« Solid pickup for shred »

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.