Steve’s Special™ is a non-traditional approach to high-output bridge humbucking pickup design. Hot humbuckers usually concentrate most of the pickup’s power in a narrow frequency bandwidth for maximum impact. Using our patented dual-resonance design, Steve’s Special™ takes the opposite path, spreading the sound over a broad range. Bass and treble frequencies are boosted while the mids are pulled back, so the pickup’s power doesn’t kick a high-gain amp into overdrive as easily. This makes Steve’s Special™ a good choice for both fast soloing and clean chords, because individual notes won’t smear together with heavy overdrive, and clean sounds have an almost hi-fi quality.
Tech Talk: Clean overdrive with high-gain amps. Very effective in Dual Sound® and coil splitting clean modes. For soloing, this is a very good pickup to play with a midrange-heavy amp: the mid-scoop in the pickup's sound keeps the initial pick attack clean, and the notes don't run together as much with legato playing, even with heavy overdrive.
Recommended For: Bridge position
DiMarzio Tone Guide:
Treble, Middle, Bass, pretty much like on your amp. Scale is 0-10. Relationship between Treble, Middle & Bass is important too.
- Treble - 6.5
- Middle - 4.5
- Bass - 7.5
DiMarzio Output (mv) Guide:
The higher the number, the more power you get. Humbuckers (generally):
200mv "classic"
300mv "punchy"
400mv "hot"
*Full-Size Humbuckers are available in Standard & "F"spacing. Pickup size is the same, but the polepieces are set further apart on F versions. Measure the E to E string spacing over each pickup. 48mm takes Standard, 51mm takes F-spaced