Warning, the following modification, if performed incorrectly, can easily cause damage to your (specifically) Dimarzio humbucker! It involves cannibalizing parts from another pickup as well, so now you know. Also, if someone has done something with the same ideas, I'm sorry in advance.
I took some cylindrical hex-top pole pieces (like the ones that are in the Imperium and I believe the Super Distortion as well) and used those in the holes for the virtual vintage pieces in an Al DiMeola bridge humbucker. The trick was to get them all the same distance into the bobbins without causing the top of the bobbins to bulge, then to balance them properly while screwing them in place on the base plate. I used a home-made pad of layers of bobbin tape to keep the standard 1/8" magnet flush with the bottom of the bobbins. Since the ADM uses regular screw-like pole pieces, this setup created the good ol' air-bucker mod' but also the virtual vintage mod' at the same time (but the thicker cylindrical pieces still touch the magnet).
Sound-wise, there is a bit of extra warmth, but there's almost no discernible drop in output thanks to the increased inductance (those cylindrical pieces are quite a bit larger than the standard pieces dimarzio uses; I also believe they're a different alloy, but I'm not sure about that). I'll likely try this on a different 'bucker as well, just to satisfy my curiosity, more results to follow. Good luck and happy mod'ing!!
