DiMarzio- differentiated

Yesterday was just a bad day Monday, the day of the week which I am not agreeable with. So I engaged some guitar therapy by lowering the action of my Ibanez SIR27F which entailed into the lowering of the pickup height. The guitar in question was equipped with a pair of DiMarzio PAF7 as default pickups. The picture above is how a PAF7 looks like as depicted at www.dimarzio.com...

But I noticed the PAF7 in the SIR27F looks like this; it has the DiMarzio logo there which was absent in the picture over at the manufacturer's website. I rubbed some talcum powder over it so it would be more visible in this pic.

So I was thinking, what else could be different & decided to unscrew it out of the guitar cavity. The arrowed portion refers to the pickup's chassis & it's not metal; it's made from a synthetic material, plastic if you will.

I am not trying to expose piracy at work but it proves that there might be some cost cutting involved & the fact that some product features are differentiated from the manufacturer's standard issues.

Coil splitting iron

Since I am not gonna have the pickups in my Ibanez Iron Label SIR27F swapped out, I had Beez do a coil split push-pull switch. The Ibanez S-series sports one of the thinnest body edges out there so there was limited room for such a switch in the tone position. As seen above, the switch is in the volume position instead.

DiMarzio: PAF 7 (2)

As mentioned before, the DiMarzio PAF 7s are default pickups in my Ibanez SIR27F. Initially, I was putting Ibanez down for equipping a metal-type guitar (manufacturer's claim, not mine...) with the weakest pickups in the range. As it turned out, the PAF 7s could handle everything thrown at them granted they might not be some players' cup of tea. A case of Jack of all trades, mater tones of none? Of course not, the PAF 7s are very good at the job, it's just a matter of appeal.

Well, the PAF 7's 'secret' could be the fact that the magnets on board are ceramic as opposed to the sweeter alnicos for the intended purpose but then again, what was the initial intention? It wasn't made clear by the manufacturer but the PAF 7 turned out to be a super utilitarian model. Thumbs up to that.

DiMarzio: PAF 7

No, I've not retired my Duncans to embrace DiMarzio & nobody had paid me to say this. This is about reflecting the obvious & accepting what works. This is also a further understanding of the fact that Duncans & DiMarzios work differently. As I am currently looking at DiMarzios to address some tonal concerns, my approach to this was to scout for DiMarzio equivalents of my favourite Duncans but it's quite a futile exercise. It doesn't work this way. Why would a manufacturer offer the world a close alternative of their competitor's product? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of being different?

This was perhaps the reason why I find DiMarzio tones rather unagreeable; I've been looking too hard at the higher output offerings believing the products in that end would manifest the Duncans in the same output selection. Today's encounter with my Ibanez SIR27F made me realize that I've overlooked what works for me- the lower output DiMarzios. The default pickups in this guitar are DiMarzio 7s, the lowest output passive humbuckers in the manufacturer's range. They are splendid in this guitar & they will stay resident for a simple reason- they are the right pickups for the instrument. Have I come across the PAF before? Of course I have, there's one in the bridge position in my RG560, it's the pickup that replaced the Tone Zone & made me happy. A delightful episode escaped me, maybe I was distracted but today came the reminder.

To be continued.

Ibanez: Iron Label SIR27F

Seven deadly sins strings...