About the "Deactivators" (they're actually called D Activators)

[horstausmforst]

.. just FYI, they're are now up on the dimarzio site:

Originally Posted by dimarzio.com

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.
[..]
The D Activator™ neck and bridge models are the result. They have the same loud yet clean sound as the active humbuckers players 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.
[..]
Our pickup is passive with a lot of headroom, and it responds quickly and accurately to changes in pick attack (as opposed to actives). A hard pick attack doesn’t cause the signal to flatten out, and picking more softly or rolling the volume control down lets the sound clean up naturally.

Sounds either promising or impossible. I'm not sure yet.

[klp2332]

i agree, sounds very impossible. but i hope someone can prove me wrong.

[SpikeSocietySucks]

If Dimarzio have been looking at the "leading" models of active pickups, it suggests they've been looking at the EMG seires. My moneys on the 81 for the bridge, and by the specs of the neck pickup maybe a hybrid of the 60 and the 85.

They've probably succeeded in creating a pickup which clips an amps overdrive channel the same way a distortion class active would, but I very much doubt they've created the "Clean Overdrive" I associate with EMG. As well, with that much power, they're probably not going to have the best cleans. The neck's top end looks nice, and I'm guessing if put in the right guitar would probably result in a pretty clear articulate high gain type sound..

I'm sort of expecting a slightly reduced X2N, with ballish sound, which warms up when the tones rolled back, but what I'd LOVE too find with this pickup is a colourless tone which just perfroms consistantly and gives the same versatility an EMG would......

....or a nice enter sandman solo :P

[jm1681]

Just read about these.

I'd really like to get the EMG sound with no batteries and more headroom. If they can pull it off, I may have a new favorite...