I have an old DiMarzio^® pickup that I’m trying to identify. Can you help?

The easiest way to identify an old pickup is to look for a model number on the back. Some of our early models were not identified by model numbers, and some of our OEM models have a different numbering system. See the question, "Do you still make...?" for a full list of pickup models.

We can usually help if you send us an email that tells us enough about the pickup, preferably including a photo of both the front and back of the pickup.

Please try to answer the following questions in your email, especially if you are not able to provide photos of the pickup in question:

- What style of pickup is it, such as full-size humbucker, single-coil, etc?

- If you can see the coils, does it appear to have molded plastic bobbins or do the bobbins look like a hard laminated material?

- What kind of polepieces does the pickup have? Solid? Slotted? Hex sockets? Blades? What color are the polepieces?

- On humbuckers, do the polepieces pass completely through the base and come out the back?

- If a humbucker, what is the base made of? Brass? Silver metal? Black metal? Circuit board?

- How many wires and what colors are they? Jacketed cable color? What kind of shield?

- What identifying marks are printed on the front and back of the pickup, and/or are there any stickers?

It may be possible to identify the model from this information. If not, we may also need to know the DC resistance of the pickup:

After taking note of all connections, unsolder the pickup wires from the guitar. You may leave the bare ground wire, if any, connected to the guitar if you wish. If this is a 4-conductor pickup which has the black and white wires soldered to each other and insulated with tape, you may leave the black and white connected to each other, but you must remove the tape from that connection so you can connect an ohmmeter probe to it.

Measure DC resistance at normal room temperature with an ohmmeter. Make sure you are not touching the leads with your fingers when you take the measurement. You should look for readings between 1 Kohm and 20 Kohm.

On single-coil pickups, measure between the two leads, usually black and white, and ignore the ground wire, if any.

On four conductor pickups, measure black and red, then measure white and green. Ignore the ground wire.

On humbuckers where there are only two wires plus a ground, measure between those two wires and ignore the ground.

On humbuckers where there is only one wire plus a shield, measure from the one wire to the shield.

For all other wiring formats, report all possible measurements that are not zero ohms or infinite ohms.