The first (Part 9)

The first replacement pickup I ever tried was DiMarzio's Tone Zone humbucker. It was a sheer case of embracing the hype. Back then, Paul Gilbert was seen promoting it, so it was perfect timing- I was very busy checking Paul Gilbert out & replicating aspects of his gear was inevitable.

So I had it in my Ibanez RG560 & was ready to rock but it was disappointment for me when I plugged it in with my set up- I didn't like how it interacted with my amps & effects. The pickup churned out more lower frequencies than I'd prefer & the sheer ignorance of believing a higher output unit would do better for distortion, got the better of me. Elsewhere, people kept putting the TZ in good stead but I somehow failed to connect with any of the claims.

It dawned on me that the TZ was indeed NOT the humbucker for me, regardless of what the rest of the universe had to say about it. It went into some other guitars I own hoping a different guitar wood type & dimensions would somehow had something for me but nothing happened.

It was this episode that educated me to not exalt an item for its name; prior to its possession, I had turned down offers for other pickups which are of lower output & lesser known brand name. However, I do have other DiMarzios in my guitars today; it's not about abominating a particular brand name, the fault was clearly mine...