I have a basswood bodied hardtail rg921 that needed better pickups. It turned out that I got 2 bridge pickups instead of the n/b set, so there you go. It's a very clear guitar with a somewhat light low end.
First was full shreds. I love these, but holy heck were they ever the wrong pickup in this application, due to them having the same eq as the guitar itself. It had a doubling effect and sounded tight and ear piercing.
Gotta try something new.
The aha moment hit me that I should find a pickup set that will balance out that eq, not emphasize it with the same eq, but which ones? Well, dimarzio makes a ton of pickups with chopped highs, so I started there.
Was looking at:
Tz/an
Az/an
All the petrucci sets
The breeds
mo Joe/ paf joe or pro
I did research out the yin yang and narrowed down to the tz/an or breeds. Out of those 2, it came down to vintage or modern. The tz/an being modern, and the breeds being (and I heard them described this way too) a vintage take on the tz/an. Hmmmm......
I ended up with the breeds. As you know, they are another vai set. They are "discontinued ", but still available if you order them directly or thru a dealer. They are supposed to get sort of a les paul sound from a shred stick, which impressively, they do. In fact, they sound fatter than my ltd ec401v with 36ths loaded. They get that vibe, and it is freakin' cool!
So how do they sound in a brighter thin guitar? I won't be switching them out, that's for sure.
Neck- parallel sounds good, splitting ro single sounds really good. It really does remind me of a vintage sounding air norton. It's in the feel. There isn't any airbucker or mismatched coils happening here, just a 10k neck pickup. I hear it makes a great bridge pickup btw.
The bridge - do you like fat sounding bridge pickups? This is one of them, lol. Let me say this from the get go, I don't use the bridge humbucker itself for anything but gain. You know how alot of guys roll off the highs at the bridge for stuff? Yeah, that's not necessary here. It's like your tone control stops at 7 or so. That's what I like for my bridge sound, and it delivers in spades. Go from neck (where the tone control is almost always at ten) to bridge without adjusting the tone knob.
The mids are truly special here. They are more broad spectrum rather than all high mids like a jb and they crunch up really well. They chug for days!
Combined to inner coils, they deliver a very stratty sound that sits in between strat n/m and b/m in sound.
I really like these pickups, and would use them again in a brighter guitar. I would not use these in a les paul though, unless you want really warm.
Do a search here and on jemsite for some other people's opinions on them. Jemsite is a great source for all things ibanez. Back in the day, everyone was on there! There are plenty of reviews and threads about all kinds of dimarzios.
My advice is to play your 550 unplugged and see what it has/needs eq wise. Choose pickups that balance things out.
