Dimarzio Pickups

[ESDictor]

Back in the 80's, it seemed like any time you looked at replacing a pickup you would be looking at DiMarzio's. However, it seems these days like I hear very little about that brand. For example, if I look at the links to sites to buy guitar parts, none of them sell DiMarzio at all. If I go to the DiMarzio site and ask for online stores, I get huge national chains like Guitar Center, Sam Ash, and Musician's Friend.

I guess the question is ..

I'm in the planning stages for building my first guitar, and the first name I thought of for pickups was DiMarzio. Is that a good choice these days?

Thanks,

Evan

[Thoughtless 7]

Most of my guitars have DiMarzio's in and i love them.

[ihocky2]

Dimarzio's are still great pickups. Though the following seems to be more of the 80's metal fans and shredders these days, so they dropped off a little I think. But that is the style of music that was played when they were bigger. I've noticed the small local shops carry very few pickups anymore, not just Dimarzio. I think it has more to do with not wanting to stock inventory when most people buy online. I've seen a lot of people though that still play only Dimarzio in any new guitar they get.

[GregP]

DiMarzio are still a pretty strong presence in the pickup world. I think that Seymour Duncan's marketing guys did a better job at attracting OEM opportunities, which ineveitably leads to greater exposure as well. But that doesn't mean that DiMarzio's products are inferior, just that they don't have quite as large a market share.

[gibsonsg26]

i play 80's hair metal and i am in the process of putting dimarzios in all my guitars. My opinion is all there models are great. Ive tried the evos the pafs the joe satriani the super distortion and the x2n. The only one i really didnt care for was the x2n. I have it in my yamaha strat and i think its too powerfull it distorts my clean chanell too much. its still better then most pickups. also the options of colors are awesome.

[c.thep]

Dimarzio is my favorite. Tone zone and air norton combo is probably my choice pickup set. Evolutions and Breeds are great too. Still haven't tried the D-activators, but they seem to be gaining popularity.

[ihocky2]

The X2N seems to be fairly popular with the death metal crowd. Well at least the ones that don't play EMG's yet.

[gibsonsg26]

Ya it was just to powerfull i play ALOT of ballads in my band so if your like me and need to go clean the x2n is definetly a bad choice im replacing mine with an evo soon wich imho is the best pickup they ever made.

[crafty]

I think most of the hubris and misinformation about DiMarzio was put out by people like Ed Roman who were simply trying to make a buck off their own custom Seymour Duncan line. I used to use Duncan or EMG exclusively, then when I wanted to put a set of covered pickups in my Les Paul, I decided to give the PAF Classics a shot. Honestly, they're the best vintage PAF replica I've heard yet--and the price is right.

Larry DiMarzio actually worked for the real live Bill Lawrence for years honing his craft. His company puts out fresh designs almost every year and rotates old designs to "custom only" status. Duncan makes great pickups, but most of his designs are at least 20 years old. Not to say that's a bad thing, but I think it shows that development and innovation aren't much of a priority there.

If we were comparing microphones, I'd say Duncan is like Shure and DiMarzio is like Heil Sound. Shure is the industry standard and the go-to mic for just about everything, whereas Bob Heil is the innovator who actually has Grammys and Oscars sitting on the bookshelf.

[ESDictor]

Thanks everyone, that was exactly the type of information that I was looking for. I guess I really just wanted to make sure that they were still a solid choice, and that's what it sounds like.

Evan

[gibsonsg26]

yup yw good luck with your build hope it turns out awesome.

Edited July 12, 2007 by gibsonsg26