DiMarzio

Larry DiMarzio was repairing guitars for professional musicians on Staten Island through the 1960s when he started building his own replacement pickups, and the Super Distortion he designed became one of the first mass-market aftermarket pickups anyone could buy — before that, swapping a pickup meant finding a tech willing to hand-wind one. He launched the company properly in the early 1970s with little more than one guitar, a suitcase of pickups and a price list at a Washington trade show; players including Eddie Van Halen and Carlos Santana adopted DiMarzio pickups soon after. It remains family-owned and still hand-builds every pickup on Staten Island. We cover it mostly through pickup guides and the guitars that ship with them. Here's what we've written.