What makes a great vintage humbucker? A soft magnetic field, sweet tone, a perfect balance between warmth and clarity, the ability to go from clean to distorted by pick attack alone. There are many pickups that capture some of these qualities, but DiMarzio wanted to build them all into one pickup, and this is it. Totally redesigned for 2008, DiMarzio brings you the DiMarzio PAF 36th Anniversary Model available in standard or F-spacing.

Partly based on the pickups in Larry DiMarzio's own 1959 Les Paul and partly on their own patented technology, the PAF 36th Anniversary Model will perform equally well in the neck or bridge position, just as the best humbuckers from the '50s did.

Recommended For: All positions

Tech Talk: There is no reference standard for the sound of a humbucker from the 1950s. All of them had variations in output and tone, and these differences could be quite large. Recently, DiMarzio focused their research on making pickups with warm highs and bright lows. This combination is only found in their favorite vintage humbuckers, and it's really good for a pickup intended for both the neck and bridge positions. It allows the bass strings in the neck position to avoid muddiness, and the treble strings in the bridge position to be warm and not brittle.