Nighthawk with dimarzio HB !

[hawkfanatic]

Been meaning to try this. After a not so great experience with the slanted duncan 59, which to me lost a ton of harmonic complexity and power over the stock p/u, i decided to try what i've often contemplated....putting the coils and magnet of a a standard non slanted humbucker onto the hawk's bridge p/u's plate. The low strings were so muddy with the stock HB i wondered if that was the way this guitar just is due to the slant bringing the low side of the p/u back towards the neck. Tried a ceramic magnet in the stock HB and still muddy. So i took the coils and magnet off one of my all time fav hummers, a dimarzio super distortion and put them on the slanted plate from the stock p/u. No more low end mud, far greater tone ! The SD is high output, and in this guitar i would have preferred lower, but it's great as is. In the future i may try a different p/u, but this os so much better than stock i'll leave it for now if not for good.

 

Speaking of pickups, i put a dimarzio mini hum in the neck a few days ago. That pickup is not in a box headed back to dimarzio in trade (30 day exchange policy)for the bridge model, which can also be used in the neck. The neck model just wasn't great. It was too low an output to get the fat sweet upper register lead tone the stock p/u did, and the cleaner tones that is what i wanted it for were not a heck of a lot less muddy that the stock one. That surprised me. The split tone was cleaner and not so muddy, but at 3k per coil it was too low of an output and a bit too weak. The bridge model is 8.25k vs 6k for the neck model, so i'm hoping the split sound will give me what the other did but with enough output to be usable and the full sound hopefully get me some of that lead tone the stock has. If not i may exchange it yet again for a p/u for another guitar and try the duncan mini, or even the cheap GFS.I fear the mud these minis all have is due to the cover. And i don't think they will look right or even be usable w/o it because i tried removing the stock cover and it's made so that the cover acts as the part that holds it all together as opposed to the plate like with most p/u's.