IBZ USA vs Japan Pickups Shootout: Two 86' Ibanez RG440’s with IBZ Pups Battle Over Van Halen Riffs

Like most folks, the choice between USA Dimarzio IBZ and Japan Ibanez IBZ pickups keeps me up at night. In this vid I present them head-to-head using RG440s from the same year using the same setup - a Strymon Iridium at about 80% drive on the Marshall sim setting and the Fender Deluxe sim for a run through the pickup selector.
There is a massive disparity between the single-coil pickups - the IBZ USA models measure absurdly high output, as they are stacked humbucking pickups. Despite the output gap, the true single coil IBZ Japan pickups “stack-up” surprisingly well against the Dimarzios.
Thoughts? Questions? Unsolicited links for dirty stuff? Leave them in the comments!
One or both of these Ibanez RG440's will be available soon from 121212Guitars:
reverb.com/shop/121212guitars

[@AndGuitar]

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[@121212Guitars]

Thanks for the heads-up! A couple invisible unicode characters made their way in there - should be working now.