DiMarzio DP153F F-Spaced Fred Pickup

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DiMarzio DP153F F-Spaced Fred Pickup
zZounds Gear Experts Say...
More gain, mid EQ, and overtones than the PAF Pro¬.

FRED¬ humbuckers take the PAF Pro¬ up a notch with more gain, mid EQ, and overtones. It's a sound with more crank and growl. FRED¬'s wide, fat tone fills up a lot of space in the mix: a great pickup with combined lead/rhythm styles and power trio gigs. FRED¬ is really sensitive to changes in pick attack. Digging in hard pushes the tone from crunch to overdrive without running back to the rig to change the gain settings. Rolling back the volume knob on the guitar warms up the sound without losing snarl and bite. With the tone control backed off, the round, vintage sweet tone steps out, recreating the tubular singing tone of the 60's.

For straight-into-the-amp burning, FRED¬ lets you make all the changes happen right from the guitar. A short time spent exploring pick attack and the guitar's volume and tone controls reveals the wide variety of tones available from FRED¬ with just a little work.

Recommended for neck and bridge positions in all solidbody, hollow, and semi-hollowbody guitars.

Tech Talk
The FRED¬ started out as a prototype designed to add a little midrange to the PAF Pro¬. When DiMarzio sent one of the the first ones to Joe Satriani, he discovered and exploited a unique tonal characteristic - the FRED¬'s ability to emphasize upper midrange and treble harmonics through an overdriven and distorted amp. Many standard humbuckers have a tendency to fatten up with distortion. The FRED¬ does the opposite; it gets tighter and brighter, much like a single-coil.… read more Joe uses the FRED¬ strictly as a bridge pickup, but it's also a distinctive neck pickup - works really well with a Norton, Tone Zone, or Evolution¬ bridge models. read less

Wiring: Standard 4-conductor

Magnet: Alnico 5

Output: 305mV

DC Resistance: 10.07K

Year of introduction: 1993

Patent #: 4,501,185

Reviewers gave this product an overall rating of 5 out of 5 stars. (9 ratings)
Submitted July 16, 2003 by a customer from yahoo.com

"FRED pickups, the new revolution in enjoyable guitar playing!!!"

Overall: 5 out of 5 stars
(see rating details)
This review has been selected by our experts as particularly helpful.
Ha. WHen I see a newer more inovative sounding pickup I'll at least take a look at it and a test drive but parting with my FREDs is very doubtful for many years. I've been able to maintain a consistently high sound quality which is unlike a lot of pickups out there that sometimes get better with age or go way to the other end of the scale. These pickups just perform to the max and are totally consistent 100% of the time. The ability to change your style with the same pickups is an added bonus. Depending upon your style of play they seem to fit almost every genre of sound you could possibly want out of any instrument.

Sound
Excellent tonal characteristics. It's got great sustain for high notes and excellent overdrive for the deeper notes. It gives you fluent sound at a really great price. The sustain on these alone are worth a lot more than what they sell for. DOn't believe me try out a JS1000 and see for yourself. Incredible is an under rated score here!

Features
Easy to fit in if you've already got a setup fpr a humbucker sized pickup. Nothing complicated about it. Measure it, set it, run the wiring, sotter, and play.

Quality
Factory QC on these is better than excellent. Out of the 3 that I've bought for myself or other people, not one has had any problems and the tech group is always there if you need them. Great job!!

Value
Too bad there's not a 20 scale… read more on here for this category. The cost of these pickups are very very undervalued. If they went by value pricing, they'd easily be around $100 for a set but they aren't. I've gotten rid of any other type humbuckers I've had and replaced them all (3) with brand new FREDs.

Manufacturer Support
After checking with tech support on some custome setups they were very thorough and answered every question I set in front of them (by phone). And actually the tech I talked to was way more than helpful by getting me some technical specs that aren't always available.

The Wow Factor
The genius of the design here is the capability to do both sides of the sound spectrum to perfection. You want dirty deep drive type sound? You got it! You prefer the quiet tonal response of the classical sound? You got it! There's almost nothing you vcan't do on a guitar with these pickups. And as a fan of jazz and rock they're the perfect sounding addition to your axe.

Musical Style:
Rock, jazz read less
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