EB MM Axis Pickups Question

[FrankieIII]

Are they a readily available pickup or custom wound? What production model pickups would be the closest in tone?

Thanks in advance

[zenmindbeginner]

They're not available for sale.

Think of a JB and then think of a Tone Zone... it is right smack dab in the middle of those two.

I have suspicions that the Axis pickup is more or less the Hamer Slammer pickup. The Slammer stopped right about the same time that the Axis started... and they are nearly indistinguishable from each other. The Slammer and the Axis are the Tone Zones without the boom and sludge... like a JB with a tighter low end and a tiny bit less compression.

Pretty sure we are talking 44AWG wire wound fairly generously with a DC resistance similar to the Tone Zone and JB and of course, an A5 magnet. Slugs and fillister head screws on a wax coated brass baseplate. Supposed to be mounted straight to the body via inserts.

DiMarzio is recommending the AT-1 and I am inclined to believe that this is not a bad substitution at all.

Murkat's WCR Murkat Special Floyd specific pickup will give you the Axis mojo and juice with the added ease of having 12 adjustable fillister screws instead of the usual 6slug/6 screw hot rodded PAF design. i've played it, it's got the vibe and the sound in spades.

The Air Zone isn't quite right and I've half aired a Tone Zone and it wasn't quite right either.

[FrankieIII]

Thanks Z. I thought it was you who mentioned something about this in the past. The Axis pups are made by Dimarzio then, right? I own both the JB and Tone Zone, each in the bridge of two different late model Charvel So Cal Strats I own and my Axis just smokes both of them. The JB and TZ are too harsh/shrill amongst other things. The Axis is very ballsy/chewy/bright without being overly harsh. A very nice classic/hard rock pickup.

[zenmindbeginner]

Thanks Z. I thought it was you who mentioned something about this in the past. The Axis pups are made by Dimarzio then, right? I own both the JB and Tone Zone, each in the bridge of two different late model Charvel So Cal Strats I own and my Axis just smokes both of them. The JB and TZ are too harsh/shrill amongst other things. The Axis is very ballsy/chewy/bright without being overly harsh. A very nice classic/hard rock pickup.

The Axis, like the JB and Tone Zone needs to be in the right wood combination in order to sound it's best and Ernie Ball could do this by only allowing them in the Axis model. I do not know if the magnet is UOA5 or roughcast... I don't know much about DiMarzio's use of magnets since they don't go into detail about it like Seymour does.

It's just ballsy/chewy/bright in those Axis models with the basswood/maple and maple neck combo or even more so with the mahogany sustainblock ones.

The Tone Zone and JB are stock mass produced pickups... the Axis is like a Custom shop model equivalent in terms of an upgrade in tone and response. The mag might be UOA5 instead of the smooth A5s in the JB and TZ.

I wouldn't be surprised if the EVH Wolfgang pickup isn't right up that alley too (never owned one).

[FrankieIII]

From the Gear Page:

"They say that the closest Dimarzio Axis production pickups are an Air Zone for the bridge & an Air Norton for the neck."

http://www.dimarzio....uckers/air-zone

The AZ and TZ have the same EQ, but the DC Res and Output mV are slightly different and the AZ has less string pull, due to it being an Airbucker, so I would bet the AZ sounds even closer to the Slammer (and maybe the Axis as well) than the TZ.

Also wanted to mention that Axis pups screw directly into the wood (no threaded inserts) as you mentioned above in your first reply. There's a piece of dense foam under each pup to provide upward tension.

[zenmindbeginner]

The AZ and TZ have the same EQ, but the DC Res and Output mV are slightly different and the AZ has less string pull, due to it being an Airbucker, so I would bet the AZ sounds even closer to the Slammer (and maybe the Axis as well) than the TZ.

Also wanted to mention that Axis pups screw directly into the wood (no threaded inserts) as you mentioned above in your first reply. There's a piece of dense foam under each pup to provide upward tension.

I already mentioned the direct mounting Frankie. The AIr Zone does not sound like the Slammer... the "air" mod doesn't really do the trick... like I said, I've done it.

Have you ever modded a Tone Zone? Do you have a variety of JBs with different magnets? Have you ever owned a EBMM Axis pickup in anything other than an EBMM Axis model?

I've given you the information that you requested... not sure what more you want to know or why you are sort of challenging what I'm typing here.

[FrankieIII]

You wrote:

"Supposed to be mounted straight to the body via inserts."

I wrote:

"Also wanted to mention that Axis pups screw directly into the wood (no threaded inserts) as you mentioned above in your first reply."

I was addressing that "inserts" are not used. It was an FYI.

And re: the AZ - I was just posting something I read on another page to see what your opinion about the AZ is.

You should drop the tude about challenging you. It's a discussion.

[zenmindbeginner]

You wrote:

"Supposed to be mounted straight to the body via inserts."

I wrote:

"Also wanted to mention that Axis pups screw directly into the wood (no threaded inserts) as you mentioned above in your first reply."

I was addressing that "inserts" are not used. It was an FYI.

And re: the AZ - I was just posting something I read on another page to see what your opinion about the AZ is.

You should drop the tude about challenging you. It's a discussion.

I'm not talking about the inserts or lack of Frankie, that was an excellent correction of my oversight, I am talking about you telling me that the GEAR PAGE says yadayadayada and that the Axis is nothing like the Tone Zone or JB.

Forget the Gear Page, I gave you the right information, the closest to the Axis pickup is the AT-1.

Was your thread titled "EBMM Axis pickups, let's discuss?"

No it was not. It was you asking for knowledge on the expert's forum.

The 'tude comes from your ingratitude. I didn't have to take time out of my day to answer your question and I was THE ONLY ONE who did...

Your simple answer should have been thanks and that's pretty much it, the correction about the inserts was fine and dandy to drop in there.

When people do nice things for you... you thank them. When I answered your question, that was doing something nice for you.

Gratitude... it's a virtue.

The difference is roughcast vs polished... it isn't a night and day change in tone... plus, the JB has a nickel/silver baseplate and the Axis has a wax coated brass one... those are pretty big differences in tone. Plus, your Charvel's alder body is not anywhere similar to the basswood/maple combo that the EBMM Axis has.

[cmatthes]

If this had been a Gear Page thread, it would have read "School me on Axis pickups!"...

[FrankieIII]

You wrote:

"Supposed to be mounted straight to the body via inserts."

I wrote:

"Also wanted to mention that Axis pups screw directly into the wood (no threaded inserts) as you mentioned above in your first reply."

I was addressing that "inserts" are not used. It was an FYI.

And re: the AZ - I was just posting something I read on another page to see what your opinion about the AZ is.

You should drop the tude about challenging you. It's a discussion.

Your simple answer should have been thanks and that's pretty much it, the correction about the inserts was fine and dandy to drop in there.

When people do nice things for you... you thank them. When I answered your question, that was doing something nice for you.

Gratitude... it's a virtue.

Ummm, I clearly thanked you on my very first reply to you above, so not sure what you're missing here.

End of discussion.

[zenmindbeginner]

You wrote:

"Supposed to be mounted straight to the body via inserts."

I wrote:

"Also wanted to mention that Axis pups screw directly into the wood (no threaded inserts) as you mentioned above in your first reply."

I was addressing that "inserts" are not used. It was an FYI.

And re: the AZ - I was just posting something I read on another page to see what your opinion about the AZ is.

You should drop the tude about challenging you. It's a discussion.

Your simple answer should have been thanks and that's pretty much it, the correction about the inserts was fine and dandy to drop in there.

When people do nice things for you... you thank them. When I answered your question, that was doing something nice for you.

Gratitude... it's a virtue.

Ummm, I clearly thanked you on my very first reply to you above, so not sure what you're missing here.

End of discussion.

Hmmm... never said you didn't thank me, but you should have just left it at that. I'm not interested in a f**king debate.

Forgive my anger and jerky behavior, I should have been more calm and chilled... I'm normally a really nice guy but I am regrettably, (at least) 20% asshole.

[FrankieIII]

"20% asshole"... LOL... Well, at least you still have your sense of humor. It's ALL GOOD. I appreciate it. Thanks! Forgive me as well if I somehow offended you, which certainly wasn't intentional.

BTW - Is EVH your favorite player, or at least favorite guitar tone? He's both for me. Jimmy Page a close second. We should share tone Info on the EVH sound. I've been chasing it for decades.

[RCM78]

A good friend of mine works for DiMarzio and he wont tell me what the Axis pups are nor will he sell me a set... He did tell me they would be dark in an alder bodied guitar and recomended the Tone Zone for the bridge position. I went with the Liquifier for the Neck (also his recomendation). These are going into a Hamer Diablo.

When I asked him about the differences between the Tone Zone, Air Zone, and AT-1 he said this..."Tone Zone is close to the Axis output wise but has different harmonics making it a bit brighter and more suited for a variety of guitars, Air Zone works great with a very hot amp, AT-1 is also great with a hot amp, not as much bottom as the TZ or AZ but thicker top end"

If I dont like the TZ I'm gonna try the AT-1. It's his favorite pickup at the moment and I've seen him play live many times. He knows good tone...

[zenmindbeginner]

BTW - Is EVH your favorite player, or at least favorite guitar tone? He's both for me. Jimmy Page a close second. We should share tone Info on the EVH sound. I've been chasing it for decades.

Absolutely! He is my favorite player along with DiMartini, Lynch, Jake E. Lee, Friedman and DiMeola. Eddie had that elusive sort of slippery ability and reminds me of great jazz musicians... his boogie is out of this world. His stretches and boxes are like a total workout and lessons unto themselves. It's taken me a while to sort of get in his head and get my muscles up to speed but I am cruising along at a sort of good rate (a song can take me 6 months to learn properly and I am still working on Eruption).

There's a lot of his stuff that I can't play yet, but hopefully next year will be the year where I start to tackle stuff like the lightning fast staccato opening to Fools and Spanish Fly and that kind of stuff.

That's with the JB and the Centaura. I did a tone test of GGB a couple of weeks ago and that will be my next tune... I cut the tone test with my Xaviere XV-620 and will probably use it for my next video which will be for the same song.

Main song riffs:

Girl Gone Bad (Geoff Take Test) 1c.mp3

Solo:

Girl Gone Bad (Geoff Solo Take).mp3

Here's where you can download my two fav EVH Line 6 POD X3 Live tones if you can use them:

http://line6.com/cus...dscarabstudios/

A good friend of mine works for DiMarzio and he wont tell me what the Axis pups are nor will he sell me a set... He did tell me they would be dark in an alder bodied guitar and recomended the Tone Zone for the bridge position. I went with the Liquifier for the Neck (also his recomendation). These are going into a Hamer Diablo.

When I asked him about the differences between the Tone Zone, Air Zone, and AT-1 he said this..."Tone Zone is close to the Axis output wise but has different harmonics making it a bit brighter and more suited for a variety of guitars, Air Zone works great with a very hot amp, AT-1 is also great with a hot amp, not as much bottom as the TZ or AZ but thicker top end"

If I dont like the TZ I'm gonna try the AT-1. It's his favorite pickup at the moment and I've seen him play live many times. He knows good tone...

The AT-1, Tone Zone and JB are all cousins with the same DNA... the wire might be coated differently between the pickups and the Axis I'm pretty sure has a roughcast magnet which would take the bright edge off of a Tone Zone, give the midrange a bit more texture and soften the bass up a bit. It's like the difference between my 35th Anniversary JB and a stock JB. The 35th Anniversary is it's own pickup because of the pretty big difference between a RCA5 and a polished one, just like the Duncan SH-11, SH-5 and SH-15 are all the same wind but with different magnets. You load up two bobbins with 44AWG poly coated wire and the sweet spot for maximum power and tone at that wire gauge is a wind measuring at roughly 16-18K... pretty much the raw ingredients for a JB, Tone Zone or AT-1. The Tone Zone and AT-1 are on a brass baseplate which affects their sound differently than the JB's nickel silver plate... yadayadayada.

No air technology in the Axis that I or anybody has seen... a symmetrical wind with the funky wax coated baseplate.

I had fun installing a Tone Zone, JB and an Axis set in my friends OLP for fun one weekend a year or two ago. It was crazy how similar the Axis pickups and Tone Zone sounds... all three shared the same wild ass harmonics. the thing that I noticed most about the Axis was that the bass wasn't as boomy, it was a bit softer and had a sort of a more dry sound than the other two... more like the drier sound of the JB than the sort of wet sound of the Tone Zone. Splitting all three yielded similar results too.

That's why the AT-1 is so close too all three of those pickups being the same 44AWG wire and similar wind and is a very close contender and a better representation of the Axis than even the TZ I'm afraid since it has more of the JB flavor that the Axis has.

I lost my mind for a while with the Axis pickup and in the end, just went back to the JB.

The only mass produced production pup I would switch out my JBs for is the AT-1, damn right Timmons knows tone.

[Ting Ho Dung]

Sincerely like your tone, Zen, as I've said before. You are an impeccably accomplished guitarist. Be happy :)

[Crwth145]

What Thorn said... and that's probably the best panama cover I've ever heard, bro...

[RCM78]

I put the Tone Zone and Liquifier in my Diablo earlier this week. My objective was to get this guitar to sound as close as possible to my Peavey Wolfgang which to my ears is very close to the Axis.

The original pickups in this Hamer were Duncan JB's both bridge and neck. Never cared for them. They had this fuzzy character, even clean this guitar always had a bit of fuzz to the tone. Plus compared to my Wolf the JB's in this guitar were a bit darker.

My first change was a set of Suhr Aldrich pups. Wow, These are bright in an alder guitar. Very musical though. Not shrill at all they just lack bottom end. I have an Aldrich in my PC-1 and love it. I guess the mahogany body makes a big difference.

Like I said in a previous post a buddy of mine at Dimarzio recomended the Tone Zone / Liquifier combo for this guitar. I gotta say, it's so close to the wolf I'm done!!! Not changing anything anymore and this guitar will now go into my live rotation. The other guitar player in my band even commented on how good it sounded. I didnt tell him I replaced the pups, wanted to see if anyone noticed since they didnt normally like the tone of this guitar.

So the Tone Zome output feels very close to the Wolfgang output. Bass, mid, and treble response also feel very close. I didnt want to change the EQ on my amp at all. The biggest difference I can hear is the Tone Zone has more clarity then the Wolf pickups. I'm not saying it's better or owrse just different.

The liquifier is so fluid. I only solo on the neck pickup and this is why the liquifier was recomended. I love it!!! Tons of clarity from a neck pickup, plenty of output. Theres no drop off in volume when switching from bridge to neck. It also sounds very open and uncompressed. Unlike any neck humbucker I've ever used. It's great!!!

[yngwie308]

If this had been a Gear Page thread, it would have read "School me on Axis pickups!"...

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: That is too funny, school me on... the exact words, I often feel like have you heard of Google search, duh!

When I met Steve Stevens a year ago in October, at his Phoenix show with Idol he was using his MM Axis for all the whammy bar songs and I asked him if he had changed the pickups as it sounded awesome and Steve said that the guitar was completely stock including the pickups! So they must be fairly good as SS is a stickler for tone, it has been noted

http://i57.photobuck...54/6e162a3d.jpg

yngwie308