The history of this has been mentioned in my 2021 “Tone Zone Half Air Mod” post.
To recap, the guitar came fitted with a Tone Zone in the bridge, and an Air Norton in the neck – but, the former has no tone, and the latter has no air. I replaced the Air Norton (a Reverse Polarity pickup in this guitar) with a PAF PRO (DM151FBK), after doing the “Air Mod” to it, and fitting “Virtual Vintage” slugs. I half-aired the Tone Zone, but that did not do much to the tone issue – an overwound pickup (17.3 kOhm!) will be just that - dead. I fitted a Kinman style treble bleed (150 kOhm resistor and 0.001uF capacitor) in place of Ibanez’s 33 pF cap, and a 0.01uF tone cap, with new CTS pots.
The standard, very neat wiring:
Been a while, working up motivation to continue with this – I really do not enjoy soldering small wires into small places. But, I recently bought a long thin tip for the Magnum soldering station. Works a treat.
The tone control, with a 0.01 uF capacitor, was a bit vague. I fitted a 0.022 uF drop. The standard fitment was 0.022uF. The wiring is nowhere as compact as before, I did not cut the new pickup leads. Added Earth Bus strips, I am not a fan of soldering wires to the pot casings.
I decided to remove the six Virtual Vintage slugs from the PAF PRO, hoping to reduce output, increase clarity and shift the EQ a bit. I perceived it to be a bit thick(?) in the neck, as if it needs a bit of air. It is subtle.
(Reading posts by inquisitive pseudo-scientific people on the web, will indicate that these “Virtual Vintage” slugs apparently do not add much to a pickup’s inductance, well, not enough to “matter”. I was a physicist by trade, I like science, but, clinical numbers do not tell me why purple is such a nice colour. Or why these slugs do make a difference.)
The “Air Mod” spacers are Perspex. DiMarzio just use two plastic rings each side, to keep the magnet from touching the screws / poles.
Oh, yes, the polepiece screws are much shorter than standard, due to the pickup cavity not being able to accept anything below the baseplate. The standard screws go to the bottom of the legs, but here the legs go into deeper pockets.
Even after the airing modification, the Tone Zone was dead. No fun playing the guitar. I have debated which pickup might work best, but, I guess most lower wind pickups would be better for my purpose. I decided to try a Mo’Joe (DP216F).
The Paf Pro, fitted in the Neck position, is listed as having an output of “300” in standard form, the Mo’Joe is listed as “320”. The “Air” mod on the Paf Pro might reduce it’s output to about “270”, if I compare specs on DiMarzio’s site. OK, so, back in the old days, there was no “Matched Set”. But, going by DiMArzio specs for matched sets, the output difference should be about right.
(Take Note: There is not too much extra space in a pickup. I carefully assembled after removing the “Virtual Vintage” inserts, but, no output after I soldered in the new pickup. Dang? I did not mess with the neck pickup’s wires on the switch? It is earthing somewhere? I managed to pinch one wire against the magnet, not really visible. Took me a while to find that little pinch spot earthing the coils.)
Initial playing shows a much improved guitar. Amazing what pickup DCR does to"tone". These pickups are far from true “PAF” winds, but still has a lot of clarity - the Aired PAF PRO (measured 4.11 kOhm “North” coil, 4.3 kOhm “South” coil) and Mo’Joe (measured 4.81 kOhm “North” coil, 5.05 kOhm “south” coil) matches well in output and tone. All the potential I heard for the switch positions, but was afraid might be lost with another pickup, just got better. The guitar is much nicer now. The tone control rolls off very dark. I might try a 0.015uF capacitor in future, but with a 0.01 uF being very slight, 0.015 uF might again be “not enough”.
Now, I still have that RG570 with the lifeless Ibanez pickups to do…
