« Thin sound strange harmonics »

The Dimarzio FRED is one of Satrianis crazy creations that pretty much only he can use properly. Satriani wanted a tweaked pickup for his signature model Ibanez guitar and this is what we got. It is a PAF pro with the craziness dialed way up. Overall tone is similar to that of a PAF pro one of Dimarzios most popular pickups. It seems that many of Dimarzios pickups are based on the PAF pro, like they take the PAF pro and slightly tweak it to get whatever specific tone they are looking for with the new pickup. This is not a bad approach considering the PAF pro is one of their most popular and well known models. The mids are way boosted with this model. They are way over the top and honky sounding on the FRED. In this way it almost like a single coil. Along with these crazy mids you get ridiculous harmonics that just pop out whenever you want. You can tell this pickup was made for Satriani because he is not one to hold back on the harmonics and dive bombs. Because this pickup is so crazy it will be all but useless in a guitar with any bright species of wood. A very dark wooded guitar could possibly tame this pickup but it is a longshot. This pickup is crazy as a fox. Because this pickup is so bright and honky it overall comes off with a thin tone. This is why a darker guitar could help the pickup. Overall I would not really recommend this pickup for anything. There are better pickups for darker guitars and this pickup is just way to specialized. This is another example of a signature item that should not have been mass produced. The artists specifications are so extreme that only the artist can really use it.