Ibanez make some damn sexy guitars. Mine for example is sexy. The new JBM100 however is sexy at a ridiculous level. I wonder if the guitar equivalent of sexy personified is sexy objectified? If so, the JBM100 is exactly that. If I don’t obtain another Ibanez one day I’ll be pretty upset with myself. But I digress.
The JBM100 is the new signature model guitar for Jake Bowen (of Periphery fame). The guitar is a great combination of black and gold with particularly attractive looking DiMarzio Titan pickups. Watching the official video gives you a fairly good indication of how impressive the pickups sound too. Actually, I love the pickup switch configuration. Position one (bridge) is the bridge pickup isolated. The next position provides you with a single coil from each pickup. The middle position provides you with both humbuckers while the fourth position provides the neck pickup in a parallel connection. The final (fifth) position is the standard full neck humbucker. Those options should certainly provide some varied and amazing tones.
The entire guitar just looks amazing (as previously stated). The ebony fretboard is a perfect match for the matt black finish on the guitar and all of the gold hardware matches the Titan pickups perfectly. The hardware is all perfectly balanced in my opinion. It’s not all gold though as the Ibanez Lo-pro Edge bridge and volume control are black (my favourite). I may have said this before in other articles here, but Ibanez design guitars like few other companies can. I love that.
Official specs? Sure. They are:
- Maple/Bubinga neck
- Mahogany body/Maple top
- Jumbo frets
- Special JBM 12th fret inlay
- Lo-pro Edge bridge
- Locking nut
- Sperzel locking machine heads
- DiMarzio Titan pickups
- Factory tuned to Drop C
Honestly, for me it comes down to the fact that this is Ibanez. The guitar is sexy. I want one.