Tūmatauenga is the Signature Pickup of Lewis De Jong – Alien Weaponry
NZ$229. If you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$199.13
Ceramic 8 – Bridge 13.6 KOhms, 9.65H
The Tūmatauenga bridge pickup is the signature pickup of Lewis De Jong from the band Alien Weaponry.
This is no ordinary pickup, it’s specifically designed around Lewis’ requirements on stage and in the studio.
This pickup is aggressive and immediate, the bass is tight and punchy, mids powerful and clear with clear highs. It has power but also clarity to bring out the complex chords in Lewis’ playing.
These samples were recorded by Lewis using: a DBZ Bolero guitar, D’addario 11-56 Nickel Wounds tuned to drop C#, Marshall JCM 2000 DSL 50 heads x2, Marshall MF280 4×12 with V30s x2, Shure Wireless/tuner, Ibanez Weeping Demon, Line 6 M5, Boss HM6, Radial ABY box (all off/bypassed for this demo), mics used – Sennheiser ES906, Audio i5
The Story of the Tūmatauenga Pickup
I was contacted by Alien Weaponry in December 2021 on their way back from a US tour. They were wondering if it was possible to have a NZ pickup made for Lewis. I jumped at the chance.
I’d been working on a pickup for extreme metal for some time and thought this might be me chance to use it. I loaded a test guitar with this pickup and headed to Waipu to meet Lewis. The band are based about 2 1/2 hours from my home so it was a great opportunity to do everything in person.
We plugged my test guitar into Lewis’ Marshall at their rehearsal room and it was obvious from their reaction that this wasn’t the sound they wanted. Okay, so it was going to take some work.
I had a listen to the pickups he was using and we had a long chat about what he wanted. I took one of their pickups out of his No.2 guitar to take back to the workshop to analyse.
Back at the workshop I measured all the parameters of the pickup and made a plan. I didn’t want to clone his existing sound but I couldn’t go too far away from it. I wanted to increase the punch of the bass and add a little clarity to the mids. One thing that was important was that it still sounded like their last album – you can’t go out on tour with a completely different sound.
I made a couple of prototypes and the following week headed back to Waipu.
I had one of the prototypes in my LTD test guitar and although it wasn’t exactly right is was close. From now on all the testing would be in Lewis’ own guitars. Once you’re close you need to minimise the parameters. And that’s how it went, swapping pickups and testing until Lewis was happy.
Finally we had the sound but that wasn’t all, it needed to look right.
The design on the pickup
The design on the pickup came from the band – hereis what they say about it:
Mangopare (Hammerhead shark) is a kaitiaki (guardian) and tohu āriki (sacred chiefly symbol) of our family.
It is a traditional design motif that appears throughout Māoridom but is particularly treasured by my tribal group (Te Arawa) It stands for strength, courage and power.
Name of the pickup – Tūmatauenga (Māori god of war)
The name was decided to be Tūmatauenga (pronounced “2 ma toe enga”) the Māori god of war.
Tūmatauenga Alien Weaponry https://mrglynspickups.com/
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