DiMarzio pickup? Pls help identify.

I grabbed a lawsuit era P Bass locally and I looked at the pickups and noticed that the inside of the covers say "DiMarzio USA". do these look like DiMarzios to anyone? They do sound pretty good, and measure 11.18k ohms. 5.93k and 5.23k on the individual coils, both have opposite polarity (one reads North and one reads South)

I did read that these were on a lot of lawsuit japanese copies so it would make sense.. anyways, thank you in advance
 

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It could be a DiMarzio Area P. The pickup was an Alnico II pickup and has not been made for some time.
It's a guess and I frankly do not know enough about DiMarzio's history to be sure.
I would contact them directly. They are very responsive in my experience.
At the end of the day they are the real experts.
 
During the "lawsuit eras," the only Dimarzios being made for P were the Model P (as far as I know) and they were constructed with adjustable pole pieces. These are definitely not that.

Screenshot 2024-03-26 at 2.05.26 PM.jpg


Or, if they are the Area P, they are much newer pickups than the bass... but I don't think those came apart from the cover easily. Most of their newer options I've ever seen were sealed. And these have beveled poles.

Screenshot 2024-03-26 at 2.05.00 PM.jpg


It's possible that just the covers are from Dimarzio and the pickups are something else all together.
But the wire colors do jive with Dimarzio (though aren't hooked up in the proper manner, according to the manuals).
 
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Not sure on that myself, but it may be worth trying to wire them up according to the Dimarzio color scheme (solder red and white together, black is +, green is -) and see if that fixes it.
It's a pretty easy test, if anything.
 
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Not sure on that myself, but it may be worth trying to wire them up according to the Dimarzio color scheme (solder red and white together, black is +, green is -) and see if that fixes it.
It's a pretty easy test, if anything.
Just did this and switched a couple of wires around and now the thing is dead quite. I just hope its not installed backwards now but it sounds good. How can i check that?
 
You can (and I've frequently needed to in order to fix phase issues) swap the + and - leads on passive pickups without any kind of harm.
If this pickup is by itself and everything is working well, you're good to go!

If you had 2 pickups and the "both on" (middle of blend or both volumes at max) yields a quieter signal than one or the other, just swap the leads of one of the pickups and that usually fixes it. Fenders suffered a lot from that issue in my experiences and that fix was so simple, I couldn't believe it.
 
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Just got word from DiMarzio that these are indeed DiMarzio VP1.

Just for the record, i cancelled the hum by switching the black and red wire on the actual eyelets. The wires are super thin - would these benefit from getting a shielded wire or better quality wires installed?
 
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