I don't know how much of a premium you would fetch for the older dimarzios. No idea if there's anything special about them. I mean I'd assume that a Super Distortion from the 70's would sound the same as a Super Distortion that was just freshly wound by dimarzio.
Well, it wouldnt sound the same, that much I'm sure of. Every pickup undergoes changes with aging, and mostly for the better in regard to vintage PAF's..
I’ve had some very early patent label Gibson humbuckers, so essentially PAFs. They weren’t that special. And I fact they came out of a ‘58 Les Paul that had been converted to humbuckers. The owner replaced them with these original DiMarzio PAFs, which were much better sounding pickups. This was in 1976.
Pickups don’t age. Not in a good way. Old plain enamel wire can develop cracks in the insulation which leads to shorts. People speculate that magnets age, but they really don’t.
And back then Gibson used whatever magnets or screws that were available. As long as the pickup worked it was good enough.
Everything else is in people’s imagination.
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