DiMarzio DP402 Virtual Vintage Blues

The DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Blues is a single coil that’s meant to be thicker than most single soils. Why they gave it the blues name instead of the jazz name, I’m not sure. Either way, even though they label it as a blues pickup, it can be used for much more than that. The pickup features a vintage magnet stagger, Virtual Vintage technology which reduces noise, an Alnico 5 magnet and four conductor wiring.

The Virtual Vintage Blues is a single coil that’s meant to thicken up single coiled guitars while still retaining their spank that most people love. It’s a low to medium output pickup, and that helps it really respond to picking dynamics. If you pick softly, the gain character changes. If you pick hard, it starts to overdrive the amp nicely without thinning out.

DiMarzio recommends this for any position, but I find it works best in the neck, personally. It’s got some bite, but there’s still enough bass and midrange to help keep everything from sounding thin. You can split this pickup, but I don’t recommend it. It just sounds thin when you do that. DiMarizo also recommends running this pickup with 500k pots. They can deliver a nice tone, but I actually found 250k to sound great with this. I like fatter neck pickups, and the 250k pots helped keep it in check without getting overly hot or bright.

If you’re looking for a pickup that still has some vintage quality going on but is quiet and not too powerful, I’d say the Virtual Vintage Blues is worth looking into. It’s a really good single coil that should mate with just about any wood combination you can throw at it. If you run it in the neck, you’ll want something a little hotter in the bridge like a Virtual Solo.