• Coil Tapping is a MUST!!

  
  As reviewed by wolfsrun on 2/1/2010

  I recently purchased a set of Tony Iommi humbuckers after 2 years of a curiosity that would not be satisfied. It should be noted that when you purchase one here on this site, they recommend a push/pull 500K pot. This is sound advice as far as these pickups go. For those that are looking for hot passive pickups that are in the vein of active pickups in terms of tone, these are not those pickups. In fact, these pickups as regular humbuckers are actually very dark and to be honest if someone installed them as such I can't see how most players would be satisfied with the tone they produce in this manner. These pickups do not deliver as promised unless they are coil tapped. If untapped, you do get a thick, dark, heavy sound that is ideal for leads and single note riffing. Tap the coils and you get a nice, beefy, punchy clear sound that is reminiscent of a P-90 single coil. I installed these with a full Jimmy Page harness and since doing this I have them tapped more times often than not (usually the neck) while running a reverse phase. I suppose there was a reason Gibson sold these in a 4 wire configuration, and based on Iommi's own history with his guitars, it wouldn't surprise me if this is what they were designed around....a pickup that sounded as close as possible to a P-90 tapped with a very heavy sound untapped. Those are the Iommis in a nutshell. (Also: I have read about some players employing 1 meg pots against these pickups, but that usually comes at the expense of volume control. In conclusion, I can't state this strongly enough: COIL TAP THESE PICKUPS!

  11 of 11 people found this review helpful.
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• Iommi Humbucker

  
  As reviewed by Pete on 3/1/2010

  I just bought this humbucker for my Faded Gibson SG in the bridge position and I couldn't be more pleased with the "fat" Black Sabbath sound I wanted to achieve. Guitar Center had it on back order. It was well worth the wait. I would recommend this pickup to any guitarist that wants to achive the Iommi sound. It's output is clean on the high end and has just enough of the heavy sound on the low end. I put some fuzz on it and it just booms the way I knew it would.

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• Iommi humbucker

  
  As reviewed by Tommy Ionni on 2/16/2011

  I bought one of these right when they came out and didn't like them until I did some research on Tony's style. Since 1970 he has been using super light strings. You can go to his website and he says that he uses .008 .008 .011 .018w .024w .032 I found this to be unbelievable but after seein Sabbath live in 2004 I decided to commit myself to these string gauges also. Tony also used a treble boost pedal in a lot of the early recordings so I got a Danneberg electronics oc44 germanium super ranger. Now I love this pickup! Volume plays a big part in this setup too. I set my amp with all controls at 0 except treble and mid at ten. Crank the volume as loud as you can and if you have a tube amp you should sound closer to Tony than you ever have before.

  2 of 2 people found this review helpful.
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