DISTORTING HISTORY

These days, players can choose from hundreds of replacement pickups. But back in the early 70s Larry DiMarzio single-handedly kickstarted the entire industry with his hot-output Super Distortion humbucker. We met NYC's king of tone to find out more

- Jamie Dickson

Larry DiMarzio doesn’t do an awful lot of interviews. Which is a shame because he’s one of the most storied and rightly famous pickup makers and tone innovators in the world. Cutting his teeth in the late 60s and early 70s, repairing guitars for the busy and demanding pro guitarists of New York, he soon learned that professional guitarists needed pickups that offered higher performance than the factory units being made by Fender and Gibson at the time. After a stint working for Bill Lawrence, he went on to almost single-handedly invent the mainstream pickup market.

His first foray into designing original pickups yielded the FS-1 – an eponymous ‘Fat Strat’ pickup designed to correct the tendency of traditional Strat bridge pickups to sound shrill and thin, which was subsequently adopted by players such as David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. But it was his next creation, the fiery but surprisingly versatile Super Distortion humbucker, that really put DiMarzio on the map – and today his pickups are used by everyone from Steve Vai and Satriani to Nita Strauss and Andy Timmons. In a rare oneto-one interview, we ask Larry about his philosophy on getting great tone and learn how the Super Distortion kicked down the door of the 70s guitar scene.

Before you founded DiMarzio, you cut your teeth at New York guitar-repair centre Guitar Lab. You’ve said that one of the commonest mods you were asked to do was retrofitting Les Paul Deluxes with full-size humbuckers. What was driving that, in your opinion? After all, minihumbuckers can sound pretty good…