New Pickup Alert; The DiMarzio Area 58

A few years back, great friend and worship bassist Rey Garguena gave me a 1998 Mexican Fender Stratocaster. It was all stock so, of course I had to swap out the pickups.

I put a Duncan Hot Rail in the bridge position and Duncan Classic Stack in the middle. I rarely use the neck pickup on the Strat so I left it stock.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to do the Los Lonley Boys song, My Way, so I needed to use the Strat with the neck pickup. Of course the stock pickup was noisy and horrible sounding so I needed to do some research for the replacement process.

Fellow worship guitarist, Mike Parsons, had made the proclamation that the DiMarzio Area 61′s & 58′s were the ultimate Fender Stratocaster replacement pickups. When Mike speaks, I usually listen since he buys and uses a lot of guitar gear.

During the NAMM show in Anahiem, I caught the Lincoln Brewster concert at the Roland Exhibit. His Strat sound is pretty impeccable so I went to his website to see what he was using for pickups. Lo and behold, he also uses the DiMarzio Area 61 & 58.

The final journey led me to YouTube. I found some pretty awesome demonstrations of the DiMarzio 61 & 58. Here’s one of the more informative reviews from Paul from GuitarWorld.

So off to Sweetwater I went to purchase a DiMarzio Area 58 for my Mexican Strat’s neck position.

I installed the pickup and wow, what an incredible sound.

After installing the DiMarzio Area 58 in the neck, I noticed that the pickup sounded out of phase with the Duncan Classic Stack in the middle position. I had to switch the green ground wire (of the DiMarzio) to the 5 way position switch and the red wire to the ground terminal. Phasing problem solved.