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Tone and power of active pickups without the battery hassle.
Active humbuckers have a distinctive sound - powerful, clean, open sounding, with excellent harmonic overtones and very tight lows. The down side for many players is that they also sound cold, have limited dynamics and run out of headroom when played hard. And of course, they need batteries. In 2006 DiMarzio took a close look at the most popular active neck and bridge humbuckers to see if they could capture all of the good qualities and eliminate the disadvantages. The D Activator neck and bridge models are the result. They have the same loud yet clean sound, as players of active humbuckers are familiar with, and killer harmonics. They also respond instantly to hard or light pick attack. In a word, they rock. And they don't need batteries.
Recommended For: Neck. Can also be used in bridge position
Tech Talk: There's a big difference between a pickup that sounds bright and one that sounds thin. A thin-sounding pickup will be brittle on the highest frets and empty sounding in the mids and lows. The D Activator neck model doesn't do this — both the wound and plain strings remain tight and bright up the neck, and very well balanced. This allows the D Activator neck model to function well in both longer scale bolt-ons and shorter scale, set-neck guitars. It also makes for a good bridge pickup if you want a sound with a lot of snap and power. Like all passive pickups, D Activators require controls with a minimum value of 250Kohms. 500K is the standard all around value, and our 1Megohm tone control is best for long cable runs.
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