SeriesDiMarzio Humbucker

The DiMarzio LiquiFire is a new signature pickup that John Petrucci helped create. It’s basically an evolution of his Ernie Ball signature neck pickup, which was an evolution of the Air Norton. This pickup features adjustable pole pieces on both coils, four conductor wiring and an Alnico 5 magnet. This new revision of the Air Norton is hotter and fatter, yet it sounds more alive than the original Air Norton. This actually has some of that signature “vowely” quality that a lot of overwound PAFs have, and despite it being fatter, it’s still tight enough to not mud up when playing fast runs. It’s also pretty open, and I feel it really gives the boutique pickups out there a run for their money. Split coil tones sound awesome, and parallel tones sound great as well. The pickup seems to sound great any way you run it. DiMarzio says this pickup can be used in the bridge, and it can be, but I think it sounds best in the neck position for that super smooth, clear and open lead tone. John developed it around his new Ernie Ball Musicman BFR series guitars that have an alder body, mahogany tone block and maple top, but this pickup will work in any wood. The thing just has tone for days and is probably my new favorite neck pickup. If you want to hear the pickup, check out Dream Theater’s latest albums from “Black Clouds & Silver Linings” and beyond. If you are looking for a fat, warm, yet clear and tight pickup, this is the pickup you want. It mates with nearly any rig, has tone for days, is quiet, open and just sounds flat out amazing. The note clarity really is improved from the Air Norton, and everything just sounds awesomely complex.

The Super 2 was a pickup made to go along with the Super Distortion. It’s a very high output, bitey and compressed pickup. It features adjustable pole pieces on both coils, four conductor wiring and a ceramic magnet. While this pickup was meant to go with the Super Distortion in the bridge, it’s quite a different sounding picking. Where as the Super Distortion is extremely fat sounding, this is very bright sounding. It’s definitely made for a dark sounding guitar. The bass is pretty laid back, and the treble, as well as mids, are pushed to the forefront. The ceramic magnet is what helps keep this powerful, tight and compressed. I really do not recommend this for the bridge. DiMarzio says it can work nicely, but this thing will just get too bitey. If you have an alder, maple or walnut bodied guitar, I recommend probably avoiding this pickup. It’s not quite as bright and clean sounding as the Humbucker From Hell, but it’s in a similar vein. This pickup sounds a bit more vintage-esque and a little bigger. Split coil sounds on this are pretty bright, and I’ve never tried it in parallel to comment. If you have a dark sounding Les Paul, and you want a hot neck pickup with some bite, this is probably the pickup that’ll work for you. It’s not as clean and open as the Humbucker From Hell, but it makes up for it in terms of a big overall sound. Those with brighter guitars will most likely want to avoid this pickup as it’ll just be way too much, especially for the neck position where most people want fatter tones. Just be sure to power this up with a very hot bridge pickup to even everything out. The Super Distortion would be the most obvious choice, but any of the hotter choices that DiMarzio offers would be perfectly fine.

The DiMarzio Norton is a pickup that doesn’t get looked at that much. It’s a modern sounding PAF that’s somewhere between the DiMarzio FRED and the DiMarzio Tone Zone. It features slugs on one coil with screws on the other. It also has four conductor wiring and an Alnico 5 magnet to help bring out that more vintage-esque quality while still keeping everything nice and tight. The Norton is a peculiar pickup. It tends to work very nicely in the bridge for those looking for a medium to high output humbucker. The low end is big and almost comparable to the Tone Zone. The midrange is grindy and powerful, again similar to the Tone Zone. The harmonics on this thing, however, are very similar to the FRED. It has a very big sound, but it’s not super high output so that it constantly clips your signal. The treble is warm, so it won’t be very piercing in the bridge. Split sounds sound pretty good, and it’s not too bad in parallel, either. This is a very versatile bridge pickup. It can do anything from Texas blues to 80s metal. It has enough compression to where it works for the higher gain stuff, but it’s also open enough to where it can be used for the lower gain stuff. It’s almost similar to the PAF Pro in terms of versatility, but I find it actually works a little better being a good “all around” kind of pickup. This pickup will work in pretty much any wood combination out there, but I find it works better with woods like basswood or alder. These woods help work with the pickup’s low end and make it sound a bit more alive than if it were put in, say, mahogany. This pickup has a lot of mids, so a heavy mid wood like mahogany could make it a bit too over the top.

DiMarizo released these pickups awhile back, and for some reason, they still fly under the radar. Aimed at the boutique pickup builders’ PAF variants, DiMarzio set out to build a pickup that was open, had note clarity and sounded like so many of the good vintage PAF clones out there. Like all DiMarzio pickups, it comes standard with four conductor wiring, so you can wire it in any way you’d like. The pickup also has adjustable screw pieces on one coil with slugs on the other. DiMarzio totally outdid themselves with this pickup. It is ridiculously good. This is one of those PAFs that just sounds amazing in nearly any guitar you put it in. The bridge sounds similar to the Vintage PAF and Vintage Hot mixed together. If you’ve never used those pickups, it has a wonderful “vowely” quality that so many good PAFs have. The bottom end is vintage, but not flubby; the high end is smooth, but not dull. The midrange is pure heaven in this pickup, too. As expected, this is aimed towards the low output pickup crowd. If you’re looking for a pickup that’s high output for heavy metal, you most likely won’t be checking this pickup out. However, this pickup can get a great 80s rock/metal tone with the right guitar. After all, a lot of those famous guitarists in that day used actual PAFs designed by Seth Lover in their Gibsons. If you’re looking for a low to medium output bridge pickup that sounds like a vintage PAF, has tons of note clarity and sounds open, I highly recommend checking this pickup out. It’ll fit with nearly any tone wood, and it’ll work great with both Strats and Les Pauls alike. The best thing is that it doesn’t cost a ton of money like so many other boutique pickup manufacturers out there.

One of my biggest influences in guitar playing was seeing John Petrucci play. I remember thinking that he was so unique in his playing style, and this was quite a surprise because I was still more into the older hard rock kind of music given my age. He just blew me away with his chops and his tone. I started researching the gear he used, and at one point, he started using this pickup. I believe it was around the Awake period when he started using this, but my memory is a bit hazy these days. The pickup itself actually takes the exact opposite approach to most conventional logic. Instead of boosting midrange like so many other pickups do, this pickup takes away midrange. For those who know anything about guitar, you’ll know that midrange is the main frequency that is needed to be heard. That means that you need a guitar and an amp with lots of midrange. It just so happens that John Petrucci was running a basswood body, and basswood has a ton of midrange. John was also running a Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+, and those amps have so much midrange that you have to scoop it out through the onboard EQ that they have. That is the secret to his old tone, and that is what makes this pickup work. For those of you who have even sounding, bass heavy or even bright guitars, this probably won’t work out for you. However, once you throw this into a basswood Ibanez and put that through a Mesa/Boogie Mark amplifier, you got that instant Petrucci tone that’s smooth sounding and very dynamic. The pickup responds nicely to your volume knob, so you can get some really chiming clean tones, hard rock and even metal tones out of this thing. Petrucci actually uses a three way switch with this, and the middle position has this and the neck humbucker split. Give it a try for three very distinct tones.

When Steve Blucher came to DiMarzio, this was actually the first pickup he made, if I recall correctly. It was a totally revolutionary pickup at the time because nobody had ever really used that dual rail system. These days, you can see single and dual rail options for nearly every pickup manufacturer out there, so he was kind of the leader in that aspect. The pickup was very popular with the heavy metal players at the time. It was, and still is, one of the highest output pickups out there. The unique thing about this, besides the rail aspect, is that the pickup is very even sounding. Before, most people generally tried to push the midrange a lot to help drive the amp into overdrive more. This was because the midrange is where the guitar’s natural frequency lives, and everyone figured that, by boosting midrange, you can get more of that distortion everyone loves. The problem was that the guitar sound would become so mid heavy that it would sound very narrow. Steve decided to take another approach to this and simply increase overall output while leaving the rest of the frequencies fairly even. It was thanks to this dual rail design that he was able to achieve that. The pickup has output for days, and it works great for those who are looking for that somewhat even sound. The problem is that it’s not too dynamic. If you play something other than the heavy stuff, it might be too hard to control, and it doesn’t respond to the volume knob too well. The neat trick with this is to throw a push/pull on the thing, as DiMarzio suggests, so you can get this really neat split coil sound that should work for most genres out there. Still, the pickup is somewhat dated these days, and there are some better pickups out there.

The ToneZone is one of DiMarzio’s more popular pickups. In fact, I think this was one of their first batch of pickups that really seemed to catch on in the pickup swapping world. This was a pickup extremely prevalent in the 80s. It is a standard four conductor humbucker that can be wired various different ways, depending on how the user wants to run this. Personally, I like to just run pickups in series, but these hotter pickups also enjoy being run in split coil mode. The pickup itself is extremely powerful and has some strong low end, along with some very strong midrange. You’ll want to experiment with the pickup height when you get this. A lot of people seem to run it too close to the strings, and it causes the sound to be a bit too extreme at times. Those who are into the rock and metal genre will love this pickup, and it seems to really get along with alder bodied guitars. It works nicely in basswood, but you have to really be careful of the midrange that’s going on. Those who are into blues and jazz will probably not care for this too much as it’s a bit too compressed and powerful for those genres. I’ve heard that Paul Gilbert used to run this in parallel for a different tone, but I never bothered trying it that way. I did try splitting this with a five way switch. I used the Suhr style wiring with the inner coil split along with the neck pickup, and it gave me some of the best cleans I’ve ever heard. To do this, you’ll want to have one of those multi-pole five way switches or megaswitches. You can find diagrams online on how to wire it up like this. Give it a go if you’re looking for something with more low end and grinding midrange.

Dimarzio DP100 Super Distortion, ceramic magnet, small hex pole pieces. Along side the Duncan JB it's one of the most famous and widely used pickups of all time! I bought this originally for a neck pickup in a Dimebag guitar but needed a pickup for my Jackson Rhoads so decided to throw it in the bridge. I was very surprised at how nice it sounded. A great crunch to it, it was smooth but still aggressive with a good grit to it. Kind of condescending but that's how it sounds, it had a velvety sort of smoothness to it that made leads really sing, but for rhythms it was aggressive and cut through very well. It was pretty thick and full sounding, definitely not a thin bright pickup. The low end was kind of loose so I'm sure with low tunings it'd fall apart a bit, but I didn't venture past drop D. It has a great vintage vibe to it. Good rolled of highs so it has that vintage sort of sound to it compared to modern music that’s tons of bass and tons of highs with little in between. It is still tight enough to pull off metal tones but really excelled and 70s and 80s style rock and lighter metal like Maiden and Scorpions (since both bands used this). Fun little fact, the very first Dean guitars actually had Dimarzio Super Distortions that were slightly overwound at the factory before going into the guitars. They used those throughout the 70s and 80s before Dean was sold off. Randy Rhoads’ Polka dot V had a super distortion in the bridge, Ace Frehley had one in the bridge of his les paul, as well as Iron Maiden all had Super Distortions in the bridge of their guitars. A great pickup and I would recommend it to anyone.

My gear is: Boss CS-3, Boss DS-2 or Boss OD-2, Boss GE-7, SansAmp Classic and Hartke Piggyback 60w. DiMarzio Air Zone pickup. It's a mid-gain humbucker with huge bass response and lots of mid range, which brings a 'nasal' character to the sound. The treble level is very, very low. I have installed the Air Zone in the bridge position of a 2006 Fender MIM Strat. Clean: it works if you want a clean sound with some 'nasal' character. The pickup is very clean and the notes sound 'organized'. Distortion: it works if you want to play metal or hard rock. The distortion gets very tight and the notes sound distinctive from each other, that is, not muddy. Overdrive: it SUCKS with an overdrive sound. The Air Zone doesn't sound vintage at all and it doesn't sound 'rootsy' nor does it sound 'natural'. It sounds TOO polished for that. With both the DS-2 and the OD-2, I get a very faithful response to the pedals sound. The sound of the Air Zone doesn't get altered so much, no matter how I change the configuration of my pedals. Not even the SansAmp alters the Air Zone sound very much, not to mention the CS-3 and the GE-7... none of which brought serious differences. The Air Zone works better if the guitar is run directly in the amp. Good for metal, hard rock and very, very clean stuff such as jazz. It is just a DISASTER for classic rock and for a vintage sound. I'll give it FOUR because it isn't versatile, it works well with metal and jazz, but sucks anywhere in between. This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

Dimarzio was thinking very specifically when they designed this pickup. It seems like from the description that it fits a certain niche of players, and in practice I can assess that this is quite true. Basically they designed this for metal and hard rock players who scoop the mids out of their amps. At face value this seems like a fairly cheap but understandable approach. The reality is that many metal players do indeed scoop their mids...but if they scoop them why would they want to put them back with this pickup? Truth be told I don't know. My situation is this. I do play metal and hard rock. But I don't scoop my mids. In fact I love my mids. I can't get enough of them. I bought this pickup with the intention of adding some mids to my sound without turning any knobs. I used this pickup on an RG550 along with a blue velvet in the middle position and a Breed in the neck position. What can I say? I like Dimarzio a lot. The pickup is indeed high output, although not blistering. I would say it's close to an Anderson H3. Maybe a little less than an EMG 81. It's high enough to get some real overdrive out of an amp but it's not ridiculously hot like some pickups that are near unusable. I run it into a Bogner Uberschall most of the time so I have no issues getting gain. As advertised, it has a ton of mids, but never really gets honky which is what I was afraid of. I can't really knock it at all. I guess it's only useful to metal players though. It can do hard rock but is too aggressive for anything more conservative than that. It's no PAF. But nobody is gonna expect it to be.

With the old original X2N I could never imagine using it in the neck position so I was quite surprised when I first saw this pickup. I had to give it a go. Dimarzio seems to want to try and make a more versatile X2N. To me this is strange because the X2N is a one trick pony metal machine and it does that well. This pickup looks like an X2N but it is way more civilized and some of the brutality seems lost. Having a super hot neck pickup is risky because if it the pickup has a lot of high end you will have an ugly sounding neck pickup. You want a fat neck pickup. This pickup seems to be on the border line. The big rail magnets are a bit weaker than the old guy so there is less magnetic drag on the strings. The pickup is also 4 conductor so you can also split it. This pickup has a bit less output than the old X2N. They have also EQ'd it well for the neck position. The high end is dialed back a lot and the low end is boosted so you get a fat neck position sound. This is what you want in a neck pickup. Even with the dialed back high end the huge magnets still pickup a ton of pick attack which is part of the X2N and D-Activator sound. This extra attack helps keep the big low end from getting overpowering and muddy. The pickup cleans up well too which is something the old X2N could never do. This pickup compliments the old X2N or the D-Activator bridge pickup nicely. Its rare that you can find a hot neck pickup that sounds good and is hot enough to balance out a hot bridge pickup. This is one of the best from Dimarzio

I liked this pickup for a while, I should say. In my prog metal days I had it in an alder super strat along with a tone zone pickup in the bridge. I can tell you what this pickup is good at. If you've heard John Petrucci's lead tone, this is that tone. It's got a lot of that low end punch yet very clear high end even on the high notes. It can sound a little piercing at times but it is a lead pickup so you want it to come through. I would not say the Air Norton is tight but in certain guitars and certain amp settings it can be. Otherwise it's normally pretty boomy and loose in the bass. Most pickups this hot have a lot of hair when they get hit with gain, but the Air Norton retains a clean singing tone even with a lot of distortion. If you are into that, it's a very cool, although non traditional lead sound. If you like hair on your notes, stay away. The AN just doesn't take gain like a normal pickup. I found it also sounds great for parallel wiring. Normally, I would say the Air Norton was only useful to me as a lead pickup, but switch it to parallel and it does wonderful clean tones. It's almost like a single coil really. It splits pretty decently too. Eventually though, i grew tired of the processed tone of the air norton. For my uses, it's useless for rhythm. It's voiced too aggressively for lead and chords suffer as a result. I've since switched to more traditional pickups in the neck which prove to be more useful for a variety of things. However the AN is a great lead pickup for a lot of styles. It has a modern sound. I can see why so many people like it.