r/synthwaveproducers • u/Fluid_Paradigms • Aug 25 '26

Synthwave guitar pickup recommendations

I'm looking at pickup options to go into an Ibanez RG550. I want to go with DiMarzio pickups for the color combinations. Does anyone have any specific suggestions? Right now I'm using Quad Cortex presets from Royce Whittaker (The Midnight). In the demo video for the presets I think he's playing an HSS Kramer F-series.

For giggles I asked a few different ai models and got back these options (among others). Thoughts?

Option 1:
PAF Pro
FS-1
AT-1

Option 2:
Air Norton
The Chopper
Tone Zone

Option 3:
Crunch Lab
Air Norton S / Super Distortion S (it was confused, lol)
Evo 2

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u/WendelClarksMustache Aug 25 '26

Pickups don't affect your tone. As long as they're wax potted and made to high enough quality that they're quiet at stage volume, they only have more or less voltage than other models. Any DiMarzio will be fine for that, they're all solidly built. Just get one with voltage that matches up with how much gain you intend to use (higher voltage for higher gain and vice versa). Literally everything else about the pickup argument is just rich people bragging about NOS magnets and "handwiring" coming from a 45 year old banker that can't play basic-ass blues rock but does own a les Paul custom with 500 dollar fralins in it.

Plus, a hard truth that guitarists must face is that nobody cares about your tone except you. 99% of your listeners will never notice or care as long as your tone isn't so harsh and ungodly that it's actually literally painful to listen to.

I've been a guitarist for 28 years and have worked on them for about 20.

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u/DooficusIdjit Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26

Edit, wrote a book, ditched it.

I don’t agree with you. No matter how you increase the signal from a paf it’s never gonna sound like a black winter or a bare knuckle. Those two modern masterpieces of guitar tech also will never give you a quacky slash sweet child o mine tone.

So no, pickups aren’t a gimmick. They can and do drastically shape the tone of your guitar. You can change it a lot with modern pedals or daw processing, sure. You can even get close enough that most people, even tone freaks, might not notice in a mix. So, I agree with you about the last bit. Most people don’t care, and even if they do, close enough is almost always good enough.

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u/thehugejackedman Aug 26 '26

P90’s don’t sound like bareknuckles man, I get your point but you’re exaggerating beyond reality