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 :)

MY MODDED PGM30

I own a 2004 Japanese PGM30WH with Edge Pro tremolo and Prestige neck that was given to me from my Dad sometime in 2006. It's been my main guitar for 5 years now and it's sort of becoming one with me, I can't imagine living with another guitar but this.

For those who doesn't know PGM: it's Paul Gilbert's signature Ibanez series. Paul Gilbert has been using Ibanez PGMs for a long time although recently he uses Ibanez Fireman more frequently. All PGMs have painted fake f-holes on the body and most of them are basswood body with maple or maple+rosewood neck. The body shape is very similar to Ibanez RG and most of them don't have tone knobs.

Originally, my PGM comes with Infinity INF pickups that have pretty high output, I don't know exactly but the bridge one I guess is in the range of 450mV judging from the sound. That is okay for quite some time when I'm still into heavy stuffs but once I started to play something with more dynamic, the pups don't do any good anymore.

I replaced the pickups with DiMarzio Cruiser Bridge on the neck and middle, I put DiMarzio AT-1 humbucker on the bridge and I accidentally removed the Ibanez logo on the headstock. I put humbucker pickup cover on the neck single coil just so that I don't miss having humbucker on the neck haha !

The DiMarzios are working very great, I got the exact Andy Timmons'(YES, him again) pups set and that helps me to get closer to his tone. I set the neck pup to be slightly lower from the strings and I raised the bridge humbucker a little bit so I get unbalanced volume level. This is kind of weird and people tend to set all pups to be at the same volume level, but I like it since I can get lower volume just by switching to the neck pup without having to press on any pedal or roll the volume knob.

By the way, I put a 300k ohms resistor in parallel with the cap on my volume pots and it helps the tone a little bit. One thing that I love mostly about this modded guitar is the fact that it doesn't have a tone knob which makes the guitar sounds much better (Paul Gilbert is a genius !). I compared this with a fellow RG with the same Wizard II neck and equipped with the same INF pups before I modded mine with DiMarzios and this thing sounds much better, more fat, more clear tops, more dynamics, more volume as well.

The bridge is actually an original Edge Pro tremolo by Ibanez(I can't find a picture of a pgm with that trem on the internet, sorry) and that bridge totally rocks ! Well, I actually hate the fact that it's a locking trem since I can't do crazy tunings, but it stays in tune forever and the little metal where the string hits on the trem is actually very good for the sustain. I used extra light gauge (.008 extra slinky) for this guitar and it still sounds great.

The neck is a little bit thicker than your usual RG necks. Anyway, if you're a tone chaser, you'll already know that thicker neck means thicker tone. It's still very playable although you don't really have a good comfort when playing chord since the thickness of the neck isn't balanced with a rounder neck shape.

This thing has been abused many times; I broke my trem arm once, I almost lost the neck pickup, I carried it on my car trunk without hard case, I bring it out to a gig during rainy day without gig bag or anything; yet this guitar's doesn't get any issue besides few minor very-hard-to-see scratches from my jazz III pick during strumming sessions. Oh, I replaced the switch once BTW, it broke due to too much pickup switching that I did haha !

I won't sell this guitar for sure, this thing is already my part of the body. This guitar also hinders me from buying new guitar since this one sets the standard of tone and playability pretty high. This is not a relic Strat '68 with special neck joint plate, this is not a '57 Les Paul with gold top finish and original PAF pickups and this doesn't worth as much as them. If this guitar is available in the market, it would cost probably less than $1000.00 for a new one with the exact same specs.

I didn't find any flaw on this guitar except that the white paint slowly turns to yellow-ish white. I don't really care though, it still looks neat and it still sounds great, those are what matter the most. If this guitar died, I would probably get an RG with Edge Pro trem and put the same mods that I've done to that RG. I would even probably throw away the tone knob for better tone.

I'll post some sound clip of this guitar soon :)

Hope you enjoy, cheers and God bless !