Gravity Storm Neck Humbucker Pickup - Black Review

Not what I expected

I have an Ibanez Prestige RG2570 with a Basswood body and a Rosewood neck with stock Dimarzio/IBZ pickups that are direct mounted from the factory. My amp is a Gallien Krueger 2100SEL 100x2 stereo amp that I have a Yamaha Magic Stomp pedal for delay and a MXR 10 band eq with volume and gain in the effects loop of the amp. The sound is identical to Iron Maiden's "Somewhere In Time"… read more sound.When doing my research I chose to stick with Dimarzio since that has been the combo I recognize for metal and fast playing/shredding. Plus I am big fan of people like Steve Vai and I love his sound. When on Dimarzio's website using all their parameters available, the Gravity Storm pickups came up 90% of the time. I purchased the neck and bridge pickups and installed them. Even with telling the salesman, no options were given for direct mount or machine screw/spring style pickups. Ibanez uses a shouldered screw that are larger than the factory opening for the standard machine screw/spring set up so you MUST drill out the mounting holes on the pickup or you will strip out the wood on the guitar, I was looking for a neck pickup that was a little more transparent in sound, one that didn't alter the sound too much and make it sound like a cow mooing as I can best describe it. Since I didn't do enough research in my quest to get Steve Vai's sound, I didn't realize his main guitar has a Fernandez Sustainer in it and that was the sound I was looking for. So this pickup has very much a PAF style sound to it with a little less bass and a little more highs when playing on a distorted channel. In time I should be able to get a better sound and I need to add shims to raise the pickup a little more, maybe 1/8 of an inch or more. The pickup on distortion needs to be just a little hotter volume wise and that is why I will raise it, which may help on the tone.Having said that, the pickup on a clean channel sounds amazing, much better than I thought it would. You get bell like tones and amazing clarity. All tones, high/mid/bass are balanced very well. As much as I am disappointed in the distorted sounds, I am that much more pleased with the clean tones. But I was looking for a pickup that was best of both worlds and clean channel/neck pickup tones are very important to me. The dynamics and clarity of this pickup leaves you plenty of room to adjust your sound with volume and tone. Finally, I went with the salesman's recommendations for standard spacing on the neck pickup instead of F spacing. Visually, standard spacing on my model Ibanez does not work. Even the factory pickup(I didn't check first before buying) is F spaced. Sonically this may not make a difference. But then again it may. I'm not going to go through the hassle of returning the pickup and reinstalling a new one. Bottom line, I will probably replace this pickup in the future. But I am going to do everything I can think of before I do that as I may finally get the best of both worlds I am looking for.

---

Cancel Comment