Hi all,

I have a custom Strat (Fender 57 neck and Warmoth mahogany body). In order to get a good classic rock/hard rock sound, I've been using a Dimarzio Vintage Heavy Blues in the middle, and a Vintage Solo in the bridge for several years now.

Those pickups are definitely hot/powerful enough, but sometimes for my taste they sound too bright and harsh. I'd love to find pickups that give me good humbucker tone that I can get reasonably close to VH/Gary Moore/Rhoads cruch, but still have the Strat look.

I've been looking at the Dimarzio Injector series - does anyone know much about those? Or have any other recommendations? any advice is much appreciated.

-ryan

I have the neck in the neck and the bridge in the middle of my HSS strat (I use the humbucker for single note riffs or Nirvana, which is fairly rare). I like them a great deal, the neck is great for amp break up chords and vintage distortion from my Peavey Classic 30. The bridge one being in the middle gives me a great fuzz solo tone and I use the neck for OD solos.

I doubt they'd be any darker or smoother than the pickups you have though. According to Dimarzio the treble response is greater in the injector series. You might want to use the bassier pickup positions (neck and middle) look into your cab/speakers or try a bit of rig tweaking. What kind of amp and pedals are you using?

My Classic 30 has the treble down to 3.5 with the bass and mids maxed, for solos I have a modded Big Muff with crazy amounts of midrange and for others a Green Rhino OD pedal with volume and gain maxed and the tone at 9:30, so all in all fairly dark and almost muddy settings.

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Talking about wireless pedals...

For an amps I usually run into a Fender Blues Deluxe and I typically have the treble there on 0 and the bass only on 2 or less, cuz that amp seems really bass-y sometimes. But... sometimes I will have to use more bass on the amp for outdoor gigs, or else my rig sounds extra shrill


For pedals my chain is:
1. Samson Airline 77 wireless (LIVE use ONLY)
2. ISP Decimator (LIVE use ONLY)
3. Crybaby wah (with Fulltone switch mod)
4. MXR Phase 90 (new but with Script logo mods)
5. Barber Direct Drive
6. Barber Dirty Bomb
7. Boss CH1 super chorus
8. BOSS DD6 delay
9. BOSS TU3 tuner

Hmm, you've got some nice distortion from the Barber's, shouldn't be adding too much harshness. You can get some spikyness from the midrange, try turning up the treble a little and then giving it mroe bass maybe? The extra treble might counteract the boominess and you could open up the bass that way.

Do you play around with your tone knobs at all? They can also smooth the edges.

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Talking about wireless pedals...