FRED humbuckers take the PAF Pro up a notch with more gain, mid EQ and overtones. It's a sound with more crank and growl. FRED's wide, fat tone fills up a lot of space in the mix : a great pickup with combined lead / rhythm styles and power trio gigs. FRED is really sensitive to changes in pick attack. Digging in hard pushes the tone from crunch to overdrive without running back to the rig to change the gain settings. Rolling back the volume knob on the guitar warms up the sound without losing snarl and bite. With the tone control backed off, the round, vintage sweet tone steps out, recreating the tubular singing tone of the 60's. For straight-into-the-amp burning, FRED lets you make all the changes happen right from the guitar. A short time spent exploring pick attack and the guitar's volume and tone controls reveals the wide variety of tones available from FRED with just a little work.
Recommended For:
Neck and bridge positions in all solidbody, hollow and semi-hollowbody guitars.
Tech Talk:
The FRED started out as a prototype designed to add a little midrange to the PAF Pro. When we sent one of the the first ones to Joe Satriani, he discovered and exploited a unique tonal characteristic - the FRED's ability to emphasize upper midrange and treble harmonics through an overdriven and distorted amp. Many standard humbuckers have a tendency to fatten up with distortion. The FRED does the opposite; it gets tighter and brighter, much like a single-coil. Joe uses the FRED strictly as a bridge pickup, but it's also a distinctive neck pickup - works really well with a NortonTM, Tone ZoneTM or Evolution bridge model.