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DiMarzio D Activator Humbucker Guitar Pickup

Designed to eliminate the sterile edginess commonly associated with active pickups.

Overall User Ratings

Overall:
          10 out of 10
Features:
          10 out of 10
Quality:
          10 out of 10
Value:
          10 out of 10
I Want It:
          10 out of 10
Sound:
          9 out of 10
Ease of Use:
          10 out of 10
Support:
          10 out of 10
 
 

"More METAL for the Buck!"

Overall:
          10 out of 10
Features:
          10 out of 10
Quality:
          10 out of 10
Value:
          10 out of 10
I Want It:
          10 out of 10
Sound:
          10 out of 10
Ease of Use:
          10 out of 10
Support:
          10 out of 10
User: a customer from aol.com
Submitted: 2/6/2008
Style of Music: Classic Rock, Metal, New Metal, Death Metal if it KRANKS, I like it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Musical Experience: Musician
Location: Atlanta, Georgia USA

 

 
zZounds has verified that this customer bought this product from us.
Feature:
The best feature I like about this pickup is getting the Active sound without having to feed it 9 volt batterys!

Quality:
It's a Dimarzio! Nuff said!

Value:
Definitely worth the price considering what active EMGs or Duncans are selling for.

Desirability:
Its a sweet looking set of open coils all rivets no screw heads, looks great sitting above a Floyd Rose Bridge!

Sound:
I got this pickup on an Ibanez EX 370 I won off E-bay. I was surprised by the response I got win I cranked it up. This pickup can give you some sweet sustain on clean channels and on an overdriven channel with a Digitech Metal Master pedal it creates some great Metal sounds like Tommi Iommi's vintage sound to Nickelbacks cranking tones.

Ease of Use:
Couldn't be easier to use, it reacts to the force at which strike the strings. It gives you all the features of an active pickup with the wiring ease of a passive pickup.

Support:
I know from past experoences that Dimarzio is great with customer support, whether your having problems with a product oe just need a wiring diagram.

Overall:
Looks, Sound, Features, and Price make this pickup a great upgrade to any guitar and an excellent value!

7 of 7 people (100%) found this review helpful. Did you?    
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"Best passive pickups for metal!!"

Overall:
          10 out of 10
Sound:
          10 out of 10
Submitted: 3/1/2008

 

 
Quality:
obviously not active right...... but easy to have installed and no batteries.

Sound:
Wow.. these D activator pickups are really rich in harmonics, and delivers with out edgy-ness. I have a miny P.A. system at home (4[2x15]cabs,2[2x18]subwoofers and 6 power mixers) and use these pickups with my Schecter Damian fr and line 6 pod xt live(with metal shop[and racks that include;aural exciter 204,dbx compression, and pretube mp rack.).....AWESOME TONE when direct to P.A.

Overall:
Really gives you superior tone...check out necophagist at youtube.. the guitarist use these pickups.....

6 of 6 people (100%) found this review helpful. Did you?    
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"Active-sounding pickups for a Passive Price. Brillant"

Overall:
          10 out of 10
Features:
          10 out of 10
Quality:
          10 out of 10
Value:
          10 out of 10
I Want It:
          10 out of 10
Sound:
          9 out of 10
Ease of Use:
          10 out of 10
Support:
          10 out of 10
User: a customer from yahoo.com
Submitted: 10/3/2008
Style of Music: Metal all of it
Musical Experience: "active musician"
Location: centerville, ohio

 

 
Feature:
The feature of not replacing batteries is very useful. Active volume control makes it easy not to kill people when switching between pickups.

Quality:
dimarzio made these pickups very well. Enough said.

Value:
These are active sound for passive price.

Desirability:
These and a xiphos. Groupies need to stay in a line

Sound:
Being passive, My EMGs sound a lot more metal. However these are "The Best" passive pickups, sound wise, of all I have used.

Ease of Use:
Solder those puppies up and start playing. Amazing.

Support:
I have not contacted them, but I have for other pickups. Nice people, easy to talk to.

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"The best pickups in the market...Guaranteed"

Overall:
          10 out of 10
Features:
          9 out of 10
Quality:
          10 out of 10
Value:
          9 out of 10
I Want It:
          10 out of 10
Sound:
          10 out of 10
Ease of Use:
          10 out of 10
Support:
          9 out of 10
User: a customer from hotmail.com
Submitted: 8/13/2007
Style of Music: Hard Rock, Alternative Rock, Pop-Rock, Grunge and General Rock, Rock N' Roll
Musical Experience: Guitarist
Location: Jeddah, KSA

 

 
Sound:
The sound is clear....precise and unlike most other active pickups it does not have that uneasiness.....however an awesome "PASSIVE" pickup carrying out the amazing features of the famed active pickups.... These are THE PICKUPS for all metal players and pther genre players too

4 of 5 people (80%) found this review helpful. Did you?    
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"Not what I had hoped for..."

Overall:
          5 out of 10
Sound:
          5 out of 10
User: a customer from aol.com
Submitted: 10/31/2007
Style of Music: Rock/Metal
Location: Woburn, MA

 

 
zZounds has verified that this customer bought this product from us.
Sound:
I've read a few negative reviews claiming this pickup was "lifeless" and weak, and given the specs on the DiMarzio site I found that hard to believe. Actually trying the pickup, however, was a bit of a surprise. DiMarzio claims they were trying to capture the feel of a pickup that behaves in a manner much hotter than what it specs out to be, but my findings turned out to be quite the opposite. The pickup did feel to be moderate in output, as if certain key "power" frequencies were missing. Palm mutes were not as sharp and present as the JB, and the mids, while prominent in certain areas, lacked life and "zing." The distorted tone also felt very flat and sterile, much more so than other DiMarzios. The Evolution is almost vintage sounding compared to this pickup. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise given this pickup is designed to emulate EMGs, but I actually did have faith in DiMarzio's claims that they had eliminated the sterile qualities of active pickups and increased the headroom of the pickup for a more natural and uncompressed response. This pickup does not show the nuances of the player or allow for much feel. While most DiMarzios introduce a bit of this in a pleasant way (seems to make them easier to control, this pickup takes that quality to an extreme. The other reviewer who mentioned a lack of character was spot on. On the positive side, the pickup is not fuzzy in any way, and the chordal clarity is quite good in certain cases. I found some chords worked better than others, with some sounding muddier than on other pickups...strangely enough.

Overall:
I've been playing 8 years and have been through a fair amount of pickups -- mostly DiMarzios. I tested this pickup through a Single Rectifier and Marshall JCM 900 SL-X. Both amps were feeding VHT fatbottom 2x12 cabinets with P50E speakers. The signal was split using a Radial Tonebone SwitchBone to run both amps at teh same time... Overall this pickup was a let down. I was really hoping for something that felt hotter nad the sterile quality has turned me off to DiMarzios for the time being. I still have them in my other guitars, but I think I'm going the way of Duncan now. Even the Evolution and Super Distortion feel much more powerful than this pickup, and those both have less output in MV. I was looking for a less extreme X2N humbucker, as that pickup was too over the top for me and picked up too much "thud" noise on the guitar.

1 of 4 people (25%) found this review helpful. Did you?    
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