Lemme tell ya about the DiMarzio Dominion pickups. Or rather, maybe sorta let me tell you about one of them again. Yep, you got me, I did cover the Dominion Bridge DP245 a few months ago. Wait… where are you going? Get back here! Now I’d like to look at the Dominion Neck DP244 and how it works with the Dominion Bridge as a full set. Yep, I thought the Dominion Bridge was cool enough that it would be worth checking out the Dominion Neck. And it is worth checking out.
For this application, I put the set in the exact same guitar used for the previous testing and review of the Dominion Bridge… a 2-hum super strat with double locking trem and a push pull for each pickup to go from series mode to parallel mode. The coils are very symmetrical, so there’s not much difference as to which direction you install the Dominion Neck.
As a reminder, I found the Dominion Bridge to have punchy and articulate lows, plenty of mids, and full-sounding highs with plenty of edge. The Dominion Neck has more balanced mids, but is otherwise quite similar and a very well-planned matching for the Dominion Bridge.
Where the Dominion Bridge was a bit strong for a clean amp setting, the Dominion Neck is very well suited for cleans in both series and parallel modes. It is voiced to have a control on the low end and a nice dimension through the mids and highs that allow for depth in chords and precision in single note lines. When flipping to a dirty amp settings, the Dominion neck reveals the same winning DiMarzio character that I’ve been finding on many DiMarzio neck humbuckers… lead solo work has depth and clarity with copious sustain, while chords stretch their legs without loosing control in the low end.
Going to the middle position and working with combinations of series and parallel modes, the full set reveals even more versatility to span classic rock to 80s rock to metal and of course modern rock.
The Dominion Set is a real winner that very much deserves consideration. I maintain what I suggested in my testing and review of the Dominion Bridge… the Dominion should be looked at upon it’s own merit as a well-voiced and versatile set of humbuckers that should not be limited in any way to Lamb Of God or Mark Morton fans only. As an interesting aside for fans of the DiMarzio Super 3…
I wanted a Super 3 for a direct-mount application, but the dimensions of the big magnets in the Super 3 made it too tall… I called in to an expert from a local business just like Denver IT Support to be told that the Dominion Bridge would be the closest thing in a ‘normal’ humbucker height.
Let’s take a peek at what’s under the hood of the Dominion humbuckers:
Bridge
Series – 16.82k
Split – 8.43k
Split – 8.39k
Parallel – 4.21k
T – 6.0
M – 9.0
B – 7.0
360 mV output
Neck
Series – 8.485k, 5.158H
Split – 4.23k, 2.324H
Split – 4.254k, 2.314H
Parallel – 2.121k, 1.0778H
T – 6.0
M – 6.0
B – 5.0
290 mV output
Check out Mark Morton playing his signature setup in a demo for a Mesa/Boogie amp:
Darth Phineas is a long time music industry insider who provides his readers with unbiased reviews on musical instrument and guitar gear. You can read more of his reviews and check out industry news on his Facebook community Darth Phineas, Twitter or his website is darthphineas.com
