I just want to pass on a recent dealing I had with DiMarzio.
I'm quite a sad Yngwie fan. I know the issues everyone has with him. Still love him. Have since I was very young. What ya gonna do? Got everything. All the albums, the Japanese DVDs, the signature gear, you know how it goes. Sad, sad, sad. Anyway, I decided my cream/maple YJM
signature Strat needed one last touch to resemble exactly Yngwie's most frequent configuration, and that was the marvelously tacky animal print cliplock strap he has on most of his guitars.
I called DiMarzio to place an order for the strap, and within a few days it arrived. They are quick! The strap was awesome... but it had these awful big black plastic tabs at the very ends. These were unlike the scores of other
DiMarzio cliplock straps I've got and, vitally for me, entirely unlike Yngwie's version of the strap I've seen on his guitars in hundreds of photos and videos for years. I installed the strap, but they really ruined the look of the Strat.
Presuming they'd changed the design, I called DiMarzio in the vague hope they'd have some old stock hanging around I could trade for. Marie at DiMarzio took my number and said, "Give me an hour."
She called back, in about an hour and fifteen minutes,
apologized for being fifteen minutes late despite the fact that, in today's business world, I was surprised to get a return call at all. She explained that they'd changed the design on that strap five years ago but, not to worry, they were going to
make me strap ends like I wanted, the same as Yngwie's. In addition, this custom order would be free, and I didn't need to send my unwanted strap ends back, I could just keep them too.
In three days, they arrived. Exactly right in every detail, with all the mounting hardware. They still smelled of burning from that hole DiMarzio melts through their strap ends for the mounting bushings, they were so fresh.
I know this isn't terribly important, but I was just delighted with the way DiMarzio handled a pedantic customer like me. A "normal" company, if they'd called back at all, would just have said, sorry, that design was changed long ago, goodbye. The fact that DiMarzio custom made the old-style ends for me, free, and did it immediately, just lit me up.
My thanks to Marie at DiMarzio, and the unknown fabricator who took some time out of a busy afternoon to resurrect an old design for some dumb Yngwie fan.
Pictures:
1) The current production strap ends for the ocelot cliplock (on the left) complete with weird tabs; on the right are the replacements DiMarzio made for me as per the old design.
2) My YJM Strat complete with the strap.
3) & 4) Yngwie with some of his ocelot strapped guitars for comparison.
(PS, don't worry, I also play a
lot of Ibanez guitars!)
