DiMarzio and Periphery’s Jake Bowen have returned to the drawing board to spec up a new signature set of electric guitar pickups. It’s called the Mirage, and comprises a bridge humbucker for high-clarity, high-gain chug and a double-blade Strat-style pickup at the neck.
You might ask why Bowen needs a new set of pickups. His DiMarzio Titan signature pickups have served him well over the years. But Bowen has changed as a player, and he wanted a pickup that was voiced for the evolution in his picking technique.
These pickups are passive but very much a 21st-century design – a wind that is cognisant that Bowen will be sending his electric guitar signal through plugins, amp modellers such as his trusty Fractal Axe-Fx units, and, what the heck, some real physical guitar amps built in the time-honoured traditional way.
Not that the Titans are going anywhere soon. You will still find them at the DiMarzio site and from select dealers, and they will still be the default choice on his Ibanez JBM27 and JBM7 signature guitars. But the new Mirage set fits just nicely for his new JBM9999 model.
Let’s talk neck pickup first. Fans of DiMarzio double-blade designs such as The Cruiser and Chopper will recognise the “super-saturated single-coil sound” here. Basically, it is no slouch as a bridge position fire-breather but if you’ve got a high-output humbucker at the bridge – as Bowen does here – it makes a natural bedfellow at the neck position.
It has a slightly pronounced mid-bump. It can be positioned anywhere your guitar is routed for a single-coil, and has plenty of output to complement its counterpart at the bridge.
The Mirage bridge humbucker has more output, more clarity, and more bass, middle, and treble. Like his signature Titans, this bridge ‘bucker is a ceramic magnet design. The neck pickup is neodymium.
Again, the frequency profile shows a little more oomph in the midrange frequencies but across the board Bowen wanted a bit more from the pickup.
DiMarzio has given the Mirage a muscle car aesthetic, using satin nickel coverings for both neck and bridge pickups, with a diamond pattern racing stripe on the bridge pickup because why not? It’s quite understated all told.
And while there is no demo video available yet, let's remind ourselves of the best Jake Bowen x DiMarzio video content on the internet, when he and Revocation's David Davidson busted Larry DiMarzio's 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard out of storage to play chugging riffs and throw jazz shapes around the fingerboard.
The Jake Bowen Mirage signature pickups are available now, priced $150 for the bridge pickup, $122 for the neck. For more info, head over to DiMarzio.
