May have found my new favorite pickups

[MadAsAHatter]

I had bought a Dimarzio Fred and PAF Joe a long while ago that was sitting in a box collecting dust. I've never used them before and forgotten why I originally bought them. One of my guitars was needing a pickup upgrade so I decided to give these a shot. I put the PAF Joe in the neck & Fred in the bridge

I've been playing on them for about a month+ now and they're becoming my new go to pickups. To me they're like a slightly hotter PAF with a bit of extra character and work well across all of my amps. I'm not going to claim that they're the be all end all of pickups. Though, I'm liking them so much right now because I can just grab that guitar, plug into any of my amps, and go. I don't have to worry about them not playing well with a particular amp or trying to compensate for them being too dark, bright, brittle, etc. They just work well across the board.

If anyone were looking for a PAF style pickup I'd recommend giving these a try.

 

[Dave L]

Just got an old Fred in the mail the other day, just need to find the time to screw together the guitar it´s going into ? I had one way back, and I´ve always liked it.

 

[Bardagh]

PAF Joe in the neck is kind of cool, had it in a HB equipped strat. It’s not the hollow, flutey kind of PAF neck pickup sound, it’s got kind of a mid hump that pops out and some rude harmonics. It made for some good lead tones, not too smooth.

Fred is probably the one remaining Dimarzio I’ve never tried that I’ve thought I might like.

 

[SpiderWars]

I remember trying those during a Satriani phase. I remember them being good.

 

[JohnnyGtar]

The Fred is amazing. It's one of my favorite humbuckers.

 

[JohnnyGtar]

Check out Mike Stamper's YouTube page. He has several hundred (yes, really!) excellent pickup comparisons, bridge and neck, active and passive on his page. It's a gold mine. Currently he has 26 videos comparing the Fred to other pickups so far. https://www.youtube.com/@mikestamper/videos

 

[jinch0]

Ihad the paf joe and mo joe combo in a carvin tl 60 they were killer

 

[MadAsAHatter]

I played on my guitar that has the "go to" JB/Jazz combo pickups last night and just wasn't feeling it. JB/Jazz was one of my top choices. After playing the PAF Joe/Fred combo comparatively the JB/Jazz just wasn't doing it for me anymore.

I'll note that the JB/Jazz was already starting to lose favor with me to the Custom Custom/59 combo. Those are still producing the mojo. Now I want to go make a comparison of the Custom Custom to the Fred. May do that this evening if I get a chance.