[JesseTheMachine]

Hey, I'm building a 7-string from a Carvin maple neck-thru with an ebony board. The wings of the body are butternut wood, and it's going to be Floyd-equipped.

The tone I like is a snarling, vicious mid-spike with tight bass (but not as much bass in the EQ as mids).
I usually dial my amp up with treble slightly lower than the bass and mids, but I wouldn't call the treble "rounded" by any means.

I've decided to go with the X2N-7 for the bridge because I use the bridge setting only for said snarling, vicious, metal (on this guitar anyway).
However, I was still wondering what would be fitting for the neck pickup.

Technical considerations include the fact that the maple neck-thru will give me more brightness in my sound as is, and my amp will probably be dialed with high mids so I don't want a pickup that would sound brittle or spikey (maybe a pickup with a scooped mid contour to compensate?).
I love Petrucci's solo tone, but I needed something with a bit more oomph to go with the X2N-7 than the Air Norton can offer I think (plus I'm going to be having a coil split option on the neck PU, so it has to have enough power to be suitable for that.)

I know this is kind of a complicated prescription, but any help or experience anyone has with this kind of context would be greatly appreciated.

[scott from _actual time_]

Originally Posted by JesseTheMachine

Hey, I'm building a 7-string from a Carvin maple neck-thru with an ebony board. The wings of the body are butternut wood....
The tone I like is a snarling, vicious mid-spike with tight bass ....
I love Petrucci's solo tone, but I needed something with a bit more oomph to go with the X2N-7 than the Air Norton can offer I think....

i built this neck-thru 7-string flying V from a Carvin maple neck and hard maple wings. i don't know the tonal characteristics of butternut, but it has to be less bright than maple.

i run an AN7 in the neck and i like it a lot. it has the same round AN tone, plus a nice bight from the maple. with your amp already tuned to snarl, i bet you could get a cutting tone from it too. the output difference compared to the X2N wouldn't bother me; i would raise the AN7 closer to the strings and lower the X2N to balance them out. but if it is a concern for you, the Blaze Custom is supposed to be similar to the AN7 but with lots more output, since it's designed for the bridge. Blaze Custom in the neck should have plenty of output to match then X2N in the bridge.

[JesseTheMachine]

Wow, what an amazing colour. I bet that's one heavy mutha.
What pickup did you choose for the bridge?

Edit: and yes, butternut is definitely warmer than maple, although I've never actually heard it. It's a soft wood that's similar to walnut.

I was considering the AN7, but I've heard it's tone described as warm and round, whereas I wanted something a little glassier in tone, like a single coil in that way. I wanted to apply it to clean sections as well as solos, and less for the beefy rhythm tone which I've heard the AN7 does well.