# For those of you who own Ibanez S series and want new pickups



## newyork_jarl (Oct 3, 2012)

So those of you who own an Ibanez S series 6 or 7 string and want aftermarket pickups (seymor duncan or DiMarzio, don't know about Bareknuckle or Lundgren) you might want to read this. 

So I have the S7420 which is a mohagany body, so after some trial and error as well as research I found out that Seymour Duncan pups work better in Mohagany bodies but the DiMarzio are geared more toward Basswood (feel free to disagree). 

So after trying the DiActivator Neck in the bridge position, my guitar had too much high and no body. Not very balanced. So then I orded the Seymour Duncan Distortion 7 bridge and love it, nice smooth balanced low end with sweet highs. Cleans are good too. I don't know why some people were complaining about feedback cuz I don't have an issue with too much feedback, it sounds very controlled and it plays very "clean" when plaing high gain. 

But before I found how well the pickup plays I had to install it. Yikes!! 

Here is the problem with S series guitars... they are made really thin, which is very comfortable but creates a problem with aftermarket pickups. The bottom plate of the pickups have a wider and shorter screw then the aftermarket ones. Now you might think that you can just work with the aftermarket screw but you can't, you have to use the original screw that came with the guitar. 

So the second problem was that the original screw would not fit either the DiMarzio or the Seymour but at least the DiMarzio bottom plate was made of plastic so I was able to drill the right size hole to fit the original screws but the Seymour is made from metal and would not budge!!  So I had to unscew the bottom plate from the original Ibanez pickup and switch the plate with the Seymour plate. Easier said than done. Then I couldn't figure out why I could not re-soder the ground to the Ibanez plate, it turns out they paint the plate so I had to file off the paint so the soder would stick!

Man this was frusterating but I am now happy with the results!


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## darren (Oct 3, 2012)

I've drilled out the metal base plates on Duncans and Bare Knuckles without issue.


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## theo (Oct 3, 2012)

I'm in the same boat as darren. Did this just the other week actually. No problems.
I'm waiting on some Dimarzio Dominions for my S1XXV. It'll be interesting to see how they sound.


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## newyork_jarl (Oct 3, 2012)

darren said:


> I've drilled out the metal base plates on Duncans and Bare Knuckles without issue.


 I used a dewalt drill, what did you use? Trust me I put some force into it but it wouldn't budge. Where did I go wrong??


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## theo (Oct 3, 2012)

I don't want to come across rude, but are you sure you had the drill bit spinning the correct way? (clockwise)


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## 74n4LL0 (Oct 3, 2012)

I have a S7320 with a seymour duncan custom in the bridge and jazz in the neck

they have a tight fit but they fit with no problems :S

my old pickup installation picstory: 
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/pi...ory-tutorial-sd-custom-jazz-inside-s7320.html


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## newyork_jarl (Oct 3, 2012)

theo said:


> I don't want to come across rude, but are you sure you had the drill bit spinning the correct way? (clockwise)



Yeah it was the right way lol. I guess the bit just wasnt the right one but it wass all i had and it was the same one i used for the DiMarzio.


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