DiMarzio® has been working on serious vintage single-coil design with no hum for twelve years. Our goal has always been to capture the best qualities of pickups we heard from the 1950s and early 60s. We’ve played several pickups from the early 60s that had a unique tonality: they were steely, yet woody-sounding. Naturally, we wanted to nail this sound, and we wanted to do it with no hum and less magnet-pull. The Area 61™ does it. It’s good in all three positions. It’s the perfect bridge pickup with a pair of Area 58™ pickups if you want to go all the way from Nashville to Texas in one guitar.

What do you need in order to play blues with a Strat®? The Virtual Vintage® Blues has more power and warmth than a typical single-coil. You can really hear these qualities when you’re playing the Virtual Vintage® Blues. It withstands hard picking and opens up when you’re playing with an overdriven amp. Instead of shrinking away, the sound jumps out of the speakers. These qualities are really useful for getting a fat neck position sound, but they’re outstanding for the bridge position — particularly if you have a thin-sounding guitar or use light gauge strings. It’s a tough sounding bridge pickup with warmer guitars, and makes a good neck and middle choice to match with a full-size bridge humbucker. As the rest of the Virtual Vintage® family, it’s dead quiet; there’s practically no hum at all.

There are two major differences between a great vintage Strat® pickup and an average one: treble response and dynamics. A great pickup is clear and bright, but not thin-sounding. A great one makes the sound jump out of the amp when you pick hard and drop way down when you play softly, and the tone varies when the string is picked at different spots. The best pickup we’ve ever heard like this was from 1958, and that’s what inspired the Area 58™, with two major differences. Our pickup has way less magnet pull, and virtually no hum.