DK2S and EMG85 Guitar Modification
Not many updates for all of you over this winter period. Needless to say I’ve been working very hard on a lot things: the usual Paradox album material, mastering other people’s work, and the odd quick collaboration with others. I’ve also been doing large amounts of daily vocal exercises to better improve my strength and sensitivity. I need to do this because some of the songs I will record for have sections that are very very demanding and require near-perfection. So lots of scales, across about a 5 octave range and over and over is all I’ve been working hard at. And the usual winter blues of trying to keep warm – keep the spirits up.
Over a year ago I bought a new electric guitar but didn’t make any mention of it here. I pretty much feel in love with it as soon as I saw it in the store in Brisbane: the Jackson DK2S, coloured blue rippled sunburst. The key ‘coolness’ about this guitar is the Sustaniac which allows for all sorts of expressive, long note weirdness. It’s been featuring on a lot of recordings in the last year or so.
The DK2S comes standard with Seymour Duncan passive humbucker pickups at the bridge. The more I played the guitar with that pickup selected, especially with a clean tone, I grew to dislike the sound. It was hard to describe, but the attack had a fizzed-out feel and it was generally ‘grainey’ sound. I may have been a little unlucky and received a defective pickup, but either way I decided I’d replace it. It was hard to ignore to reputation of EMG’s pickups: so the shopping began.
After reading quite a bit I decided to go for the EMG85′s. This choice is a bit unconventional as the 85′s are designed to go a the neck position and the EMG81′s for the bridge position. I wasn’t quite into the ‘classic shredding’ metal sound the 81′s gave at the bridge, and I heard a sample of the 85′s at the bridge position and liked it a lot. It sounded more rich and warm, yet still ‘super-charged’.
Installing the active pickups was much more of a challenge than I bargained for. There was no concrete wiring diagrams to follow given that I was doing something so non-standard on an uncommon guitar. After a few false starts I got some help from Alan at Sustaniac. The correct wiring was tricky and not at all guessable. It also required a special 9-lug jack to be wired in – so I had to order that from the States and wait a while for it. After some frustrated wiring attempts for hours the other day, I think I eventually got it right.
So I plugged the axe in and took it for a thorough test drive. The EMG85′s are as rich, clean and warm as I hoped they would be – but surprisingly too peaky and overdriven for some clean sounds. This is easy enough to curb with rolling the volume off a touch (and with a few re-writes of my patches). For your listening pleasure (or pain) I recorded a quick noodle of the sound of the new pickups. You can hear it warts and all here.
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Here’s some shots of the the work on the guitar, with Gus helping out:
Blue!
