Draig doom pickup set NZ$399 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas they’re GST free; NZ$346.96
Draig doom single humbucker size P90 neck NZ$199 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$173.04
Draig doom single humbucker bridge NZ$219 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$190.43
Bridge covers are $20 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas they’re GST free; NZ$17.39
Draig doom set specifications: Alnico VI – Bridge 9.38 KOhms, 7.42H, Ceramic 8 – Neck 7.26 KOhms
The Draig doom guitar pickup set is designed for all the genres encompassed by Doom Metal. It has strong mids, smooth treble and a bass response immediate enough to cope with low tunings. This is different from the harsh, dry percussive bass needed for extreme metal. There’s a warmth and clarity. It really is all in the bass and mids.
Table of Contents
The Draig is inspired by the sound of Tony Iommi and that heavy riffing guitar tone, mid forward.
Iommi’s tone has been in my head since I was a teenager, its a huge part of my guitar taste. I’m delighted to make this pickup available.
As you will hear from listening to the following demos, it’s more than just the Iommi sound. Players have taken this pickup and created their own sounds and feel. That was just the starting point, there’s no telling where it will go.
Power and Tone
But there’s another factor with this pickup. You’ll notice the Ohms for the bridge are in the 9K range, lower that you might expect. But this is still a powerful humbucker. This is all about increasing the dynamics and reducing compression. When using heavy fuzz, it’s really useful to be able to back off using just playing technique; the Draig is designed to do just that. It’s designed to work along with your fuzz no matter how extreme. Whether you’re using just a light fuzz or overdrive or an extreme Big Muff tone the Draig maintains clarity.
The coils are tuned to give the Draig its tonal characteristics with the magnet providing the engine.
Pickups designed to derive most of their power from the strength of the coil, rather than the magnet, sound smooth, even and compressed like my Attitude humbucker. The Draig bridge gets a lot of power from its oversized alnico 6 magnet. This makes the Draig touch sensitive, dynamic and punchy.
So why alnico 6 in the Draig doom bridge humbucker?
Alnico 6 has similar properties to the more familiar alnico 5 but with more mids – it’s all about the mids. As you’d imagine, it has a little more power too.
Draig doom bridge humbucker design
It wasn’t an easy pickup to design. It was designed for low tuning but with more of a Doom vibe in mind. I’ve made pickups before for extreme metal and it a very different approach to the bottom end. With extreme metal the bottom needs to be much drier and more immediate and percussive. With the bass on this one I’ve tried to walk the line between over hard and dry on one side and soggy and undefined on the other. I like to think I have found a path in between giving power with clarity.
The choice of magnet was a big part of this. A bigger magnet has a more immediate response than the conventional size and I experimented with a few different types of alnico. I finally settled on alnico 6. This oversized alnico 6 magnet gives all the punch and immediacy I wanted but with slightly stronger mids than alnico 5. Being an unusual size and material, I get these magnets manufactured specifically for this bridge pickup.
Like with many pickups to focus on the winding alone is telling only a small part of the story. The winding is 9.38K Ohms which might seem small but it’s all about balancing the mids. That oversized alnico 6 magnet is where the power comes from. The blade pole pushes more of that magnetic energy to the side of the pickup furthest away from the bridge, lessening the ‘pingy’ high end. It’s all about balancing the tone and emphasising the mids. The blade side of the bridge pickup is more efficient, mounting this side furtherst from the bridge helps with that mid forward tone.
You can see from this picture of the magnetic field how much more intense it it around the blade.
I made a short video explaining the thought behind the Draig pickup and how it works:
Test, tweak and test – Draig doom guitar set
I rigorously test all my pickups in various situations, different amps, pedals and always next to a drummer. Every pickup in my range has been gigged. You don’t really know a pickup until it’s been with a loud band.
For the Draig I asked Timmy Smalls in Australia for his opinion on the Draig bridge humbucker. He has a great Instagram channel and makes fantastic demo videos. Always good to have a second opinion you can trust.
There are always changes along the way; this video is from when the Draig had an alnico 5 magnet.
Draig neck – humbucker size P90
With the success of the Draig bridge pickup I was asked by a few players about a matching neck pickup to complete the Draig doom set.
It was an interesting challenge. I wanted the neck to have a similar ‘mids forward’ character to the bridge pickup. It needed a smooth lead tone but a lot of clarity when playing chords. It needed to hit a fuzz pedal with just the right amount of power so as not to make the sound into an undefined mush. And it needed to be a good match for the bridge pickup.
I wanted to re-think the neck pickup sound. So many PAF based neck humbuckers have a warm thick sound. This can work well with fuzz but not so much in this genre of music. I needed clarity. I wanted to make the neck pickup as useful as the bridge. My intention was to give players a tool to make use of the neck pickup sound.
I decided upon a humbucker size P90.
P90’s have a very different magnetic field to humbuckers with woody mids and less of a lower midrange push. It’s those lower mids that can create a mush.
As you can see the magnetic field is strongest in the middle of the pickup. With this smaller magnetic window the neck pickup has a less complex harmonic content and therefor more clarity.
A smaller magnetic window translates to a pickup with more character, often lacking in neck humbuckers.
After a lot of experimenting I landed on a combination of winds and magnet that did what I want.
I used a pair of undersized ceramic magnets that I have specially made for me. Ceramic has a drier tone than alnico which helps with the clarity and I designed the coil windings to compensate for the ceramic’s reduced mid range.
After some tweaking and, as ever, playing the pickup set alongside a drummer and bass player I was happy.
The Draig neck pickup has a different look to the bridge but I think they compliment each other well.
Do not underestimate this neck pickup. A lot of players have told me they avoided the neck pickup until they tried this one.
If you are an Instagram user you can find a whole plethora of Draig guitar pickup demos on this page. Babylon Sun is an endorser of Mr Glyn’s Pickups and has become a good friend to Mr Glyn’s Pickups. I encourage you to follow him on Instagram.
Draig doom pickup set – 6 string bass
Here is an interesting video from Tasmaniak Guitars. He designs guitars for 3d printing. This is a 30″ scale 6 string bass tuned EADGBE so like a conventional guitar an octave lower.
In this short demo he compares the clean and dirty tones of the Draig bridge pickup. This rather cool guitar is called the Meteora. You can get in touch with him and buy the files to print out your own version of this guitar. He has quite a few guitars in his range – worth checking out.
The name – “Draig”
So why call it ‘Draig’? Well, the word Draig means dragon in Welsh and although I’ve lived in New Zealand since 2005 I was born and grew up in Wales. The idea for the name came from my 9 year old daughter.
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updated 26 June 2023
Draig doom humbucker