DiMarzio DP126 Creme

I bought the DiMarzio DP126 Creme pickup set to use in the resurrection of an old bass guitar whose pickups had seen better days.

In short, they are an excellent choice - a well constructed and relatively inexpensive upgrade that will provide a noticeable improvement to the sound of your bass guitar. They come well packaged with black screws, clear wiring instructions and the foam within the packaging can be used as mounts to adjust the pickup height when fitted.

What I love about the pickups is that being quad wire, you have the option to install a switch to enable what DiMarzio call 'Dual Sound', which basically switches the pickups between parallel (regular use) or series, which gives a notable boost in output. This can be done with both the split coil and the single coil pickup, giving you four different sound configurations before you even get to any tone/EQ controls you have on your bass. I'd recommend this and there are instructions included on how to wire up such a switch.

Speaking of the single coil bridge pickup, it is actually two small coils positioned side by side and are therefore hum-cancelling so there is no 60 cycle hum that you get on traditional Jazz style pickups.

Soundwise, the split coil has a nice middy presence, a little more aggressive than stock pickups, thanks to the two ceramic magnets which sandwich the pole pieces. The pole pieces, incidentally, can be adjusted to fine tune volume from string to string. As this was a popular modification to basses in the late 70s and early 80s, it's great for reproducing tones of that era.

The single coil is well matched in terms of volume (ie. the split coil doesn't overpower it) and gives the expected barky/burpy tone when playing finger style directly over it.

That's not to say that the pickups can't do vintage tones - a slight roll off in the tone control will remove a little top end and warm them up. Leave it wide open for a great rock tone!

In summary, these are my 'go to' pickup for any P/J basses when the stock pickups are lacking and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. Especially at the price Thomann sell them for!

Always a safe bet buying from Dimarzio but these pickups are extremely dark sounding especially compared to their other Ultra Jazz pickups. I eventually sold them as they weren't giving me the sound I was looking for. It was like even with the passive tone wide open, they didn't have the usual top end clarity I was used to. I suppose for an overly bright bass they may be just the ticket to darken things down.