Good Bridge Pick-up to Pair w/ Sustainiac?

[ElRay]

I'm thinking about adding a Sustainiac Stealth Pro to my ancient/venerable/trustworthy/sentimental/modifed Revenger-7. What would be a good bridge pick-up to pair with it? When in PU-mode, the Stealth is "PAF-ish". Also, the pick-up should have a good difference between series and parallel wiring.

From Sustainiac:

• Examples of INCOMPATIBLE bridge pickups:
  • Offset pickups, like G&L Commanche, or "P"-bass type pickup. (Some of these are concealed by a permanently-attached plastic top. The only way to tell is to use a permanent magnet to determine its polepiece configuration.) The Duncan "Vintage Rails" is a split pickup with this type of appearance.
  • Neo-Vin model Neo-9 neodymium pickups (which looks like a normal single-coil or stacked design pickup, until you remove the cover and see a dual rail design with non-magnetic "dummy" polepiece arrangement attached).
  • Lace "Alumitone". This is an offset design. It kind of works, but not quite. (Lace SENSORS work great, however.)
  • Seymour Duncan "Blackout" active pickups" THESE WORK OK, but you can't run the Sustainiac driver wire near the bridge pickup. The Sustainiac driver wire is shielded for electrostatic radiation. Since it carries quite a bit of ac current, it radiates a small, pulsating magnetic field. When the driver wire runs near a Blackout pickup, the magnetic sensitivity of these pickups is so great that it responds to the Sustainiac driver current. The solution is to route the driver wire so that it is an inch or m ore from the Blackout pickup.

 

[syzygy]

Not something I've tried, but I've always wanted to pair a Sustainiac with a Dimarzio X2N for a bunch of Death-style riffs with the Sustainiac for leads. Might be a bit much but you'd definitely have a pickup that sounds different when in series versus in parallel or split

 

[odibrom]

I have a Sustainiac 7 in my fretless guitar. I've used it with a DiMarzio D-Sonic 7 and now it's paired with an Air Norton 7 in the bridge (yes, a pickup designed for the neck placed in the bridge).

Things to have in mind are simple:
- No slanted coils like those found on some multi-scale guitars, even on single scale guitars (some Fender bridge pickups, I'm remembering Gibson's Night Hawk)...
- I believe no NeoDimium loaded pickups, even if passive pickups...?
- No Alumitones...
- I Active pickups, and Blackouts in particular, make sure that in the installation one runs the lead wires from the Sustainiac Driver and the bridge pickup NOT CLOSE to each other.

Other than that, practically any magnetic pickup will work just fine.

About the bridge pickup perceived tone, that's a big subjective matter, but I guess that whatever you like will do. Since you're going with passives, the series and parallel wiring of the coils will deliver significantly different tones, unless you'll have your dirt pretty high and compressed... then it will all sound about the same... the more exaggerated the FX are, the less the pickup's original tone matters...

... last but not least, the Sustainiac in pickup mode has 4 different voices achieved with 2 ON/ON switches: darker/brighter and stronger/weaker. Sustainiac doesn't advertise this on their web site, they only suggest a Hum or Single coil "sound", but it's doable (I have it on my fretless) and they confirmed me that by email some years ago.

 

[ElRay]

@syzygy & @odibrom Thanks!

@odibrom: Would it be easy to post the schematic for the "4-sound" mod?

 

[odibrom]

@syzygy & @odibrom Thanks!

@odibrom: Would it be easy to post the schematic for the "4-sound" mod?

Yeah, let get to my archive and I'll do it. Meanwhile, search Sustainiac's labyrinth website for a PDF file named "wire functions" or something like it...

 

[odibrom]

@ElRay PM sent with the info you asked...