I was playing around with the pole piece height on the bridge pickup of my JPM recently and I think, as a result, I somehow damaged the winds on the pickup. What really sucks is the fact that they are the original pickups and I really wanted to keep the guitar stock. The bridge pup squeals pretty uncontrollably now on any amp with any sort of high gain combined with high volume settings.
So I decided to order some replacement pickups, and store the older ones for later 
should I want to make the guitar all-original again. I ordered some super-cool colors... the exact ones that Petrucci used on the video "Rock Discipline"! The only thing is DiMarzio screwed up the colors on the bridge pickup, as it should have been black/purple, not blue/purple. My GC guy, Devin, is getting this straightened out with DiMarzio but in the meantime I am free to use the blue/purple pickup until the correct one arrives. How cool is that?! :)
I ordered a Steve's Special for the bridge and an Air Norton for the neck (purportedly the pickups that were used on the original JPMs... either stock or slightly modded to Petrucci's tastes). Installation was simple. I just removed the tremolo with strings
attached and placed it off to the side. I then removed the old pickups and soldered in the new ones, popped the tremolo back on and I was done! Easy as that.I can definitely say the new pickups are very close tonally to what was originally there. I took the time to raise the pickup shims (this guitar uses direct mount pickup cavities) to get some more gain and balls from the guitar. I love this guitar, and it looks even cooler and sounds better than ever now with the new pickups.
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