Project "Mystic Blue Strat": Step 2 - The Pickups

As mentioned in the initial post, I already had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to take this build. I had gone with Seymour Duncan pickups in my latest telecaster build, so this time I wanted to go with some DiMarzio's - The Evolutions in my Jem are really nice and overall I do feel I'm more of a DiMarzio fan than SD's.

I had a few 'requirements' for these pickups:
a) "Modern"/Hum Cancelling
b) High Output
c) Available in black (or easy enough to swap out a pickup cover)
d) Did NOT really care if they still sounded like a typical Stratocaster.

Playing with the aptly named 'Pickup Picker' on the Dimarzio website I came up with several interesting choices, such as the: Fast Track, Pro Track, Chopper, Air Norton, Injectors, etc. Picking between these based on just description is almost impossible (at least for me) so I went on a 'listening spree' on their site and any youtube reviews I could find.That... didn't really help at all and I STILL couldn't decide..

While I would prefer a single ply pickguard like I put on my other black Strat, I noticed Dimarzio sold pre-wired Pickguards as well. This would definitely make things easier to install - and if anything, help (i.e. force) me to make a decision. I could just get one of these loaded pickguards and if I ever wasn't 100% happy with any one of these pickups I could just swap them out as I pleased.

Looking at the list that would meet my criteria I found the following sets:
"Billy Corgan", "High Power Strat", "HS Strat" and "Injector".
I found a thorough review of the "HS Strat" ones, which were being described as an 'Yngwie' set... to me both that one and the BCs didn't really click with me so it was down to the High Power Strat and Injector set. While the Injectors sounded very nice, I really wanted something a little 'heavier' and I liked the blade approach for something different, so I ended up settling on the 'High Power Strat' pickguard, aka FG2108A7.

DiMarzio FG2108 Fast Track Prewired Pickguard Black

The High Power Strat comes with (blatant copy & paste here):
"a Pro Track™ neck / Fast Track 1™ middle / Fast Track 2™ bridge pickup configuration. The Pro Track™ is warm and friendly, with a classic neck humbucker sound. The Fast Track 1™ is bright and clean, with enough power to keep up with the neck and bridge positions . The Fast Track 2™ is our heaviest-sounding Strat-size humbucker, with a huge mid-range and bass punch."

If I'm not happy with either the middle or Neck pickup I already have the 'Chopper' or 'Cruisers' selected as a possible replacement.

Really not much more to say on this besides that the pickguard is on it's way from Music123 (beats having to deal with Crap Center) so once it's here and installed I'll post up some pictures