Review: DiMarzio Illuminator (with video comparison with Emg 707)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are reviewing a pickup that when I bought it was the latest one designed by John Petrucci of Dream Theater (the second after the CrunchLab), but recently we have seen the announcement that the guitarist came out with a new pickup (called Dream Catcher) for the 2019 model of his Majesty guitar.

I admit that even if I had numerous pickups both active and passive, I've always been kind of an active guy, because I have experienced often (especially back in the day) that passive pickups needed usually a booster to drive an amp (I'm not talking about extremely high gain amps, but those that we had in the rehearsal's room: Marshalls, Laneys..) enough to play metal, or if a passive pickup was really hi-gain, it wouldn't let me play the clean channel really clean, and it would be pretty noisy.

Active pickups changed all of this, they brought clarity, tightness and low noise to very high output pickups, changing completely the game.
On and off I have switched back to passive to see whether there have been improvements, but eventually I have always wound back to Emg or Blackouts (my favourite).
Recently, with djent and other forms of extreme metal, we are seeing a return to passive pickups, with brands as Bareknuckle Pickups, Seymour Duncan and DiMarzio creating tools for the new generation of guitarists that finally brings high output, clarity and low noise, without the hassle of changing the battery.

In the video sample I have used the same guitar (an Ltd Mh-417), same virtual amp, same input volume, same everything, only the pickup changes, and what is impressive is how they sound quite similar, but the Illuminator has both more output and more dynamic excursion, and less noise (you can hear it especially on the last riff, the noisegate is off for the whole sample).

I like the Illuminator because it doesn't change drastically the eq of the guitar: the frequency response is quite flat, not too bassy, not too nasal and it has a very bright, chuggy attack and an extremely tight low end (both features fundamental to play modern metal), plus the cleans sounds really clean and the noise is surprisingly low.

So far it's the best passive pickup I've ever tried, and I can only suggest you to check it out if you have the chance.

Thumbs up!


Specs taken from the website:


- Output: 410

- Recommended For:Bridge position

- Quick Connect: No

- Wiring: 4 Conductor

- Magnet: Ceramic

- Resistance: 11.17 Kohm

- Year of Introduction: 2013


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