Seven String Pickups: Air Norton/Tone Zone, Sentient/Pegasus, Jazz/Wolfetone JB rewind
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- Three different sets of pickups in my Suhr Modern 7:
Air Norton 7 neck/Tone Zone 7 bridge clean: 0:05 distorted: 0:40
Sentient 7 neck/Pegasus 7 bridge clean: 1:07 distorted: 1:43
Jazz 7 neck/Wolfe JB 7 rewind bridge clean: 2:13 distorted: 2:53
Amp was my Mesa Roadster through a Tremoverb 4x12, mic'd up with a SM57 and a MD421 mixed a little back. Clean was Ch 1 Fat, distorted was Ch 3 Vintage
Wolfetone!!! Wolfe is the man. His P90s are the best of the best.
Yeah, it was a nice humbucker, for sure.
The Tone Zone/Air Norton sounded the best, easily. Fantastic shoot-out, did you use the same settings for each?
+Samus5164 I did - I just left the amp on standby, with the same mics and same EQ settings, and the same settings in the mix (no post-EQ, a bit of reverb, and some mild compression, with the SM57 as the dominant mic and a MD421 set maybe 6db behind it (same for all pickup sets).
I'm not sure if I have a clear favorite - the Tone Zone 7 was better than I remember it being, but definitely sounded its best set a little further off the strings. Actually, I think all three pickups have a bit of similarity to them, especially the Tone Zone and the JB. I've got the Jazz/JB set in at the moment, but in a couple weeks I might toss the Sentient/Pegasus back in to spend a little more time with them than I did here.
They are very similar, you're right, but the Pegasus and Sentient have some sort of awful quack to them and the Jazz is too dark for my tastes. You a fan of the D-Sonic? I think it pairs extremely well with the Air Norton
+Samus5164 The Pegasus and Sentient were very transparent, to my ears, and had a vaguely single-coil quality to them (and I've always been a Strat guy at heart) - ironically, the set I ended up with was the Sentient neck (which the more I play the more I like) and the JB. If anything, I found the Jazz too bright, and a little scooped under gain. Different strokes, though - I haven't spent much time with a D Sonic, but as I recall it wasn't really for me.
I liked the Air Norton/Tone Zone the best clean as they have a much better ring, but the Sentient/Pegasus also had a very nice clean tone, just didn't have the same ring to them. but didn't have the same ring. Now with distortion, the Sentient/Pegasus was my favorite, and I thought they did alright clean although it's a different clean sound.
Did not care much for the Jazz at all, sounds like it's missing some highs and high mids. The JB sounded like it could have used a slight boost to the highs as well but to a much lesser extent and did much better with some gain too.
+shred5 I was surprised how much I liked the Sentient neck, to be honest. I ended up preferring that with the JB to the AN/TZ set. One of the things in a comparison like this that you have to keep in mind is that since I'd been using the Dimarzios for some time now, I had the height adjusted to where I thought they sounded the best, and the amp dialed in for them when I started these, whereas I was ballparking the height and using the same settings that worked for the Dimarzios, but maybe wouldn't be ideal for the other pickups, so it's not a *perfectly* fair comparison. It's about as close as I can get, though - changing amp settings between pickup settings would mask some of the differences.
+Drew Peterson regardless of height I think it was just a different sound. The AN/TZ has the most vintage sound and the best highs, so I thought they had the best clean sound. The Sentient/Pegasus sounded more modern -- for whatever reason I gather they would be a great choice for use with chorus from their attack or maybe a higher amount of reverb. Clean, it was really close between the two for me. The Sentient/Pegasus both did have a great full tone once you added some gain too.
I'll be pickup shopping soon too so that was useful.
shred5 Well, that's the fun of these - so much of what makes a pickup "good sounding" is subjective, so different people can watch something like this and come away with different impressions. If this helped you settle on the AN/TZ set, out of these three, then I'm happy I was able to help!
+Drew Peterson I honestly have no idea. I might do a Super Distortion and a PAF Pro neck, BKP Emeralds or Nailbombs or even the Mule or some other full blown PAF style pickup. Tough choices.
so many choices!
I like the Pegasus the best of the bridge pickups. I have narrowed it down as my favorite of the new breed of pickups over the past year or so. I like the Sentinent neck, it will do, but I think I like the Air Norton in this test just a little better.
What are the output differences between the two? Would a Sentinent still pair better with a Pegasus, or are they close enough in output not to matter?
+Sean Wookie They seemed pretty comparable to me - I didn't touch a thing on my amp while doing this, so if you hop back and forth between the section where I'm playing the Air Norton and where I'm playing the Pegasus, you can get a pretty good picture. The Pegasus was SUPER articulate - I liked the way the JB rewind "smeared" notes a little on sustain a bit more, but that was definitely a pickup I could see working well for tight, articulate rhythm playing.
Nah.