DiMarzio DP161 Steve's Special

One of my biggest influences in guitar playing was seeing John Petrucci play. I remember thinking that he was so unique in his playing style, and this was quite a surprise because I was still more into the older hard rock kind of music given my age. He just blew me away with his chops and his tone. I started researching the gear he used, and at one point, he started using this pickup. I believe it was around the Awake period when he started using this, but my memory is a bit hazy these days. The pickup itself actually takes the exact opposite approach to most conventional logic. Instead of boosting midrange like so many other pickups do, this pickup takes away midrange. For those who know anything about guitar, you’ll know that midrange is the main frequency that is needed to be heard. That means that you need a guitar and an amp with lots of midrange. It just so happens that John Petrucci was running a basswood body, and basswood has a ton of midrange. John was also running a Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+, and those amps have so much midrange that you have to scoop it out through the onboard EQ that they have. That is the secret to his old tone, and that is what makes this pickup work. For those of you who have even sounding, bass heavy or even bright guitars, this probably won’t work out for you. However, once you throw this into a basswood Ibanez and put that through a Mesa/Boogie Mark amplifier, you got that instant Petrucci tone that’s smooth sounding and very dynamic. The pickup responds nicely to your volume knob, so you can get some really chiming clean tones, hard rock and even metal tones out of this thing. Petrucci actually uses a three way switch with this, and the middle position has this and the neck humbucker split. Give it a try for three very distinct tones.

The DiMarzio Steve’s Special is a pickup that Steve Blucher wound as an experiment more than anything else. It happened to turn out to be quite an awesome pickup. Most pickups out there boost the midrange to really drive the amplifier, but this pickup is actually scooped. Normally, that would make for a bad combination, but it seems to work quite well in this pickup. It features allen head bolts on both coils for ultimate adjustability, four conductor wiring and a ceramic magnet to help keep everything nice and tight. This pickup got most of its fame thanks to John Petrucci using it for a very long time throughout his career.

The Steve’s Special’s specs aren’t normally the kind of thing you’d look for in a pickup. A guitar is a midrange instrument, so when you have a scooped frequency, you tend to get lost in the band mix. However, the frequency band of this is spread out pretty wide. It uses a dual-resonance design to help spread everything out. With the relaxed midrange, this actually aids in clarity. When mids are boosted too much, it tends to make everything a bit less clear due to the signal being pushed so hard. By pulling back on the mids a little bit, you can hear the detail a bit better.

This isn’t a neck pickup, and I can’t see a situation where you’d run it in the neck. It’s solely meant for the bridge. When split, it sounds like a really nice single coil, and parallel sounds pretty awesome too. I find this works best in basswood. Basswood actually has a good bit of midrange and some slightly relaxed treble, so the extended bass and treble of this pickup tends to be almost perfect. Using a basswood guitar with this pickup and running it through a Mesa/Boogie is the secret to that Dream Theater tone.

I have this microphone for a few months (to replace the neck pickup on my Ibanez QM1 s540FM).
I was looking for a neck pickup powerful and highly accurate. On these two points is the best!

I let you see the features on the site of DiMarzio. You will certainly be surprised by seeing the output level (390 mV for the lazy) is more powerful than a tone zone!

I use it mostly for clean sounds that are beautiful, be it slow or arpeggios for phrass faster! (Combined with a single coil, electro c better than one) and some solo passages or solos (part bluesy or faster).

In short it really is a super micro, powerful, precise, very typical Sir designed for Petrucci (Dream Theater)!
Still, it's not nothing

I play mainly heavy thrash like sepultura, testament, megadeth .... . This microphone is ideal for a quiet little game to play solos or more expressive.

I was tempted by the SH1 or SH2N Seymour but they were less accurate and less powerful nettemant I remake that choice again!

One word of warning: you have a pickup kind powerful enough X2N or SH13 (the one I have!) For an equivalent volume output of your 2 or 3 mics ...

Regarding the price, as usual with DiMarzio is a bit expensive (~ 140) but crying a little you should have a 120
In any case I think it's well worth!

If you think finding a neck pickup with the characteristics prcits, try the DP161, you tell me the news

The Steve's Special is a micro size for the distortion, including solos and sounds are creuss and clean. However for large heavy rhythmic although it lacks a little something in spite of a large output level (390 mV) because the mediums are not sufficiently supported and the sound is immediately more prcis but drier and less extensive as a super distortion or tone zone for example.
Its clear sound has little unless we intrt splits. In this regard, it is worth noting that the microphone is NOT symtrique, and the reels have impdences Properties and trs diffrent, it's good to know when splits the microwave, because according to the coil used, the sound will be DIFFERENT.
In short, a micro magnet recommended for solo sounds well saturated but relatively clean.