Post by antigua on Mar 15, 2021 2:12:36 GMT -5
This is an older product now, I think it was released more than a decade ago, and I never bought the pick guard, but I bought multiples of the pickups to make my own brew. It has just taken me a long time to get around to measuring these particular pickups. I didn't grab bode plots of these, because the eddy current / Q factor situation with DiMarzio blades is known guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/8502/dimarzio-chopper-analysis-review
(BC-2 pre-wired pickguard bridge)
DiMarzio Billy Corgan DP226BK BC-2 Bridge
- DC Resistance: 12.051K ohms (5.837K split)
- Measured L: 7.416H (2.820 split)
- Calculated C: 334.8pF (4 conductor hookup) (554.3 split)
- Gauss: 450G (ceramic)
...
(Choppers, pre-wired pickguard middle)
DiMarzio Chopper DP184BK #1
- DC Resistance: 8.88K ohms (RB 3.82k, GW 5.03k)
- Measured L: 5.898H (RB 2.115H, GW 2.144H)
- Calculated C: 231pF (241 - 10) (RB 640pF, GW 632pF)
- Gauss: 500G (ceramic between steel blades)
DiMarzio Chopper DP184BK #2
- DC Resistance: 8.86K ohms (RB 3.83k, GW 5.03k)
- Measured L: 5.915H (RB 2.132H, GW 2.159H)
- Calculated C: 221pF (231 - 10)
- Gauss: 500G (ceramic between steel blades)
DiMarzio Chopper DP184BK #3
- DC Resistance: 8.85k ohms (RB 3.81k, GW 5.02k)
- Measured L: 5.904H (RB 2.112H, GW 2.153H)
- Calculated C: 221pF (231 - 10)
- Gauss: 500G (ceramic between steel blades
...
(BC-1's, pre-wired pickguard neck)
DiMarzio DP225BK Billy Corgan BC-1 Neck #1
- DC Resistance: 10.989K ohms (5.261K split)
- Measured L: 6.766H (2.576 split)
- Calculated C: 353.8pF (4 conductor hookup) (422.9 split)
- Gauss: 450G (ceramic)
DiMarzio DP225BK Billy Corgan BC-1 Neck #2
- DC Resistance: 10.922K ohms (5.203K split)
- Measured L: 6.800H (2.557 split)
- Calculated C: 309.2pF (4 conductor hookup) (411.3 split)
- Gauss: 450G (ceramic)
The interesting thing about this set is that the neck pickup has a rather high inductance just under 7 henries. That's more typical of a hot bridge pickup. Without any coil splitting or parallel wiring scheme, the bridge is very muddy for cleans and chords, but works fine for fuzzy lead lines. The Tillman pickup aperture demo shows how single coils retain more high harmonics than a full sized humbucker, due to a lack of comb filtering effects that notch out so many frequency bands. I believe, and I think it's safe to say, that the presence of the higher harmonics allows these single coil sized humbuckers to have a higher inductance, 7 henries and upwards, without sounding quite as muddy as a comparable full sized humbucker.
Subjectively speaking though, I don't feel the rails "chug" as well as a full sized humbucker, and for what it's worth, Billy Corgan himself seems to have shifted out his guitars that featured these pickups. I saw them live in 2018 and they didn't make an appearance at any point during the three hour show. That era when he did used these pickups was my personal favorite though, so they still have currency with me.
The DC resistance values show that the they're using difference gauges of wire on the coil, but in the case of the Choppers the inductances are the same, so I'd extrapolate and guess that they all keep the same numbers of wire turns on each coil, and that's not uncommon for DiMarzio, I think they have a patent on it and they seem to believe that it constitutes and innovation of some sort.
The really great thing about these pickups though is that because the inductance is so high, the split sound of the individual coils is pretty sweet. These same sorts of pickups can be bought on Amazon for $12 so I probably wouldn't buy them now, they're sold at a rather high price just for the benefit of the name brand, and IMO they're the best passive pickup to have been invented, and the fact that they can be had for $12 is a testament to their perfection. Another often overlooked fact is that you can get alternate covers for these pickups, and there's a rainbow of color options to match your hot pink Super Strat.
For my use, I appreciate the high inductance neck and bridge for being fire breathing lead oriented pickups, but the Choppers, which is only meant to be the middle pickup of this set, comes a lot closer to a Little '59, or a "PAF in a Strat size" type pickup, and so I had put three Choppers in another Strat so that it could be a good jack of all trades, and put another neck pickup in the middle position of my "Billy Corgan" Strat to make it a more dedicated "lead" guitar with a really nice split tone.
