Jimmy Wahlsteen demos DiMarzio's The Black Angel Piezo and Magnetic Pickups Video

[buzzardwhiskey]

DiMarzio is getting in the dual pickup game by combining their Black Angel with an under-bridge (inside the guitar) piezo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yx7WWfZC1U

He's getting some really good tone, but he's definitely a pro with some great outboard gear.

I hadn't seen this video before ordering a Black Angel and combining it with my Baggs Lyric, which is working beautifully.

[guitaniac]

Yes, I've been checking out the these vids for the past few days. The Mike Dawes vids are pretty impressive, too.

While the Black Angel recordings sound somewhat "electric" to me, its a darn nice electric sound. Also, I've heard it mentioned that the pickups "feel" or touch response is part of its appeal.

[royd]

I had one of the earlier generation Angels and liked it a lot... I'm not sure the black angel sounds very different from the earlier one but if I need to purchase a new pickup rig at some point, it likely will be my first choice. The mix with their SBT sounds very, very good to my ear.

[guitaniac]

I thought both pickups sounded very good, individually and together. There's no doubt that the signal was processed, however. Jimmy explained his EQ settings, but it seemed like more than that was going on, be it reverb, compression, multi-band compression, signal saturation or whatever. LR Baggs's candid revelations (with the introduction of the Session DI) regarding the studio techniques used to enhance their company demos have made me a little more wary of all company demos.

That aside, I find it easy to believe that DiMarzio's new soundboard pickup will be a better companion to the Angel than the Shadow NanoFlex has been. I've tried the NanoFlex and found it less pleasing than several other undersaddle pickups which I've used (PUTW I/O UST, DTAR Wavelength, Headway co-axial).

The mere fact that the DiMarzio piezo pickup is a soundboard pickup, as opposed to a UST, will be a big plus for a lot of folks. The DiMarzio folks may be making a mistake to call it their "piezo pickup", however, since the word "piezo" equates to an undersaddle pickup in the minds of many players. Mistakenly as it may be (since most soundboard pickups are piezo pickups also), "piezo" has become a dirty word in the minds of many who prefer soundboard pickups or magnetic pickups to undersaddle pickups.

In any event, its a good thing that the Black Angel is designed to combine (in a dual source) with any passive piezo pickup, or even active pickups like the Lyric which have a ring contact available to add a mag. I don't think many folks will be applying Bondini super glue remover to their Pure Mini setups in order to replace that pickup with the DiMarzio piezo pickup.