I swopped a pickup! (Ibanez Universe/DiMarzio content)

BMU · 2011-03-09T09:54:25+00:00

You guys are going to laugh, but this is a big deal to me mm'kay! I'm not averse to messing around with truss rods and setting intonation an' stuff, but the thought of taking hot molten metal into the guts of a guitar always made me break out in a cold sweat. And I'd say I'm especially unqualified to work on anything even nearly as expensive as this guitar. But. I've had these DiMarzio's lying around for ages (impulse buy at the time)...sometimes you just have to do what must be done. ? The final impetus came when a certain forum member dropped by and convinced me "it'll be easy". (Damn you Arjun!!!!! Ok actually he was right.) Anyway here's the UV with its guts out, at this point I really was in a cold sweat. (Witness kitchen counter makeshift guitar workbench. No the bottle opener wasn't used on the guitar but rather on some medicinal nerve calming substances for the guitar tech ?) (Don't worry I put a cloth over the body to protect it before bringing out the soldering iron.) Anyways, all went well. I actually couldn't believe it when it really WORKED, and no guitars were incinerated in the process. I swopped the standard DiMarzio Blaze bridge pups with Evolution 7s. The Blazes are scooped, a bit too bassy and a bit too bright. There's a fairly audible difference with the Evo's being more full-bodied and growly, and rounded on the high notes. I'm not sure they're quite what I'm looking for, which is something smoother to offset all the gain I play with. (The Evos are HOT!) But never fear, I also have a Blaze Custom and Air Norton lying around. And there are those SD Blackouts I really wanna try...LOL. This may be the start of a long adventure.

BMU

G-Man wrote I must say, to me at least I like the sound of the PAF 7 the most, although its such a tiny difference.

Yes, me too. I forgot to say that.

I read that the PAF is supposed to be a good neck match for the X2n in the bridge. I have stock Inf 3 and Inf 4's in my Ibanez and I'm not liking the tone I'm getting, very muddy neck and tinny/clangy bridge with distortion.On cleans the neck PU sounds good . I've been eye-ing out some DiMatzio's for a while and was wondering if I could keep my neck pickup stock and wire a DiMarzio into the bridge or would I have to do both 1 shot?

Imo: Nah just put it in! The whole 'matching' deal is much overstated imo. If the neck turns out louder than the bridge, just lower the darn pickup.

There's so many combinations to choose from it's a mission...

If I'm learing anything, it's not to agonise over it. Get something in the right ballpark, relax, rock out.

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