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Author Topic: Only you can prevent bad pickups  (Read 1018 times)

manana12

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Only you can prevent bad pickups
« on: May 26, 2010, 01:22:13 AM »
Hey guys I have a non bkp question. If it matters, I got my painkiller and it's pretty good. It's very clear. Anyway, I might be getting a used kramer focus 3000 and I believe it has a maple body. I have a dimarzio d activator bridge from
 my xiphos that got the painkiller so I was wondering if the d activator is too bright for the kramer

BigB

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Re: Only you can prevent bad pickups
« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2010, 12:14:24 PM »
According to this page http://www.vintagekramer.com/parts5.htm, most Focus bodies would be alder. OTHO, maple has been used on quite a lot of japanese guitars so your own might indeed be maple, or even poplar or basswood. This should be easy to find out once you have it: maple is heavy as hell, almost overly bright, with very tight low ends. Unplugged, it can range from suprisingly resonant, almost as much as an hollowbody, to very "closed", almost dead sounding (and yet sounds just great once plugged with the right pups).

I don't know much about the D Activator, but I can tell you that the (stock) X2Ns on my (all-maple, going-thru neck) Vox Custom 24 sounded like sh*t.

Anyway: wait until you get the guitar so you'll know how it sounds unplugged (and possibly guess what wood it is). Two pieces of the same wood can have very different tones so there is no hard rule here.
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