DIMARZIO AREA SOLDERLESS PICKGUARD

Hello everyone, today I'm going to post a review of DiMarzio Area pickups that I recently installed on my MIM Stratocaster. They're being sold in a package called "Solderless Area Pickguard" complete with all the potentiometers and proper wiring(2nd tone knob goes to bridge pickup). The installation only took me 6 minutes, it does not require solder, you will only need a wire cutter and a pair of scissors to strip the wires. On the pickguard itself, there are 3 pickups already installed in a conventional SSS configuration: Area 58, Area 67 and Area 61. DiMarzio claims that these pickups are the best hum-free rendition of the original '50-'60 era Stratocaster.

Sound
Right away after installing the solderless pickguard, I put a fresh set of strings and immediately plug the guitar to my amp and start playing. My first reaction is the guitar seemed to reached a new level of dynamic and clarity. I've had lots of DiMarzios on my guitars but these ones are different from them. Compared to my Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2, these pickups sound softer, brighter and cleaner. You can get the famous Stratocaster clicky percussive sound using these pickups easily.

On an overdrive channel, the pickups seemed to retain its cleaner quality. On the neck and middle combined(58 and 67), you can hear very clear the original characteristic of the tone, even with generous amount of overdrive. The bridge (61) gets a bit harsh on higher register, but once you roll down the tone knob a bit, you'll get a very thick, warm and punchy sound from it. Add more overdrive and get the tone knob to around 3 or 4, you'll get a tone that's in fact sound so much like a full size humbucker.

Is this the right pickup for me?
If you play a Stratocaster and you've been struggling to get a good noise free pickups that retain the original qualities of vintage single coils, then these pickups are for you. Once again, they're not the most powerful single coils, but they're a tiny bit hotter than regular Strat pickups. Moreover, they had less magnetic pull compared to your average Stratocaster pickups; hence, you'll get more sustain.

If you're a humbucker guy, these pickups might be worth exploring. Although I never tried the original '50s and '60s Stratocaster pickups, I can easily say that these pickups changed my life. I was once a humbucker guy, believing that achieving good tone can only be done using humbucker; now I'm quite happy with my single coils because they can nail almost everything.

However, keep in mind that single coils are not meant for ultra high gain modern lead drive tone. No matter how good they are, humbucker is still better for ultra high gain; except for some single coil sized humbucker replacement.

Here are some sound clips:
Neck Dirty
Neck Clean
Neck and Middle
Middle and Bridge
Bridge Clean
Bridge Dirty 1
Bridge Dirty 2

I hope you enjoy this post, stay tune for more posts!

Cheers and God Bless :)

FENDER MIM STANDARD STRATOCASTER

Hello everyone, I finally acquired a Fender Standard Stratocaster made in Mexico. I originally hesitated on buying a MIM Stratocaster because of the polyester finish, but this guitar really blows me away. First of all, being a Fender, it shows an excellent craftsmanship and high quality on every details. So for you who think that MIM Stratocaster is not worth your money, please re-consider MIM Stratocaster, this guitar surely worth every cents I spent.

Basic Spec

The guitar was made in early mid 2011. Color is black, with maple neck no fingerboard 21 frets. It uses the vintage 6 screws tremolo and it's pretty smooth and easy to use the vibrato arm(I'm a heavy whammy user). It comes with ceramic single coil pickups on a semi aged plastic pickguard and pickup cover. Tuners are already staggered, it comes with a single string tree.

The Feel
Maple neck isn't glossy, it has urethane finish and it's doing good to my hand. Not as fantastic as my MIA neck or Prestige PGM neck though, but definitely better than my JEM-JR Korean Wizard neck. The tremolo can't be used wildly, it goes out of tune very fast. I'm in a process of getting a set of locking tuners to improve tuning stability. The fret is somehow smaller than my MIA(not quite sure but it feels small) and it's a bit harder to play on compared to my MIA neck. The polyester body finish is very sleek. I'm strongly against polyester finish but luckily on this guitar, the paint is applied thinly to the body(I checked the trem springs cover screw hole).

Weight is very normal for a regular Stratocaster, it won't weight you down too much. I set the trem to float, and the action is already low from the factory so I didn't adjust anything, it feels perfectly right to my hand. The neck is thick and rounded as in regular C-shaped Stratocaster neck, and the frets are slightly rounded too for a more comfortable chord playing.

The Sound
The sound is very Fender-ish; clicky, percussive, bell tone on 2nd and 4th position, very bright and clean, sits well on an average mix. It lacks only one thing: sustain; this is what I feared the most from Stratocaster-type guitars. I immediately put DiMarzio Area 58, 67 and 61, rewired the tone knob for the bridge, and now I got a proper sounding Stratocaster with no hum and long sustain.

MIA(Made in America) vs MIM
This topic has been discussed since the existence of MIM Strat. MIM is really worth every cent you spend, it's not expensive and it sounds good too. If you plan to use the guitar frequently, MIM is really worth the money, it has all the "mojo" of Fender guitars. Now you probably ask: then why should I buy MIA Standard Strat? Because it's also worth every cent you spend. The craftsmanship of an MIA is way better than the MIM; let's say if MIM is extremely good, then MIA is perfectly perfect. When you first touch an MIA, you'll immediately feel that "wow" factor even before you know it's an MIA. The neck, the body contour, the finish and all the details are very perfect on MIA.

BUT, if your priority is tone, it's not possible to get a good sound out of MIM Standard Stratocaster. That will depend on how much are you willing to upgrade the pickups on the guitar to make it sound fantastic. MIA by itself already sounds great but if you dare to replace the pickups with a set of better sounding pickups, then you'll get a fantastic tone.

Let's say you'll use a same set of pickups for both MIA and MIM and you do a blindfold tone test, you'll notice only a tiny sound difference. Although MIA surely sounds better than MIM, it's not significant at all.

Overall
10 out of 10. Once again, Fender made a believer out of me. Good quality guitar, good price, great sound. I'm very happy with this guitar and I'll make some good music with it for sure.

I hope you enjoy this post. Cheers and God Bless :)

p.s. I'll soon post a review of my DiMarzio Area Pickup set, stay tune!

DIMARZIO PAF PRO

Hello, this post will talk a lot about DiMarzio PAF Pro. As we all know, DiMarzio is one of those companies who are selling aftermarket pickups with many options to fit your preference. I got one installed on my JEM-JR now and the reason why I put PAF Pro on my JEM-JR is not because it's my choice; ironically, it chose me one day because my local DiMarzio dealer didn't have any humbucker left at that time except PAF Pro.

Paul Gilbert
First time I heard PAF Pro was on Paul Gilbert's solo albums. Paul put PAF Pro on the bridge position of some of his guitars, including the famous PGM300 which he later converted to a 301. It attracts my ear because it's a relatively bright humbucker which means it will blend perfectly with other bright sounding pickups and/or single coils. This also makes it very effective on the neck position to brighten up muddy neck position on a darker sounding guitar.

Put it on my JEM-JR
My original plan was to stick it on the neck of my JEM and get something hotter and darker for the bridge to kind of level off the EQ on both neck and bridge position so that I get the similar bass and treble on both position but with different gain. However, I was more interested with single coils on that time, so I chose Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 to be installed on the neck and middle position.

The sound
Exactly as what it was advertised: bright, strong, punchy and stands out pretty clear in the mix. It was bright enough that you can nail some bridge single coil tone using this pickup on the bridge position. It screams too if you need it to scream, just add more dirt on your signal and you'll get a fantastic result. Harmonic overtones are everywhere! It's not categorized as high output pickup, so it won't really drive your amp too much but that also adds more dynamics to your overall sound.

Is this the correct pickup for me?
I adjusted my volume pot to 250k in order to make this one works better, but even with 500k it was still sounding good. Beware, if you had a very bright sounding guitar you better be ready for some super bright tone especially if you put it on the bridge position. My JEM-JR is already strong in the upper mid but it's not bright enough on the top end. This pickup really helps me to achieve that top end boost so that it can cut easily on the mix without obstructing other instruments on the mid level. If brightness and top boost is what you're looking for, this is what you need.

Price?
Same with every other DiMarzios, they start around US$70.00 depending on the color you choose.

Worth the price?
Obviously, you can't go wrong with DiMarzio pickups if you know what you want.

Sound clip: coming soon
I hope you enjoy the post, cheers and God bless :)

JEM-JR PROJECT UPDATE

Hello everyone, this post will be talking about my modded JEM-JR and some of the sound that I got from this guitar. Basically, I am trying to aim for a cleaner Strat-style sound with the modification that I did. It started with the pickup last year on this post, but now I added more interesting stuffs on the guitar to make it look and sound good.

Volume pot
Last year, I added DiMarzio PAF Pro on the bridge and Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 on the neck and middle. I can't really tell if the sound is right or not because at the time I don't have a "true amp". But now with my AMT preamp and my other effects, I can tell that it really has some nice tone. However, it was proven that 500k volume pot was a bit too bright for my pickups, even for the PAF Pro.

So I decided to go with Fender 250k Pot for the volume pot. It was not too pricey and there are some good reviews of the pot. Got it installed and I instantly get warmer sounds from all pickups. The PAF Pro doesn't bite with too much treble anymore and it balances perfectly with the new pot. The single coils are now getting warmer as well without losing the glassiness.

High-end pristine presence
However, at this point I was still struggling to add presence to the guitar. So I asked a technician to put 330k resistor and a lower value capacitor in parallel on the volume pot to boost the presence a little bit. It worked and now I don't have to tweak the EQ too much to get that super high crystal pristine presence that I was looking for.

Visual
I also changed the pickguard to a homemade white acrylic based pickguard. It was a bit heavier and thicker than your standard 3 ply plastic pickguard, but it worked. It adds more resonant to the guitar acoustically but it doesn't affect the tone too much when the guitar is plugged in.

Overall result
This makes the guitar sound even better than it was before. I was quite happy with the "Stratocaster sound" that I got last year, but this mod significantly adds more to the overall tone AND to the visual quality. Check out some of the audio clips below and hear it for yourself.

Neck Clean
Neck + Middle Clean
Middle + Bridge Wet
Bridge Wet

Thanks for checking this post out. More posts on their way, cheers and God bless :)