Active humbuckers have a distinctive sound: powerful, clean, open-sounding, with excellent harmonic overtones and very tight lows. This also fits the description of a great 7-string pickup, if the problems associated with active pickups sterile sound and limited headroom could be eliminated. The D Activator 7(tm) bridge model does just that. It has the same loud yet clean sound as the best active humbuckers, and killer harmonics. The low B string is all about attack, not mud. It responds instantly to hard or light picking. The neck model has both power and clarity. The low B string stays solid and doesn't sound like mud with extreme overdrive, and the high strings sing all the way up the neck. In a word, it rocks. No batteries required.

Recommended For: Bridge, Neck

Tech Talk: Like the 6-string version, the bridge D Activator 7 has a very focused attack that hits the amp hard and makes it 'feel' more powerful than it actually specs out to be. DiMarzio also wanted to avoid the limiting effect that can occur with active pickups when they are played hard. The pickup is passive with a lot of headroom, and it responds quickly and accurately to changes in pick attack. A hard pick attack doesn't cause the signal to flatten out, and picking more softly or rolling the volume control down lets the sound clean up naturally.

It's tough to get a clear tone from the low B string in the neck position without making the unwound strings sound brittle, and even harder with a high-output pickup.… read more The two D Activator 7 coils are tuned to different frequencies that complement each other and allow the pickup to 'speak' clearly, with the power concentrated in the most effective frequency range.

Like all passive pickups, D Activators require controls with a minimum value of 250Kohms. 500K is the standard all around value, and DiMarzio's 1Megohm tone control is best for long cable runs. read less