Video Comparison - Fender Custom 69/Texas Special, Dimarzio Area 67/61

[Drew]

Another video that no one but Mondrain will care about.



I ran through every position (including the bridge Humbucker) clean, mid-gain, and high gain on my strat, first with the Fender Custom 69 neck and Texas Special mid (my favorite "traditional" combo so far), and then with an Area 67 neck and Area 61 middle (Dimarzio's take on the same combo).

The biggest advantage with the dimarzios for me isn't tone or noise reduction, actually, but output - they seem to be a hair hotter to begin with, but they have a modern stagger and much less magnetic pull so they can be set much closer to the strings before tone or sustain suffer (in fact, sustain seems better than with the Fenders), for a substantial effective output boost.

[jordanky]

Very nice man, I am a big fan of the Texas Special pickups as a whole. I have one in the bridge of my Tele and it rules! The Dimarzio Area's are great pickups as well.

[Drew]

The Texas Special middle pickup was all sorts of awesome, but the neck I wasn't wild about for anything than somewhat gritty lead work. To be fair, that's what it was wound for, but with any significant amount of gain I just didn't care for it.

The middle, however, kicks ass.

[Vince]

Bump for Drew. I liked it, and aside from the pickups I love his playing.

[Drew]

Thanks Vince!

A couple days down the road, I really like these. The neck is very fat, round, but still has a bright snap to it when you dig in - very Jimi. The middle, meanwhile, absolutely slays for biting blues playing a la Stevie Ray. It's a very versatile set, is dead quiet, and is hot enough to make working with a bridg humbucker totally doable.

[Mordacain]

Nice comparison Drew! I've noticed when we've compared notes on the various pickups / positions we've tried that I prefer a fatter neck pickup in general and thinner middle pickup while you seem to prefer the opposite. For some reason I just noticed that

[Drew]

I play a VERY thick, dark amp, however - even clean a rectifier has quite a lot of girth to it, and it only goes up from there. So, while I want a reasonably fat neck sound, I think the best way to get there given my rig is to start with a pretty bright pickup. Meanwhile, for moderately high gain stuff I rarely use the middle so I tend to want something optimized for a bit less gain, for bluesier stuff.

The funny thing is I've never really thought much about why I prefer certain thigs in different positions, and to me the end result seems to be a fatter neck pickup and a brighter middle.

[jordanky]

An update. This inspired me to drop an Area 58/67/61 in my Strat and I couldn't be happier! Probably some of my favorite Strat pickups I've used.

[Drew]

Cool, glad this helped! They're great pickups, you lose a little chime clean but they sound a little thicker than most traditional singlecoils in an appealing way with a bit of gain.