 2 Treble 6 Mid 7.5 Bass 6 Output 375

Standard D-Sonic Treble 5.5 Mid 6.5 Bass 6.5 Output 390

I am tempted by the tone Zone and Breed mostly but I'm just slightly worried about the boosted mids being too round and warm for the clarity on the gain channel, the breed has boosted treble which i like ( I like a reasonably high treble setting), but the Tone Zone does not, so any advice would be great from people with these pickups!!

I'm fairly set on an Air Norton for the neck as I want a warm smooth sound that can be used on clean channel as well, but am open to suggestion of perhaps a Breed Neck model?

Any help and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated and hopefully I've given you enough information to work with!

Cheers

Matt

 

[Dr. Lemonator]

Go with a tone zone or a steve's special, that's what I run and I go from Dream Theater to Electromagnets (Fusion stuff) all the time and they work fine. I would leave the neck pickup be though, that's a pretty versatile pickup and the sound difference isn't much from an air norton. If you want a good clean high gain sound I would defenitly check out the steve's special, I'm sure that would do you fine.

 

[73h Nils]

When I tried a JEM with a Breed in it, I loved it. That pickup is really great, but probably a bit too smooth/mid-heavy for what you want. It is really singy, but I can't quite recall how defined it was. It would be great for Jazz/Clean stuff, though.