“An improvement in both dynamics and string-to-string balance”: DiMarzio and Billy Sheehan have reinvented the P-Bass pickup with a new patent

DiMarzio has teamed up with Billy Sheehan to present a new shape and feel for Precision Bass pickup covers. With this reinvention, DiMarzio promises pickup covers that improve “both playability and performance”.

DiMarzio used Sheehan’s vision for ramp-style surface shapes to minimize all the hard edges from the pickup casing. Furthermore, the pickups experts relocated the height adjustment screws so that they’re now below the surface of the pickguard, thereby eliminating finger contact.

There are tonal benefits to the new patent, too. “A by-product of our newly patented design is a shape that allows the twin hum-canceling coils to be adjusted closer to the strings,” comments DiMarzio.

“A secondary benefit from this is an improvement in both dynamics and string-to-string balance.”

The new design is now available on DiMarzio’s Relentless Middle, Relentless P, Relentless PJ Pair, Sixties P, and Sixties PJ Pair bass pickups.

See DiMarzio for more info.

In a 2023 interview with Guitarist, DiMarzio founder Larry DiMarzio asserted how getting practical input from artists has shaped, and continues to shape, the direction of DiMarzio pickups.

“You can come up with ideas that you think are good in your design area… and then you still have to take them into the marketplace,” he remarks. “I mean, a lot of the pickups were road-tested, not just by me but by my friends. I mean, imagine if you would, it’s 1973, KISS is formed and recording, but they’re not even out on the road yet.

“Right? Ace Frehley and I meet up and I give him some pickups because he heard about them. Well, those pickups were out on the road for like a year. Now, if there were problems, I was going to hear about it. So I like the idea of getting a product and road-testing it.”