Guitar Pickup Comparison: Ibanez Quantum, Entwistle Nemesis & HDN, DiMarzio, & GFS Power Rails

Are you thinking about swapping the stock quantum pickups in your Ibanez electric guitar, watch this video for a comparison between the not-so-bad Ibanez quantums, moderately priced models from Alan Entwistle & Guitar Fetish GFS, and the highly regarded Air Norton & D-Activator models from DiMarzio.

[@andyy6481]

why are you not making more videos...

[@yong-joonchoi3844]

Good!

[@bluwng]

Ent whistle is best to my ear. Is it difficult to purchase in the US?

[@nicolaswoolstenhulme191]

It's a very nuanced trade-off, depends on taste and amount of drive, but I tend to agree, especially for the nemesis in the neck, it has a nice light harmonic quality with softer picking and lighter overdrive. The HDN is cool too, very tight timbre with heavy distortion. The Entwistle pickups are very good, and half the price of DiMarzios, but they are hard to find in the US. I bought mine from Mystic Guitars on Reverb.com: reverb.com/shop/custom-guitar-classics

[@bluwng]

@@nicolaswoolstenhulme191 thanks. Nice to own some but in the end so many options and differences between most pickups is minimal and dependent on the signal chain and your likes.

[@muratdemircioglu3150]

Best to worst. GFS, Entwistle, Quantum, DiMarzio. Surprisingly DiMarzio's are too muddy

[@nicolaswoolstenhulme191]

Agreed, the difference is especially obvious on the dry input with the Air Norton, not much treble content. DiMarzio has defined many of the iconic pickup sounds, even the GFS power rails seems to be an imitation of the DiMarzio X2N. I think my real complaint is that Ibanez selected a more rhythm-oriented DiMarzio pickup for the neck position, and I like to use the neck pickup for lead guitar. I guess if you are the sort of person who cares enough about pickups to make UA-cam videos about them, then you're probably better off buying guitars with stock pickups and swapping them out based on preference.