Blog

Archives

Celebrating MJ’s 40th Anniversary at Seymour Duncan

Maricela “MJ” Juarez never applied for a job at Seymour Duncan. One day in 1983, six years after the company was founded, a neighbor asked MJ for a ride to an interview at the still-young Seymour Duncan company. She obliged and put her name down as a personal reference. Later that night, she was surprised…

Josh Smith Flat V Signature Pickups

If it takes 10,000 hours to master a certain skill, then guitarist Josh Smith could call himself a master before he even turned 20. Stepping into the music scene as a pre-teen, Smith quickly became a regular performer at blues festivals, released three albums and toured the US with his first band Rhino Cats—all before…

Slash 2.0 Signature Pickups

Longtime Seymour Duncan users or rock music fans—or, let’s be honest, fans of music in general—are likely well familiar with the six-string living legend himself, Slash. The Guns N’ Roses guitarist is the textbook image of the cool, stoic rockstar who lets the music do the talking, which is why he’s the go-to when anyone…

Lari Basilio Signature Pickups

In 2017, the YouTube channel Music is Win posted a video featuring “Some of the best guitarists on YouTube (and Earth)” taking turns on a nearly eight-minute long jam. With some of the most prolific guitarists in the online music scene on deck, the sheer amount of collective talent—and the total amount of notes played—was…

Introducing Seymour Duncan’s HyperSwitch

Experimenting with tone is part of the electric guitar experience. Splitting humbuckers for single coil tone, using a push-pull potentiometer to get that Peter Green out-of-phase tone and reversing pickup polarity are some of the most common electric guitar wiring modifications. The downside of wiring modifications is that you have to know your way around…

Seymour W. Duncan Biography: The Man Behind It All

Bring up the topic of guitar tone and one name quickly rises to the top of any discussion — Seymour W. Duncan. A living legend in the world of electric guitar, Duncan not only pioneered the customization of the electromagnetic guitar pickup, he broke open the gates of guitar repair and alteration — all in…

Mark Holcomb Scarlet & Scourge Signature Humbuckers

“We all pushed ourselves on [Periphery V: Djent is Not a Genre] much harder than we ever have before,” explains Mark Holcomb. As one of three six-, seven- and eight-string axe-rippers in GRAMMY® Award-nominated Djent practitioners Periphery, guitarist Mark Holcomb brings a timeless old-school metalhead sensibility to the genre-agnostic progressive metal quintet’s spellbinding virtuosity. For…

The Wes Hauch Jupiter Rails Humbucker Pickup Set

Widely considered one of the best players in the modern metal scene, Wes Hauch’s reputation precedes him. Whether playing with Alluvial, Devin Townsend, Thy Art Is Murder, The Faceless, or as a guest soloist on countless records, Wes’ ferociously aggressive and immaculately clean playing cuts like a knife through the mix.   In 2019, we…

The Cory Wong Clean Machine Pickup Set

We’re excited to announce that after one of our groundbreaking artists, Cory Wong, released his signature Fender guitar in 2021 with the highly anticipated Seymour Duncan Clean Machine pickup set, these signature pickups are now available to order direct to consumers from Seymour Duncan. Here’s the background on how we crafted the perfect tone for Cory.  Antiquity…

How to Find the Best Guitar Tech

Finding a guitar tech can be a daunting process. Have you ever gone into a music store as a newbie and asked a question about something about your guitar, only to be met with a snarky response? This is quite a common occurrence in the guitar world, sadly. I remember buying a BC Rich Warlock…

Seymour Duncan 2022 Holiday Gift Guide: Gifts for Guitar Players

Find the perfect gift for the guitarist in your life.   Need tone for the holidays? You aren’t alone. Buying guitar pickups for a loved one (or even for yourself) can be a daunting task. However, that’s why we at Seymour Duncan have put together this Holiday Gift Guide for 2022. Using the information in…

The Rise of Neo-Soul Guitar

The current world of guitar is a strange one indeed. The charts are dominated by synthesizers – even the rock charts – yet guitar is as popular as ever. Some might even say more popular. There are even more guitar heroes than ever before. Don’t see them? You’re still looking for them on MTV, the…

The Seymour Duncan High Voltage Humbuckers

There really is only one guitar tone that defines hard rock. The sound straddles the line between bluesy clarity and cranked Marshall grind. It wrote the book on anthemic riffs, electrifying solos, and a no-nonsense attitude. And it’s the heart and soul of the Seymour Duncan High Voltage humbucker set. Inspired by the tones roaring…

Dealer Spotlight: Warmoth Guitar Products

To say our dealer network is important would be a massive understatement. We couldn’t do what we do without them. From one-on-one interactions to their excellent online content, they ensure you always have access to your favorite Seymour Duncan products. In honor of their hard work, we wanted to spotlight a few of our friends,…

How to Use the Seymour Duncan PowerStage

Learning how to use the Seymour Duncan PowerStage pedal amplifiers will help you get the most from your tone. With a few simple – and familiar – connections, these diminutive tone machines push out a ton of musical power while simplifying complicated setups. They are as useful for straight-in guitar players as pedalboard users and…

The Seymour Duncan Green Magic Humbucker Pickup Set

Legendary guitar tones often come by breaking the rules. A perfect example was when a 1960s guitarist – with an incorrectly installed magnet in the neck humbucker – stumbled upon a genre-changing, hollow, mid-forward sound. That sound is still iconic, and we captured it in the Seymour Duncan Green Magic humbucking pickup set. At their…

Meet the Seymour Duncan ‘78 Model Humbucker Pickup

Guitar tone was in the middle of a massive shift throughout the 1970s. Especially the late ‘70s. With the advent of hard rock and metal, players were pushing their amps harder than ever before. They wanted more distortion, more harmonics, longer sustain, and electrifying touch response. It wasn’t long before they needed new pickups to…

Seymour Duncan’s 7 Best-Selling Pickups (Over the Last Five Years!)

We’re fortunate to be able to say we’ve built quite a few pickups since moving into our first 12x15ft. warehouse in Santa Barbara in the 1970s. It’s our pleasure to help generations of guitar heroes achieve their sound in rock, blues, jazz, punk, prog, psychedelic and country music, plus all the subgenres—math rock, metalcore, fusion,…

How to Choose Guitar Strings

Strings don’t always get a lot of love—there aren’t too many demo videos about the best guitar strings, and you can’t flip ‘em on the secondhand market like guitars, pedals and amps—but stringing your instrument with the ideal materials and gauge for your needs is an easy way to improve the sound and feel of…

New Guitar Pickups 2022: ’78 Model, Green Magic and High Voltage Pickups!

Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups, pedals, and pedal amps, is proud to showcase the best selling: the ‘78 Model, Green Magic and High Voltage humbucker pickups. These are available for order right now at seymourduncan.com and at your favorite dealer. These new guitar pickups for 2022 are quite special and have an interesting…

The History and Resurgence of P.A.F. Pickups

If you’ve shopped for humbuckers or humbucker-equipped guitars, you’ve undoubtedly seen the term “P.A.F. pickups” floating around on product pages. It’s one of the original humbucker designs and remains one of the most popular pickup choices for modern guitarists across a wide variety of genres. But what makes a P.A.F. a P.A.F.? Unlike Tennessee whiskey,…

Our Top 7 Guitar Podcasts to Listen to On Your Commute

When you’ve run out of playlists to shuffle, it’s time to give these guitar podcasts a listen. Amplify your commute with interviews with all-time guitar legends like ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, deep conversations featuring boutique guitar, amp and pedal builders, epic documentary-style podcasts about the life and work of your favorite artists, track-by-track breakdowns of…

Women’s History Month: Highlighting Lari Basilio, April Kae, Annie Shred and Carol Kaye!

In honor of Women’s History Month, we got to recently ask a few of our artists from the Seymour Duncan artist roster if they had any tips for budding guitar players, as well as how they got started using Seymour Duncan.   “More than ever, it seems important to let others know that yes, women…

How to Use a Soldering Iron: Everything You Need for Wiring Guitar Electronics

If you want to learn about wiring guitar electronics or how to use a soldering iron, you came to the right place. And since you can’t start any project without tools, this first installment of our free Pickup Installation 101 course will ensure you have all the right ones for the job. From safety equipment…

NEW ALBUM ALERT: Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators presents ‘4’

A new Slash album is headed our way! Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators are releasing a new album ‘4’ on February 11th via Gibson Records. Their most recent single, “Call Off The Dogs” was just released on January 14th and according to Slash: “This one was written pretty much on the fly, and…

15 Words to Describe Guitar Tone—And What They Really Mean

The quest for perfect guitar tone is filled with obstacles—scales to learn, techniques to master, gear to acquire and so on. But nothing stops curious guitarists from learning their way around the instrument quite like the “tone talk” jargon that sometimes fills guitar forums, and even entire subreddits, with confusion. While the qualities that make…

Versatile Humbuckers: The SH-5 Custom & ’59 Model

The Seymour Duncan ’59 Model and SH-5 Custom humbucker pairing is a favorite around Seymour Duncan. And we know a thing or two about pairing versatile pickups. From our prepared sets to our loaded pickguards, we’ve been combining great pickup tones for years. In fact, you can read about another ’59-combo in Part 1 of…

A Guide to Seymour Duncan PAF Pickups

With so many PAF-style pickups on the market, it can be hard to tell them apart. Nearly every pickup maker offers these simple combinations of wire, bobbins, and magnets claiming to capture that 1959 Gibson Les Paul mojo. We offer a variety of pickups that deliver that Kalamazoo-era mojo, right down to the wire. To…

Artist Series: An Interview with April Kae

April Kae (of IMANIGOLD) is not only an artist but also very active in causes that she’s passionate about. Recently, we got to ask April a few questions, to discuss her musical journey as a bass player as well as her first instrument, favorite album and plans for touring. (Photo above by Tommy Rizzoli.)  …

All About the Seymour Duncan Convertible 100-Watt Guitar Amp

Seymour Duncan has a handful of great guitar amps to his name along with his pickups, and the Convertible is his crown jewel. Released around 1980-81, the Convertible was an all-tube, modular preamp design so full of ground-breaking features that Jeff Beck himself made them his go-to rig. But these features made the amplifiers WAY…

How to Find the Best Acoustic Pickup for Your Guitar

Finding the right acoustic pickup can be difficult. There are several different kinds, and each has its technical requirements to get the best performance. On top of that, you need to consider the rest of your signal chain and how it interacts. And finally, each type of acoustic guitar pickup has a unique sound with…

Playing Matchmaker: Finding the Best Guitar Pots and Caps for Your Guitar Tone

Guitar tone pot value is something most of us don’t think about unless you really like to get into the weeds of tone. But many players do like to mix and match them, optimizing their tone control and guitar to play, sound, and react just the way they want. So we’re going to take a…

Why Every Guitar Should Have Push-Pull Pots

Push-pull pots can turn a regular guitar into an insanely flexible tonal solution for every occasion. Most commonly used for eliciting single-coil-like tones from humbuckers, players can sometimes underestimate what all push-pull potentiometers can do. But that’s a mistake, because they can work all kinds of magic while hiding invisibly in the routing your guitar…

Seymour Duncan Dual Rail Humbucker Pickup: Punch, Power, and Aggression

Seymour Duncan rail pickups are bold. Even with a cursory glance, the magnetic bars cutting across their face jumps out at you. It’s striking when compared to the pole pieces or screws in most pickups. And these rail humbuckers are a fast track to inject your guitar with that same attitude. But rail pickups are…

The Best Pickups for Ibanez Guitars Part II: The Ibanez AZ Series, Pickups, and Wiring

As soon as Ibanez released their AZ line of electric guitars, the web lit up with searches for Ibanez AZ wiring diagrams. Everyone wanted to know what the Ibanez AZ pickups were. And that’s no surprise. The Ibanez AZ wiring is something new, and Ibanez players are one of the most loyal and knowledgeable fan…

What a Guitar Killswitch is and Why You Want One

The effect of an electric guitar killswitch has been around a long time. For decades players like Tom Morello achieved a unique chopped-up tone like Rage Against The Machine’s “Bulls on Parade” solo. And of course, Van Halen fanatics tried to replicate the staccato effect with which Eddie ended his “You Really Got Me” solo….

4 Decades of Pickups, Artists, and Seymour Duncan: a Q&A With Kevin Beller

When you think of Seymour Duncan pickups, you often think of Mr. Seymour Duncan himself. Makes sense. His name is on the building, after all. But did you know that there’s someone who’s been at Seymour’s right hand as long as the company has existed? Did you know that this man is directly related to…

Never Mind the Forums! Here’s All You Need to Know About Lipstick Tube Pickups

We get asked a ton of questions about lipstick single-coil pickups. We’re asked everything from what they sound like to “Will they fit in my guitar?” and more. We understand the questions. They’re unique pickups, different from a Tele neck pickup, different from a Stratocaster single-coil pickup. They’re their own thing. So what are they?…

The History of the Music Man Stingray Bass Pickup, 1976-2021

After selling his namesake company roughly ten years earlier, Leo Fender was back in the instrument business. And even with such iconoclast instrument designs like the Stratocaster, Telecasters, Precision, and Jazz Basses to his name, he wanted to make something greater. It was a tall order considering all of those instruments are still considered the…

The Different Fender Single-Coil Guitar Pickups and Which Types are Best for Your Electric

Are you confused by all the different types of single-coil pickups? You’re not alone. So we thought we’d do a deep dive into some of the most popular ’60s Fender-style single-coil pickup designs. We find these 60-year-old designs fascinating and hope you will too. We’ll discuss each of these pickups’ history and their unique sounds….

Gretsch-style Pickups: The Filter’Tron vs. DynaSonics vs. P90s

So much of That Great Gretsch Sound comes from the great Gretsch-style pickups. Yet as legendary as they are, they’re also often overlooked. DynaSonic and Filter’Tron pickups are perfect examples. These two pickups are responsible for thousands of legendary guitar tones. They’re the undisputed kings of rockabilly guitar. And their history runs parallel to better-known…

Rickenbacker Bass Pickups: Horseshoes, Toasters, and the High-Gain…?

To understand Rickenbacker bass pickups, you have to travel back to the company’s genesis in the early 1930s. Believe it or not, it was the National resonator guitar company that spawned the whole thing. But when tensions in the company resulted in a split, the team of Adolph Rickenbacker and George D. Beauchamp (pronounced Beechum)…

Drop-Tuning Like a Pro Part II: Guitars Built for the Job

In Part 1 of our series on “What is drop tuning a guitar,” we investigated the how-tos. From truss rod maintenance to filing your guitar’s string nut, that article has all you need. But drop tunings also gave rise to a world of electric guitars that are custom-built for the job. And that’s what we’re…

The Precision Bass Vs. the Jazz Bass: What Are the Differences and Which is Right for You

A question we hear from many bassists who are just starting is “What’s the difference between the Jazz and Precision bass?” Then, as they get a little further in their musical journey, it becomes “P Bass vs. Jazz Bass. Which one’s best?” Well, there is no “best.” But we will investigate the differences between Jazz…

Top 3: The Best Passive Humbuckers for Modern/Prog Metal

What are the best pickups for modern and prog metal guitar tone? That depends on how you define modern and prog metal guitar tone. Here’s how we define it. While classic humbucking pickups can get “high-gain,” modern metal players need something different. Their highly complex playing demands a precise, tight tone. One that remains aggressive…

The New Vapor Trail Deluxe Analog Delay Pedal

The Vapor Trail Deluxe builds on the proud legacy of our original Vapor Trail analog delay pedal, who’s warm, Bucket Brigade repeats and 3-dimensional modulation continues to inspire guitarists around the world. However, with the Vapor Trail Deluxe, we’ve taken the pedal’s capabilities quite a bit further. The marriage between Vapor Trail Deluxe’s all analog…

How to Add Push-Pull Pot Wiring to a Les Paul Style Guitar

Push-pull pot wiring is the perfect way to add more tonal options to your Les Paul or LP-style guitar. Coil-tapping, split-coil, in and out of phase, or parallel-series options become available with the flick of your wrist. The mods are easy to do. It’s extremely affordable. And it doesn’t require any permanent changes to your…

5 of the Best Ways to Restring Your Guitar

We all remember when we got our first guitar. But the thrill quickly dissipated the minute we broke our first guitar string. In that split second, we recognized the importance of knowing how to restring a guitar. So we learned. And we’re probably still restringing our guitars the same way today. But did you know…

Mounting a Telecaster Neck Pickup to the Body: Secrets Unveiled

What’s with mounting a Telecaster neck pickup to the body? Can’t I just mount it to the pickguard? Ok, then how do you mount a telecaster neck pickup to the body? Inquisitive guitarists ask us these questions every day. And we don’t blame them. Not only do different T-style guitars use different pickup mounting methods…

Top 3: The Best Jazz Pickups by Seymour Duncan

Everything you need to know about the best jazz guitar pickups out there.   Picking the best jazz pickups requires a different set of guidelines than choosing the best pickups for a lot of other genres. Jazz guitar players are less interested in output and the unique voice pickups can bring to their instrument. Instead,…

How to Find the Best HSS Pickup Configuration

Ever wonder how to choose the perfect pickup for your HSS Strat? You’re not alone. In a previous article, we pointed you toward three of our favorite HSS pickup combinations. But if you want to put your own trio of pickups together, we’ve got you covered. These five steps are an easy way to sift…

Unlock New Tones With These HSS Pickups

There have been many classic pickup sets throughout the electric guitar’s history: A couple of PAFs, any trio of vintage-voiced Strat pickups, a pair of active humbuckers, even the Nashville Tele setup. But we often overlook the HSS pickup configuration. There are far fewer complete sets of HSS pickups on the market. So we’ve put…

Top 3: The Best Jazzmaster Pickups for Alt Rock/Indie

Three Jazzmaster pickups perfect for the wide-ranging sounds of indie and alternative rock.   To choose the best guitar pickups for Alternative Rock, Indie, or Pop, we need to define the sound of the genres. Luckily, ever since these genres’ ‘90s heyday, Fender’s famous offset guitars remain part of the scene’s sonic signature. You’ll find…

How to Find the Best Pickup Configuration: Humbuckers

No matter the tone, there’s a humbucker replacement pickup set that will get you close. There are thousands of them. But a lot of the most popular pickups sell individually, without a matched set. Often, they might not even have a designated bridge or neck counterpart. So if you’ve found the perfect bridge humbucker, how…

What Tone Capacitors Do I Need For My Guitar?

Your guitar’s tone capacitors (caps) are the most underrated component of your guitar. Tone caps are so underrated, many players never even utilize their tone knobs. Others still settle for the one that came in their guitar and don’t realize how easy they are to customize. The truth is, a simple swap of your tone…

Guitar Upgrades: Seymour Duncan’s Top 10

When it comes to guitar upgrades, there are countless options. Some are mechanical and make your guitar play better and more reliably. Others are electronic or focus on improving your tone. So which upgrades are right for you? Here are 10 of our favorites. They’re affordable, reversible, and easy to do. So, get out your…

Changing Guitar Pickups: Free Yourself From the Myths

Changing guitar pickups is one of the most powerful upgrades you can do to your guitar and improve tone. It can breathe new life into an old guitar, fix problems with a defective pickup, optimize the guitar for a specific rig, and much more. While the idea of changing guitar pickups is overwhelming to some,…

The Three Best Classic Rock Pickups

Seymour Duncan’s three best passive pickups for classic rock tone. Choosing the best classic rock pickups can be a bit daunting. Some people say Hendrix is classic rock, while others say, Journey. And some people even claim Nirvana has crossed into classic territory. We say classic rock is defined by the iconic ‘passive humbucker into…

Our Ultimate Guide to Guitar Pickup Installation: The Secret Agent

The Seymour Duncan Brad Paisley Secret Agent Tele neck pickup is a revolution in twang. It gives Esquires the Telecaster’s flexibility while retaining the unique tone and punch of Esquire pickups. It can also give your Telecaster the sleek and minimalist style of an Esquire while still delivering the Tele’s wide breadth of tone. Best…

The Seymour Duncan PowerStage: Everything You Need To Know

Seymour Duncan PowerStage pedal platform amplifiers are the ultimate solution for modern musicians dealing with today’s tonal realities. These realities include relying on pedal-driven tones, embracing digital amp modeling, as well as weight, cartage, and stage-volume restrictions. But never fear! The Seymour Duncan PowerStage amps address all of these issues and more. Expertly tuned amplification…

Top 3: The Best Telecaster Pickups for Country

The Fender Telecaster is country music guitar tone. And country music guitar tone is the Telecaster, plain and simple. Yes, you’ll find every style of guitar used to great effect throughout the genre. But no guitar has put its sonic stamp on it quite like Fender’s first. Whether it’s James Burton’s genre-defining bends or the…

5-String Jazz Bass Pickups & String Spacing: What You Need to Know

Everything you need to know to ensure you get the perfect pickups for your favorite 5-string. Not all 5-string Jazz Bass pickups are created equal. And we’re not talking about tone here. We’re talking about if they’ll even line up with the strings on your bass. And if you’ve ever bought replacement pickups for a…

The Best Pickups for Metal: Active Pickups

The debate among players as far as what kind of pickups, passive or active, are best for metal rages on. And it will continue to do so for a long time. But one thing’s for sure. When it comes to the best pickups for metal, active humbucking pickups are regularly at the top of the…

Nashville Telecaster Pickups: What You Need to Know

The Telecaster has almost been synonymous with Nashville, Tennessee for decades. And there’s a reason a Tele can still found in every A-list session guitarist’s arsenal. But many of the town’s pros need a guitar with a broader range of voices. They need the tone of their Teles with the flexibility of a Strat. So,…

The Best Guitar Pickups for Metal: Classic Metal

We know that picking the best guitar pickups for metal is impossible. It’s even hard to narrow them down for classic metal. Every player has different preferences, everyone is after a different tone, and there are just too many options available. Not to mention, classic metal means something different to everyone. Here’s how we define…

Our Top Tips from 2020

January is a great month for new beginnings. You know, a new year, new me kind of thing. But, it’s also a great month for reflection and thinking about the best moments from the year prior. So, in this last week of January 2021, we’re going to do just that. Here are the Top 3…

3 Popular Treble Bleed Mods: What You Need to Know

We’ve all heard guitar vets pine for the days of plugging straight into an amp and getting all the tones they ever needed. No need for pedals, switchers, multi-fx boards, or tap dancing. So what stops today’s players from embracing the rigs of old? Having to push old tube amps to volume-war levels is one….

Introducing the Joe Bonamassa “Bonnie” Pickup Set and Loaded Pickguard

Joe Bonamassa’s ear for tone is legendary. So when he says that Bonnie, his 1955, hardtail Fender Stratocaster, is his “best Strat,” we trust him. And when he wanted to offer the guitar’s magical-sounding pickups to the public, we went to work re-creating them with pin-point accuracy and attention to detail.   Introducing the limited-run Joe…

How to Choose the Right Pots for Your Pickups

Pop quiz. What is the most critical part of your guitar’s electronics – other than pickups?  Answer: Your potentiometers. Potentiometers – or simply, pots – determine how much of what frequencies make it from your pickup to your output jack. And while some players may be content leaving them full up, getting to know these…

How to Embrace the Stunning Popularity of Chorus Pedals

They say history is cyclical. Nowhere is that more apparent than in guitar tone. From the roar of high-gain stacks to the cleans of pedal-friendly combos, the prominence of Big Muffs to the classic Tube Screamer, tonal trends come and go, then come and go again. But no effect’s on again-off again popularity is as…

P90 Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between a few of our most popular P90 single-coil pickups   Vintage P90 Magnet: Alnico V Neck DCR: 8.0k Bridge DCR: 9.7k   Our vintage-correct recreation of the original 1946 Gibson single-coil with all of the midrange grittiness, sparkle, and growl that make vintage P90 pickups so special. The dual alnico…

Cory Wong – A Portrait

During the summer of 2019, Cory Wong traveled to the Seymour Duncan tiny house, located just outside of Santa Barbara, CA, to film our fifth Seymour Duncan “Portrait Series” video. Cory is an exceptional musician, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist, who’s had an expansive genre-crossing career as a songwriter, composer, performer, frontman, bandleader, band member, and session…

How to Get the Most From Your Distortion

What’s the Difference Between Diamondhead and Palladium?!    Tuned for a wide range of distortion, rock players of all shades find the Diamondhead perfectly suited for their preferences. But we often hear, “Doesn’t Seymour Duncan already have the Palladium?”     Great question.    We’d like to give a bit more insight into these two multi-gain stage distortion…

5 Boost Pedals Every Guitarist Needs to Know

Boost pedals are one of the most overlooked but powerful effects you can have on your pedalboard. Within a single—often compact—stompbox, they give you access to high-gain tones, solo boosts, line-driving buffers, and even out volume differences between guitars. They are the Swiss Army knives of the pedal world. And they’re usually straightforward to use….

Passive P-Bass Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between a few of our most popular Passive P-Bass Pickups   SPB-1 Vintage P-Bass Magnet Type: Alnico V DCR: 11.0k The P-Bass has defined recorded and live music since its inception, and the Vintage P-Bass pickup nails all the things we love about that distinctive tone. You will get just the…

Passive Jazz Bass Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between a few of our most popular Passive Jazz Bass Pickups   SJB-1 Vintage Jazz Bass Magnet Type: Alnico V Neck DCR: 9.3k // Bridge DCR: 9.2k These pickups are a faithful recreation of the Jazz Bass single-coils of the early 60s. Our Vintage Jazz Bass pickups stay true to the originals…

Hum-Canceling Tele Pickup Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between a few of our most popular Hum-Canceling Telecaster Pickups   Vintage Stack Tele Set Magnet Type: Alnico V Neck DCR: 15.8k // Bridge DCR: 18.0k Our Vintage Stack Tele pickups offer up unmistakable Telecaster sparkle and spank without the traditional hum. Eliminate that pesky hum while keeping all the chime…

Announcing the Eric Steckel Signature “Candy” Humbucker Set

We’re excited to announce the release of the new Eric Steckel Signature “Candy” Humbucker Set, available now from the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop. Eric Steckel is a blues prodigy with a sonic signature all his own. Whether playing with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers or garnering international accolades as a solo artist, he continues to shatter blues…

Tele Single-Coil Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between a few of our most popular Single-Coil Telecaster Pickups   STL-1b Vintage Broadcaster Tele Bridge Magnet Type: Alnico V Bridge DCR: 8.0k A faithful tribute to the 1950 original, our Vintage Broadcaster is the perfect choice for discerning players who demand something more from their Tele lead pickup. Our Broadcaster…

Strat Single-Coil Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between a few of our most popular Single-Coil Stratocaster pickups   Vintage Staggered™ Strat Magnet Type: Alnico V Feature hand-ground Alnico 5 rod magnets and heavy Formvar magnet wire with a special wind pattern to produce that bright, glassy, bell tone with all of the bounce and sparkle you expect from…

Active Humbuckers Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between a few of our most popular active humbuckers   The Basics of Active Humbuckers Like their passive counterparts, active pickups still utilize magnets and wire-wrapped coils to capture string vibrations and read them as a current. Active pickups employ an active preamp (usually powered by a 9V battery) that, along…

Ceramic Humbucker Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between a few of our most popular humbuckers that feature Ceramic magnets   Duncan Custom™ Bridge DCR: 14.1k A hot humbucker which uses a small ceramic magnet and custom-wound coils to dish out a ‘P.A.F.-on-steroids’ tone. It has tight lows, a bump in the upper midrange which gives you more character…

Alnico II Humbucker Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between our Alnico II Humbucker guitar pickups   Antiquity™ Humbucker Neck DCR: 7.7k // Bridge DCR: 8.6k The vintage accurate wind and custom aged Alnico II magnet provide an open tone, with a full low-end, scooped mid-range, and refined treble emphasis.   Seth Lover™ Neck DCR: 7.4k // Bridge DCR: 8.3k…

Alnico V Humbucker Tone Profiles

Learn the tonal differences between our Alnico V Humbucker guitar pickups   JB Model Bridge DCR: 16.6k Our most popular pickup of all time, the JB features a full and powerful low end, crisp and detailed highs, and an upper-midrange bump that adds crunch and chunk to heavy chords but translates to a singing, vocal-like…

Tonal Properties of Guitar Pickup Magnets

At the heart of every pickup, whether it’s a humbucker or a single-coil, is one or more magnets that define the fundamental character of the pickup’s tone. Learn how a pickup’s magnet type impacts its tone to help you choose the best pickups for you and your guitar! Read on for info on a few…

How to Test Guitar Pickups with a Multimeter

Let’s talk about one of the most important subjects every guitarist needs to know in order to troubleshoot their electronics: testing pickups with a multimeter. These affordable hand-held devices are vital and helpful to have around. Whether diagnosing unwanted noises or verifying your pickups’ performance, a multimeter helps you get the most from your guitar...

How to Get Paisley-Approved Vintage Tele Tones

The rules of guitar heroism are different for Tele players. These 6-string virtuosos have come to create their own paradigm of what it means to be a true master of their instrument. While rarely moving out of their twang-based genres, these players are incredibly potent forces in the pantheon of guitarists. Today, no one embodies…

Is This the end of the Telecaster vs. Esquire Debate?

We’re excited to introduce our latest collaboration with Brad Paisley, the Secret Agent neck-position pickup. Recessed and hidden under the pickguard of your Fender Esquire, it provides Esquire appearance and grit with traditional Telecaster tones. And, each one is handmade in the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop. The Telecaster Family Tree The ’50s brought on the…

Making Music & Songwriting with Beatie Wolfe: Artist Profile

“Musical weirdo and visionary” (Vice) Beatie Wolfe is an artist who has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN role model for innovation and held a solo exhibition of her ‘world first’ album designs at the V&A Museum. Named by WIRED as one of “22 people changing the world,” Beatie Wolfe is at…

Mark Holcomb – A Portrait

  During a recent visit to Santa Barbara, CA, Mark Holcomb traveled to the Seymour Duncan tiny house and headquarters to film our fourth Seymour Duncan “Portrait Series” video. As part of the three-guitar assault that makes up Periphery, Mark Holcomb might be best known for his bombastic riffs, liquid leads, and the syncopated down-tuned…

PowerStage – Pedal Sized Guitar Amp – The Next Stage for Your Tone

PowerStage is the go-to amp for streamlining your live rig. These pedal sized guitar amps are designed for players who love pedals or modeling devices but need a clean, powerful grab-and-go pedal amp for any gig, rehearsal, or studio session. PS170  |  PS200  |  PS700 There’s no denying our love of classic tube amps. They...

Three pickups in one? Learn how the P-Rails split coil pickup diversifies your tone.

The chime and twang of great Strat, Tele, and P-90 single-coils are unmistakable. And humbuckers continue to be the go-tos for pushing amps with warmth and power. But what if there was a split-coil pickup that offered all of those sounds in one drop-in replacement? There is. It’s called the Seymour Duncan P-Rails. Pickup Splitting...

The 5 Best Strat Pickups for Blues

Wading through all of your guitar pickup options can sometimes be a bit intimidating. So we put together this list of our top 5 best Strat pickups for blues, it’s the perfect place to start. But first, lets dive into a little history… History of the Blues Guitar When it comes to the ultimate blues…

Guitar Pickup Covers-3 New Ways to Upgrade Your Guitar

A pickup’s look is just as critical to the aesthetic of your guitar as its tone. For this reason, we offer a wide variety of guitar pickup covers. These covers include three unique new looks: Black Powdercoat, Raw Nickel Radiator Cover with Gold Foil, and Raw Nickel Border with Tortoise Shell. The pickups we choose…

Adjusting Pickup Height: A Fast, Easy Way to Improve Your Tone

Adjusting guitar pickup height is one of the easiest ways to improve your tone. With a few easy twists of a screwdriver, you can obtain the best output, warmth, clarity, and balance that your pickups can deliver. Keep reading to learn the benefits of proper adjustment, how to adjust a wide range of the most…

What makes our vintage-style boutique guitar pickups so popular?

With 40 years of pickup design under our belt, we’re sharing a little history, what makes vintage so popular, and how our vintage-style, boutique guitar pickups have evolved over the years. It’s fascinating that most traditional boutique guitar pickups, after six-plus decades, are still the same design as the originals. Yes, today’s market features some…

5 Easy Strat Wiring Mods You Can Do On a 5 Way Strat Switch- Part 3

I am sure the anticipation has been killing you. We all know how exciting switches are right?! Well your wait is over, and today we are going to show you 5 easy Strat mods you can do with a standard 5-way Strat switch. If you just joined us on this adventure and need to get…

Standard Strat Wiring- Part 2

In part 2 we are going to look at a traditional, standard Strat wiring configuration with a 5-way switch and teach you step by step how to get it done. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, start here. Connecting the 5-Way Strat Switch If you remember from Part 1, the anatomy of a 5…

5 Way Strat Switch Explained- Part 1

You’ve played em’ and you’ve heard em’ but have you ever wondered how exactly a 5-way Strat switch works? We’ve put together an in-depth 3-part series that pulls back the pickguard on one of the most common switches you’ll come across. In Part 1 we take a close look at how a 5-way Strat switch…

A Guide to Strat Stack Guitar Pickups

Ever hit the studio, dial up an epic tone on your Strat, lay down the perfect take, and have to scrap it because it’s riddled with 60-cycle hum from your traditional Strat guitar pickups? Or, ever play a show at your favorite local bar, and have to ask the bartender to turn off his prized neon Budweiser sign because it’s just…

A Guide to Single Coil-Sized Humbucker Guitar Pickups for Strat

Traditional Strat guitar pickups have their time and place. When you want that quintessential, glassy, bell-like chime—nothing does it like a classic Strat single coil. But sometimes we want more, more power, more output, more authority, more aggression out of our Strat. Often times, this is where traditional, vintage Strat guitar pickups don’t make the…

50s Vs Modern Les Paul Wiring

A Gibson Les Paul, SG, ES-335 and many other guitars use a two-pickup/four-pot setup: two dedicated volume controls and two dedicated tone controls. The tonal possibilities are almost endless if you know how to dial it in right, and the tireless tinkerers among us have tried several ways of hooking up the pickups to the…

How To Solder

In this article I’ll take you through the various things you’ll need to know about soldering to work on your guitar. You’ll need to know how to protect your guitar, how to solder to lugs, how to de-solder wires, how to clean contacts,and how to solder to the back of a pot. But first, lets make sure we’ve got the right equipment.

Fine-Tuning the Adjustment of Passive Humbuckers

It’s been said that the best things in life are free, and I find that saying is never more true than when applied to getting a better tone from our guitars. With so many products on the market that claim to improve guitar tone in one way or another – from fancy new picks made…

String Theory: What Is Top Wrapping?

There’s a standard way of stringing a Les Paul or other stop tailpiece-equipped axe, and it works perfectly fine. And so it should! The darn things were designed to work that way! But there’s another method that some players swear by, often called ‘top wrapping.’

How To Sound Like David Gilmour

Oh dear. What a challenge I’ve set myself with this article’s title. David Gilmour is an amazing player, known for both incredible tone and highly emotive technique and note choice. He regularly appears in the top 3 (often at number 1) when guitar publications hold “best solo ever” polls. From iconic releases like Dark Side…

Pickup Polarity and Phase Made Simple

If you have only one pickup in your guitar, feel free to ignore this article and live your life in blissful ignorance, unhampered by phase and polarity issues. Everyone else, pay attention! This is important stuff, and it might save your sanity some day, or at least your tone.

Top Ten Most Recognizable Basslines

Whether you love or hate the song or band, you hear two second (if that) of the bassline and immediately know what song it is, and who’s playing it. And usually, if you go into Guitar Center, there’s a really good chance you’ll hear someone play one of these lines, albeit badly. And if you’re…

Joe Bonamassa: The Collection

Chances are you already spend so much money on guitars and gear that each time the credit card bill comes you have to snatch it before your wife sees that new guitar you bought or finds that 5150 you just couldn’t pass up on Craigslist. If this is you, then you have something in common with Joe Bonamassa.

How To Shield A Guitar

A few weeks ago, I completed an article about fixing my Ernie Ball/Music Man’s warped pickguard. While I had all of the electronics and pickguard off of the guitar, I noticed that the only shielding on the control cavity was a small strip of aluminum tape on the pickguard where the controls were. Now, the…

Guitar Wiring Diploma Course

Have you never opened a guitar before? Or perhaps you’ve just opened one for the first time, seen all those wires, and run screaming in confusion to the internet for help? Never fear. We have a set of posts you can read to get yourself up to speed in no time, starting completely from scratch.

Best Guitar Pickups For Epiphone

Epiphone is well loved by many for their semi-hollow bodies, their range of selection and affordable prices. You may be ready to pull the trigger your first Les Paul style guitar but your credit card may refuse such a purchase – an Epiphone LP is a good alternative.

The Philosophy of the Fat Strat: Single Coils and Humbuckers At Peace

Some people call them HSS Strats. Others call them Fat Strats. Some people don’t care for them, others don’t know what they’d do without them. Either way, you can’t deny the appeal of a guitar that combines the feel and mechanics of a Strat with the chunky kick of a bridge position humbucker.

Unleashing The Mysteries Of A Scalloped Fingerboard

Over the years there have been many modifications to the electric and acoustic guitar. One of the more radical ones is the use of a scalloped fingerboard. This is an irreversible modification that ‘scoops out’ the wood between the frets (see pictures). This article will explain exactly why someone might do this, the benefits and drawbacks of scalloping and why this became popular in electric guitar playing.

Reader’s Choice Top 10 Guitar Solos

We surveyed the Seymour Duncan Facebook audience to find out what ranked as their top guitar solos of all time. Here’s how the Top 10 broke down.

Best Pickups For Ibanez Guitars

Although I consider it my duty as a guitarist to own a Strat, Tele and Les Paul (and some day an ES-335 please, Santa), I have plenty of experience with all sorts of Ibanez guitars and all sorts of Seymour Duncan pickups. So I thought it might be fun to share some of what I’ve found.

Top 10 Tremolo Systems

I like to brainstorm a lot with other guitarists about gear, music, tone and other assorted subjects when one subject came up which can be summed up in one simple question: what are the top 10 tremolo systems on the market, right now?

Obey Your Master: The Art Of Amp Slaving

Back in the days before we had direct recording outs and stereo effects loops, if a guitarist wanted to take his favorite amp’s tone and make it LOUDER, it was done by something called amp slaving. This is accomplished by taking the signal of one amp and boosting it via the power section of  another…

Three Cool Alternate Wiring Schemes for Telecaster®

One of the great things about the Telecaster is the fact that there are so many cool alternate wiring schemes you can use. I want to tell you about three of my favorites.

Choosing A Bridge Pickup For Your Les Paul

In this article, I wish to explore some of my favorite pickups for the bridge position of a Les Paul. When I talk with players about tone, gear and music in general, the general concensus is that you need pickups with a lot of output for metal and pickups with less output for ‘everything else.’ I disagree with that notion (though it holds some truth, I have to admit) and I’ll try to highlight pickups that can do a large selection of styles as well as pickups that seem almost dedicated to a specific style.

Pickup Comparison Chart

>   Vintage RailsFour Con.Neck: ** 2.31 k Bridge: ** 2.67 kNeck: 8.5 KHz Bridge: 7.8 KHz Ceramic Bar6 / 3 / 9 Compare Tone Seymour Duncan Humbuckers & Trembuckers Model Name (click for details) Cable DC Resistance Resonant Peak    Magnet EQ B/M/T Output User Type   6 string – Sentient Four Con. Neck:…

Guitar Wiring 102

Last week we got to the point where we had a guitar with one pickup and no controls. This week we’ll be taking more steps towards a full understanding of guitar wiring.

How to Change Pickups

Changing your pickups isn’t rocket science and the right set of pickups can completely transform the tone and character of your guitar. Sometimes changing pickups can seem a bit daunting for those who have never picked up a soldering iron or opened up their guitar. Below you can find resources to select the perfect set…

Cage Match: Locking Tuners vs. Traditional Tuners

Guitarists spend endlessly debating about guitar bridges: which Floyd is better, Kahler vs. Floyd, Floyd vs. Strat, trem vs. stoptail. There might not be as much paid attention to the other end of the guitar. The headstock is the first place many guitarists look when they see another guitarist playing, and the shape is the highly-protected trademark of most guitar companies. The headstock contains one of the most important parts of the guitar: the tuners. Because no one will notice how much you paid for that RockStar LesOCaster with the perfect flames (and skull inlays, dude) if you aren’t staying in tune. This article will explain some of the differences between traditional tuners and the benefits of choosing one over the other.

Cage Match: Tubes vs. Solid State & Modeling

You had to know something like this was coming. This debate has gone on since solid state amps were marketed to unsuspecting guitarists in the 60’s. This article will consider the conventional wisdom is that tube amps are always better. Thirty years ago, I might agree, but now it isn’t so simple. Solid State (or…

Keep it Loose: Stretches for Guitarists

If you’re anything like me, you have felt the pain of playing the guitar. I’m not talking about the blues, or the pain caused by being smacked by the singer; I’m talking about pain and tension in your muscles and joints. We guitarists put our hands through a lot of punishment. Bending strings, holding barre chords, rapid-fire picking – it all adds up, and none of it is good for your muscles or joints. When your hands are aching or your shoulders are locking up, your performance suffers. Worst of all, you might be doing long term damage.

What Is Coil Tapping?

Coil splitting is the practice of shutting off (or otherwise fading out) one coil of a humbucker, leaving behind a single coil for a brighter tone. Coil splitting is often confused with coil tapping, in much the same way that the terms ‘vibrato bar’ and ‘tremolo bar’ are considered interchangeable even though only one is technically correct. So what is coil tapping, and how is it different to coil splitting?

Cage Match: Active vs. Passive Pickups

Pickups come in two basic flavors. One is active, and the second is passive. If your guitar requires a battery, chances are that it has active pickups. If it doesn’t, or will function without a battery, then the pickups would be considered passive. From what I have seen, guitarists generally prefer one or the other…

Know Your Amp: Different Kinds of Tubes

If the transformers are the heart of your amp and the preamp is the brain, then the soul must be the tubes. But the thing is, there are so many tubes available, how can we discern the differences?

Guitar Wood Types

Previously, the reason behind the different tones that different woods create has been explained. The different tones themselves were not fully explored, though. In this article I will give a global overview of the different tone woods, the sound they produce and in some cases their purpose. This is by no means a complete picture, only a global overview.

The Most Misheard Lyrics In Rock History

Once upon a time, in my first job upon landing in Los Angeles, a co-worker once randomly asked “Do you like the Cult?” “Sure!” I replied, having seen them on the Sonic Temple tour not long before relocating. “My favorite song of theirs is ‘Party Woman’!” he exclaimed. “What?” I was momentarily confused. “What are…

Down But Not Out: Drop-Tuning Like a Pro

For those few who may be unfamiliar, drop tuning is the practice of tuning the strings on a guitar to pitches that are lower on the scale than the traditional E Standard (E2, A2, D3, G3, B3, E4) guitar tuning. This term can refer to tuning all the strings of a guitar down the same…

Multi-Amp Rigs 101

In our unending quest to forge a guitar tone that sounds like somebody opening the Ark of the Covenant inside a tyrannosaurus, many of us will eventually find ourselves considering the possibility of using more than one amplifier. As the more mathematically astute amongst you will doubtless be well aware, employing just one additional amplifier will…

The Art of the Barre

Let’s face it: for the beginning guitarist, barre chords are hard. The idea that one finger has to hold down multiple strings when it has a hard enough time trying to hold down one seems like an impossible task.

String Spacing Explained: Humbuckers vs Trembuckers

If you’re upgrading your guitar’s pickups for the very first time, here’s a tip which will help you maximize your tone and get the most out of your investment: Seymour Duncan offers most humbucker models in two sizes: Humbucker and Trembucker. But what do these mean, and how do you know which is right for…

250k vs 500k pots: Going Deeper into the Subject

It is well known that a 500k pot will give you more highs than a 250k pot. But the “why” remains a cloudy subject. So let’s get to the bottom of it: why does the value of the pot matter?

Top 10 Rock Guitarists That Use Multi-Neck Guitars

Most guitarists have enough struggle with one neck. However, there are times when you might have to play guitar and bass in the same song, or play delicate fingerpicked intros on a 12 string, and rock out with a great big Rockin’ Guitar Solo on that 6-string in the end.

Cage Match: Single Coils vs. Humbuckers

Or…my journey from single coils to humbuckers and back…. For the most part, choosing a type of replacement pickup is based on whatever already comes in your guitar. When exploring the differences between guitar types, it somehow always gets distilled down into 2 categories: Guitars with single coils and guitars with humbuckers. This article will…

Piezo Vs. Magnetic Pickups

I am always intrigued in how things developed. How did the guitar develop to what it is today? How do our views change on what constitutes good tone? Those kind of questions keep me occupied during the slow moments of a day, and one day I was asking myself the question: why do we, as electric guitar players, predominantly use sound systems based on electromagnetism and not on piezo-electrics?

Guitar Bridges: The What And The Why

Guitars are stringed instruments, and as with all instruments that utilize strings, there has to be a fixing point for them. These points are called bridges and they come in several forms and shapes. Generally speaking, there are two major types of bridges: fixed bridges and moving bridges (the latter generally but erroneously called tremolos). Let’s take a look at the different types of bridges and what kind of unique feature they have.

Choosing Pickups to Match Your Guitar’s Wood

We’ve discussed choosing pickups according to your style before. We’ve also had a bit of a look at choosing pickups with respect to the wood: what wood works best with which pickup for which style? In this article I want to explore some possible guitar, pickup, style and tone choices. What goes good with what?

Tele Neck Pickup Options

The Telecaster is without question a classic instrument. It has an instantly identifiable sound – especially in the bridge and middle positions. However, the neck pickup alone is slightly weaker than the bridge position. Not to say that it doesn’t sound good, because it does. In fact Seymour Duncan makes several vintage output Tele neck pickups for those who are after that traditional, sweet Tele neck sound. I have the STR-1 Vintage Rhythm in the neck of one of my Telecasters and it’s silky smooth.

How To Fix Your Guitar Like a Pro: Solving String Problems

WAIT. Put down that screwdriver. Put down that allen wrench. Quit fiddling with your tuners, and please do not throw your guitar out the window (or up on eBay). You aren’t going insane. We’ve all had frustrating moments with our guitars. I’m not talking about frustration from learning to play or being in a rut;…

Talking Tone With Dimebag Darrell’s Tech Grady Champion

Grady Champion was Dimebag Darrell’s guitar tech for 13 years, and he was by Dime’s side as he found and continued to refine his tone, from Pantera through to Damageplan, across countless gigs on stages all over the world. Towards the end of his life Dime had been using his signature Seymour Duncan Dimebucker pickup, but Grady tells us that Dime was also a fan of the ’59 Model, using the bridge version of the ’59 in the neck position of his guitars. Grady is currently teching for Incubus, and he took time out to have a chat about how pickups fit into Dime’s tone and what it was like to work with one of the most unforgettable metal guitarists ever.

The Best Guitar Neck Pickups (Humbucker Edition)

Seymour Duncan has a wide variety of neck pickups to help you find that perfect match. There are many things to consider when you’re looking for a a neck pickup. First up is the wood of the guitar – do you have a bright guitar like alder and want to warm and fatten it up, or do you have a warmer guitar and want to make take it out of the darkness and give it some crunch and bite?

What To Consider When Looking For New Guitar Pickups

Buying a pickup can be as easy as looking at a few videos, hearing a few sound clips, and getting a few recommendations from friends. But with pickup companies like Seymour Duncan making hundreds of different pickups, an educated consumer will be the happiest consumer.

The JB and 59 – A Classic Combination

When it comes to classic pickup combinations the Seymour Duncan JB and 59 combo have to be right up there. With the ability to providing searing heavy tones from the JB, and smooth clear tones from the 59, you will end up with one incredibly versatile axe.

Gigging *Without* an Amp

Now I know the image above will give some people fits. Just the idea of doing a gig without your favorite amp roaring behind you is enough to send people to their sheds, grabbing pitchforks and lighting torches.

Guitar Pickups For Blues

There’s nothing quite like playing the blues. Every note, phrase and hint of vibrato rings out soul. And there’s nothing like seeing a good blues guitarist in concert like BB King, Robert Cray, Gary Clark. Jr, Joe Bonamassa – the list goes on and on. Most blues players use vintage-style pickups or vintage-style with-a-bit-of-edge for hotter blues….

Guitar Wiring Explored – Humbucker Internals

One of the main reasons players add switches to their guitars is to explore the tonal versatility offered by four-conductor humbuckers. First let’s take a quick look at a single-coil pickup.

How To Use A Multi-Meter

A multi-meter is a handy tool for guitar players to have on their work bench. They have a myriad of uses when it comes to guitar, effects and amplifiers, and it’s always worthwhile having even a basic multi-meter around to troubleshoot things.

How To Get More From Your Humbucker: Coil Split

Humbuckers have been immensely popular ever since they hit the market. Their fat, juicy tone allows for easier playing, their higher output makes amps crank out more dirt and with all the various humbuckers around you can easily season your guitar to taste. But some players feel the need to go a bit further.

Single Conductor Vs Four Conductor Cable Humbuckers

The original humbucking pickups designed by Seth Lover for Gibson in the 1950s were elegantly simple. By combining two pickup coils instead of simply using one (with pole piece magnets of one coil oriented in the opposite direction to the other), Lover’s design cancelled out the buzz and hum that plagued existing single coil designs, leaving in its place a fuller, rounder tone which changed the future of guitar.

Guitar Wiring 101

For many players, a change of pickups is one of the very first steps into modding guitars. It’s reversible, it’s not too hard, and it has an immediate impact on your tone. However, it’s still possible to get yourself into a bit of a mess if you don’t have a basic understanding of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

The Ambient Guitarist’s Toolkit

This article will provide a brief history of ambient guitar music and a rundown of the most common tools to get your space on.

What Is Fretboard Radius?

Ever wonder why some guitars just feel ‘right’ while others feel just plain weird? Often it’s down to the radius of the fretboard. This refers to how flat or curved the fretboard the frets are. Different roundnesses provide different playing feels, and some are better suited to particular styles than others are.

Mod Squad: Muddy sounding neck pickup?

Muddy sounding neck pickup? Try Seymour’s quick tech fix By Seymour Duncan Tech Guru Scott Miller People often call and ask how to fix a muddy sounding neck pickup. Some years ago, Seymour taught me a cool trick to fix this exact problem. If you connect a .047 capacitor in series (directly in-line) with the…

Talking Tone With Joe Bonamassa

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with Joe Bonamassa knows he’s a huge collector of vintage guitars and amps. There’s the now-famous picture circulating of him on a nearly basketball court-size soundstage packed with gear. You think it’s staged, but nope, it’s all his. The guy could stock his own music store, so impressive is his collection of classic Gibsons and Fenders. Electrics. Acoustics. Cool Alvarez models among them, as well. To-die-for instruments that drip mojo. We’re talking ’59 Les Pauls (yes, plural). 60s too! And the amps! Marshalls, Dumbles, Friedmans, so many flavors of tone. His four-amp touring rig is a sight and sound to behold as well, with a Marshall Silver Jubilee JCM800 at the heart of it.

High Gloss Finishes On Our Guitars

A while ago I was asked about different types of lacquer and how luthiers are able to get their guitars to look as glossy as they do. Sometimes they look as if they’re dipped in glass! In this article we’ll take a close look at how luthiers prepare the guitar for finishing and the final…

Active and Passive in the Same Guitar – Can It Be Done?

It’s a question we get asked a heck of a lot here at SD, and a question that appears all over the internet – how should I wire up a mixture of active and passive pickups in the  same guitar? The answer, either from us or elsewhere on the internet, is always either “It’s very…

What is MIDI and How Can I Use It?

Anyone reading through the specs of an effects processor or has ever bought a keyboard has seen the word MIDI. What is this crazy thing, and will it make my guitar sound like an 8-bit Atari game? Am I going to have to dig out my protractor and sextant to understand how MIDI works? This article…

Straps and Strap Height: Playing While Looking Cool

We’ve all seen it: Les Paul down by the knees, swaggering across the stage. This is an image that’s burned into our brain, and probably the reason why many guitarists picked the guitar over the trombone in the first place. But if we want to play in front of people, this means to most rock,…

Humbucker Wire Color Translation

If your guitar’s wiring is set up in a way that our wiring instructions do not address (special coil-splitting, or unique switching, etc…), then you may find this pickup wire color-code chart very helpful.

The Ins & Outs Of Effects Loops

If you’ve been a guitarist for more than five minutes, you’re pretty familiar with effects. Effects can morph our plain guitar sound into something from outer space or just make it seem a little bigger than it actually is. There are many different kinds of effects out there, and many theories stating the ‘correct’ order of effects in your Chain of Sonic Domination.

7 Great Android and iOS Apps For Musicians

Music making has changed a lot over the past few years. No longer is someone chained to their bedroom desk bouncing tracks on a 4-track cassette recorder, or chained to a variety of books, pedals, cables, and other devices for practicing or playing. We sometimes forget that all of this information overload today can be…

Cage Match: Big Strings vs. Small Strings

In the wonderful guitar universe, it’s important not to criticize what size strings a man or woman uses. However, any guitarist that has spent just a small amount of time on internet forum and message boards has navigated the minefield of these types of threads. This article will explain the reasons why someone might choose…

Get Wired: Four Cable Method

Before we get into the guts of Four Cable Method – what it is and what it can do for you and your tone – we need to have a little history lesson. Once upon a time, using effects was relatively simple. Your only real connection concern was “What happens if I accidentally plug my…

Cage Match: Gig Bags Vs. Hard Cases

Cases are a fact of life for any guitarist. Even if you don’t ever intend to pile all of your equipment in the back of the van to get to the next gig, every guitar we spend money on will spend at least part of its life in a case. Just the thought of taking a guitar without a case out of the store, across the parking lot and into the car for the ride home gives me shivers. Choosing a case for your new life partner (or fleeting romance) is sometimes as easy as saying “well, it came with this case, so that is what I use.” Sometimes it is a bigger consideration, which brings me to the subject of this article. The case you choose has more to do with its intended use than anything else.

Guitar Wiring Explored: Adding a Blower Switch

We’ve all been there: you’ve dialed in a sweet rhythm tone – the neck volume is on seven and the bridge volume is on… whatever it’s on, you weren’t looking. And the tone controls are turned to the precise value of “where it sounds right.” You’re grooving away and suddenly it’s time for the solo! You switch…

Why Does My Amp Sound Different At High Volume?

Have you ever sat at home and basked in your “lion riding a motorcycle” guitar tone, only for it to end up sounding all “duck chewing on a balloon” at your next gig or band practice? I know I have. If you’re the kind of bats-for-breakfast, skulls-on-mic-stand, brutal guitar warlord sort for whom LOUD is life, then you’re probably cranked 24/7 and have no idea what I’m talking about. However, for those of us who cut our teeth on modelers with headphones or amps turned down to law-abiding levels, having to adjust to being audible over a drum kit can be a very frustrating experience.

Create a two stage potentiometer

Many guitars also come with a combination of single coil and humbucker pickups. Running a 500K potentiometer when using singles may make them too sharp and shrill. Sure you can have a couple of volume potentiometers, one for each sort of pickup. But what if you want to keep your control layout simple?

Guitar Synthesizers and the Use of Hex Pickups

Mention the idea of ‘midi guitar’ to most guitarists and the image that springs to mind is most likely an ’80s cover band with skinny ties where the guitarist has to cover the keyboard parts to ‘Jump’ and ‘Safety Dance.’ That is, if you don’t get the outright dismissal of the use of guitar synth…

Turning Your Budget Guitar Find Into An Every Day Player

A simple swap of pickups can resurrect even the most boring of guitars. If you’ve picked up an old super Strat style guitar with an HSS pickup configuration and you know you’re going to be using it for some heavy metal riffs, consider some of the high output pickups available.

SEYMOUR DUNCAN RELEASE SILVER LAKE

SEYMOUR DUNCAN RELEASE SILVER LAKE  SANTA BARBARA, January 5, 2018 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the release of Silver Lake Reverb Pedal.  Silver Lake is a fully programmable reverb workstation, combining high quality reverb algorithms with unique dynamic control and powerful tone shaping options for a deep sonic experience – whether you…

How It All Began With Cathy Duncan

Today we’re taking you back to the mid 70’s… to the very beginning when Seymour Duncan the Company started. Cathy and Seymour talk about how it all started in their $300 trailer with no electricity, how they made up the rules as they went and some of the timeless lessons they learned. Subscribe to our…

Please Welcome Brad Paisley

Two friends get together to talk guitars, favorite guitar players… and the Paisley Telecaster. Check out the new episode of Seymour’s Studio, with his special guest Brad Paisley. Subscribe to our channel for new episodes!

Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb

The Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb is a powerhouse reverb workstation. The foundation is a collection of eight beautifully crafted reverb algorithms, a powerful set of tone shaping options, and our proprietary Dynamic Expression™ control. If you’re looking for classic Room, vintage Spring sounds, or massive Plates and Halls, Silver Lake has you covered. In addition,…

Seymour Duncan Announces Cutting-edge Pickup Architecture with New Duality Line

Seymour Duncan Announces Cutting-edge Pickup Architecture with New Duality Line SANTA BARBARA, CA – February 17, 2017 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces Duality™, a new concept in pickup design merging the best active and passive technologies to create a versatile and dynamically rich tone palette. “Duality is a new…

Joe Bonamassa Amos Pickup Set by Seymour Duncan

    For more info or to secure your set of limited edition Amos Custom Shop pick ups please visit our Custom Shop – JOE BONAMASSA AMOS PICKUP SET Joe Bonamassa’s 1958 Flying V was special even before being purchased by the famous bluesman – as one of just 98 Flying V’s produced by Gibson in…

Scary Tone From The Custom Shop

MJ and the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop can create any pickup imaginable. These pickups were custom-made with a Halloween theme for one of our artists, and you can get nearly any Seymour Duncan pickup in a variety or cosmetics to satisy your inner beast. A customer dreamed up these zombie-inspired humbuckers just in time for…

Musicians Institute Fall 2017 Seymour Duncan Scholarship Winners

Musicians Institute and Seymour Duncan are proud to announce the Fall Scholarship Winners, Chanjin Oh and Calvin Rasmussen! Chanjin Oh, winner of the Fall 2017 Seymour Duncan Bass Scholarship, comes to Musicians Institute from South Korea armed with a serious dedication for the bass and a passion for playing rock. He describes his future goals…

How To Tame A Muddy-Sounding Tele Neck Pickup

If you’ve ever felt that your Telecaster’s neck pickup sounded too muddy, there’s a simple fix that Seymour has been doing for years. All you need to do is connect a .047 capacitor in series (directly in-line) with the hot output wire from the neck pickup. This will filter out the excess low-end and clean up…

Mark Holcomb test drives the Palladium gain stage pedal

    In this quick video, Mark Holcomb stopped by our Santa Barbara office and we asked him to try the Palladium gain stage out. With his signature PRS guitar equipped with Seymour Duncan Alpha/Omega pick ups, Mark plugged in, played to a Periphery track, and gave us his first impression of the Palladium.. More…

Doug Rappoport – How to get a Classic Rock Tone

Doug Rappoport knows tone. In this video he shows you the pedals and pickups used to get that Classic Rock tone. Seymour Duncan Saturday Night Special pickups in his Les Paul. Seymour Duncan Forza overdrive pedal, Palladium Gain Stage pedal, and Vapor Trail delay all powered by the PowerStage 170 pedalboard power amp.

Seymour Duncan – Vapor Trail Delay Pedal (USA Made Version)

More info on the Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail Gear used – Yamaha AC3R Acoustic with SD Woody pickup – Schecter KM7 with SD Alpha/Omega pickups – SD Palladium Gain Stage Pedal – SD Killing Floor Boost – SD Vapor Trail Delay – Ernie Ball MVP Expression Pedal – Kemper Profiling Amp (Revv Generator Clean Profile)…

Seymour Duncan Catalina Dynamic Chorus

A versatile analog chorus with an innovative Dynamic Expression mode, the Seymour Duncan Catalina Dynamic Chorus pedal gives you complete depth control depending on how hard you play.

Seymour Duncan Andromeda Dynamic Delay – By Nok Novum

The Andromeda Dynamic Delay is a new approach to the traditional digital delay – as much a performance tool as it is a sound effect. Normal, Ping Pong, Reverse and Reverse Pong modes are available in Digital and Analog voicings for lush analog delays, vibey tape echoes, pristine digital repeats and psychedelic soundscapes. But that’s…

Seymour Duncan Vlog – Max talks Dynamic Delay

In this installment, Seymour Duncan’s own Max Gutnik explains how to use Dynamic Expression on the new Seymour Duncan Andromeda Delay pedal. Using the Threshold knob and the different parameters on Andromeda, Dynamic Expression allows you to regulate how much of the effect you hear by how hard or how soft you play. Guitar Signal…

Seymour Duncan – Palladium Gain Stage Pedal vs. Tube Amp

More on the Palladium – Click here ========================================­=========== Produced by Thinline Films & NOK NOVUM Filmed & Edited by Grant Cooper Engineered & Mixed by Scott Giffin Music by NOK NOVUM Gear: PRS Custom 24 Artists w/ Pegasus & Sentient Gibson Les Paul Standards w/ Custom Hybrid & Alnico II Pro D’Addario NYXL Strings and…

Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage – Metal

Keith Merrow test drives the Palladium pedal for metal tones. Follow Keith Merrow – http://www.facebook.com/keith.merrow1 https://www.facebook.com/ConqueringDystopia http://www.conqueringdystopia.com http://www.keithmerrow.com

Dave Baker – How to get a Classic Country Tone

    Dave Baker definitely knows how to dial in a great Classic Country tone! From his Telecaster loaded with Seymour Duncan Antiquity 55 pick ups, plugged into the Seymour Duncan Vise Grip compression pedal, 805 overdrive pedal for a “bit of Teeth”, finishing off with the Andromeda Dynamic Delay pedal for a bit of…

Andromeda Scores Premier Gear Award From Premier Guitar

“The Dynamic Expression’s reactive nature makes the delay feel more like an instrument.” That’s the verdict on the Andromeda Dynamic Delay from Premier Guitar’s Joe Charupakorn, who just honored the Andromeda with a Premier Gear award. You can read the full review here, but here are a few of our favorite comments: “There’s no shortage…

Eliminating ‘Wolf Tones’

Throughout the evolution of the electric guitar, players have continually searched for more. More volume, more sustain, more gain, more tone. Some methods are better at achieving it than others, and some can actually hurt your sound if you’re not careful. Take for instance the pickup: early players knew that if they needed to balance…

Seymour Duncan Vlog – Max talks Dynamic Delay

In this installment, Seymour Duncan’s own Max Gutnik explains how to use Dynamic Expression on the new Seymour Duncan Andromeda Dynamic Delay pedal. Using the Threshold knob and the different parameters on Andromeda, Dynamic Expression allows you to regulate how much of the effect you hear by how hard or how soft you play.  …

PowerStage 700 Now Shipping!

Redefine Headroom with the new PowerStage 700

Seymour Duncan Releases the PowerStage 700

Seymour Duncan changes the amp landscape with a power amp voiced and designed specifically for guitar players.

Expand Your Seymour Duncan Pedal Collection!

Do you have Seymour Duncan pedals in your collection? Want more? Of course you do, we all know more is better. Post your Seymour Duncan pedals on social media and you could add to your SD pedal cache. Here’s how it works: post a pic or video to your social media account featuring your Seymour…

Seymour Duncan Releases the Andromeda Dynamic Delay Pedal

Seymour Duncan Releases the Andromeda Dynamic Delay Pedal SANTA BARBARA, CA April 9, 2017 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups, pedals and power amps, announces the Andromeda Dynamic Delay, a digital delay that employs the same Dynamic Expression™ technology found in the Catalina Dynamic Chorus to let you control certain effect parameters with…

Seymour Duncan At The Dallas International Guitar Festival

We’ll be at the annual Dallas International Guitar Festival this weekend, Friday May 5 to Sunday May 7 at Dallas Market Hall, Dallas, TX. The Dallas show began in a small meeting room of a hotel in 1978. Now it’s in 140,000 square feet of display space bringing together guitar dealers, manufacturers, collectors, celebrities and…

Voices Of Metal: Nightrage

By Martina Fasano Founded by Marios Illipoulos and Gus G, Nightrage is certainly band with plenty of shred-worthy guitar work. As the founder of the band, Illipolous has enlisted the help of some fantastic musicians in past lineups of the band. In July of 2016, Magnus Söderman (guitars) and Lawrence Dinamarca (drums) were added to…

Music & Sound Retailer Interviews Max Gutnik

The Music & Sound Retailer recently interviewed our SVP Of Products/CRO Max Gutnik. The interview covers a lot of ground including Max’s career history; new products such as Palladium, Saturday Night Special, Duality and PowerStage; the importance of working together with guitar shops; and Seymour Duncan’s role in shaping artist developing in a post-record-company world….

Wired Guitarist Reviews Alpha/Omega

The good folks over at Wired Guitarist have reviewed the Mark Holcomb Alpha/Omega pickup set. Connor Gilkinson declares “I’ll call it right now – these are some of the best pickups to come out in recent memory. I have never seen a set of pickups that can do it all, until now. Plenty of pickups…

Talking Tone With Glen Drover

By Martina Fasano It’s easy to introduce Glen Drover as the former axe-slinger for influential bands such as King Diamond and Megadeth, but as a guitarist, Drover is more than just an encyclopedic entry listed under “past members.” When iconic metal band Testament needed a quick study to fill in for Alex Skolnick due to…

Seymour Duncan Releases Mark Holcomb Alpha & Omega Signature Pickups

SANTA BARBARA, CA March 1, 2017 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the over-the-counter release of Periphery guitarist Mark Holcomb’s Alpha and Omega pickups in 6, 7 and 8-string versions. “The Alpha/Omega set has been the heartbeat of my sound for the past several years,” Mark Holcomb says. “Since we…

Introducing Duality

Whenever we make a new product at Seymour Duncan, it has to benefit players. It has to make life easier and tone better for those who it’s made for. Duality is made unlike any other active pickup, and it opens up a whole new exciting chapter for what’s possible. We’ve made pickups that combine aspects…

Seymour Duncan Pedal at NAMM 2017

Click here to see an index of Seymour Duncan NAMM 2017 Pedal videos.

Review: Seymour Duncan Killing Floor High Gain Boost

The Killing Floor high gain boost pedal—one of Duncan’s latest offerings—delivers up to 34dB of boost that will push any amp into overdrive. But there’s more than a staggering amount of boost at play here. The pedal also sweetens the tone of your rig, providing natural, amp-like dynamics and responsiveness while enhancing the most musical frequencies and harmonics.

Joe Satriani talks Surfing With The Alien track-by-track

The gear and technique secrets behind a shred guitar masterpiece

TESTAMENT’s ALEX SKOLNICK Says He Has Always Followed His Own Path

During a short interview in the Seymour Duncan booth at this past weekend’s NAMM show in Anaheim, California, TESTAMENT and METAL ALLEGIANCE guitarist Alex Skolnick was asked how he has managed to survive in the music industry thirty years after the release of TESTAMENT’s classic debut album, “The Legacy”.

The Best New Guitar Amps of NAMM 2017

Heads and combos set to dominate backline this year.

What’s New At NAMM?

    We’ve just unveiled a stack of new products at the Winter NAMM Show, including two power amps, two new pickups and a revolutionary digital delay pedal. You’ll be hearing and seeing a lot more about all of these in the near future but here’s the quick rundown.

NAMM 2017 Wrap-Up: Top Keyboard Gear Picks

While it wasn’t the most earth-shattering turnout in terms of new keyboardist gear this year, there were still some interesting final revelations from the NAMM Show 2017. These include a new synthesizer plug-in technology, a new sub-bass plug-in and three portable gems: a digital delay pedal, a Teenage Engineering drum sequencing synth and a Universal Audio interface.

Former PANTERA Bassist REX BROWN Demonstrates Signature-Model Six-String Guitar

Prestige Guitars Ltd. has teamed up with former PANTERA and DOWN bassist Rex Brown to design and release Rex’s first signature model six-string guitar. The “Rex Brown Custom” signature model was unveiled this past Friday, January 20 at the NAMM show in Anaheim, California, where Rex personally demonstrated the guitar for Premier Guitar.

Seymour Duncan Effects Pedals at Winter NAMM 2017

Mitch Gallagher stops by the Seymour Duncan booth at Winter NAMM 2017 to check out the Andromeda Delay pedal, as well as the PowerStage power amp.

NAMM 2017: Seymour Duncan Releases New Delay Pedal & Power Amps!

NAMM2017 We headed on over to Seymour Duncan to check out what’s up and coming in 2016. They always have something clever up there sleeve, as well as some awesome artist appearances and performances at their booth. Well, this year wasn’s any different, so be sure to keep an eye out for all of our booth performance videos coming soon! For now, here’s the rundown on what to expect from the pickup/effects giants this year, including a new delay pedal and pedal power amplifiers!

NAMM 2017: Seymour Duncan Andromeda delay – Out of this world

A new fully programmable Digital Dynamic Delay. The new Seymour Duncan Andromeda delay looks like a digital delay with many possibilities and lots of options, so should appeal to players that want to experiment with dynamics, timings and synchronisation.

Mr. Seymour Duncan on Fender Guitars – Winter NAMM 2017

Another amazing interview with the man himself! Seymour Duncan with an awesome Fender Guitars story!

Seymour Duncan Raises the Bar with PowerStage & Andromeda

Seymour Duncan are known for their versatile guitar pickups and high-grade effects pedals, but now, they are diving headfirst into the world of power amps with the brand-new PowerStage!

Talking Tone With Larry Roberts Of Novembers Doom

Chicago death/doom pioneers Novembers Doom are preparing to unleash their new album, and guitarist Larry Roberts continues to wave the Seymour Duncan flag proudly. We thought it was time we checked in to see where his gear preferences are at and what we can expect from the new record.

Antiquity & Antiquity II: What’s The Difference?

Pickups are always evolving. That’s why you’ll find models like the Seth Lover and the Sentient, the SSL-1 and the Hot Stack for Strat, the P90 and the P-Rails. It’s always been this way, going right back to the dawn of the electric guitar. So how does this relate to the Antiquity series of vintage…

A Visit From Saint Seymour

A Visit from Saint Seymour It was the night before Xmas, two days from the gig. My new band had told me “Your tone we don’t dig!” My old Strat hummed like a tree full of bees. My once sparkling Tele now sounded like cheese! The gutted Les Paul was borderline junk. My SG wasn’t…

Talking Tone With A Thousand Horses

A Thousand Horses have been breaking some serious ground in the country scene. Rolling Stone credited them with bringing back southern rock, and their song ‘Smoke’ has set a new Country Aircheck radio chart record for highest debut by a new act. They’re now recording their second album after wrapping up a year long U.S….

The Seymour Duncan 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

By Martina Fasano Thanksgiving. Black Friday. The Macy’s Parade. All indicators that the holiday gift-giving season is upon us once again. Musicians have the reputation of being “quirky” individuals that non-musicians have difficulty buying for. I have no idea why this is the case, since I don’t know any guitar or bass players that would…

Seymour Duncan Releases Historic Jimi Hendrix Signature Strat Pickup Set and Loaded Pickguards

November 4, 2016 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the Jimi Hendrix™ Signature Strat Set and Jimi Hendrix™ Signature Loaded Pickguards.

Five Fiendishly Frightful Halloween Shred Machines

By Martina Fasano Halloween. The candy-lover’s Christmas. The sinfully sinister holiday that gives us chills, tricks, and treats. What better way to pay tribute to one of the coolest, most fun days on the calendar, than to play some guitars that are spooky, hellish, or downright mean? Here are five guitars featuring Seymour Duncan pickups that…

Seymour Duncan Announces the High Voltage Humbucker Set

October, 13, 2016 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the High Voltage humbucker set. They are currently available exclusively from the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop.

Top 5 Humbucker Combos for 70s & 80s Rock

By Martina Fasano The 1970s and 80s were a hotbed of lean, mean, gorgeously dirty guitar tones that would go on to inspire millions of musicians in the decades that followed. Many of those legendary tones we try so hard to emulate every time we plug our guitars into an old school stack are a…

Nevermind & Blood Sugar Sex Magik 25 Years On

September 24, 1991 was an historic day for music: it was the day that both Nirvana’s Nevermind and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik were released. Along with Metallica’s self-titled album and Pearl Jam’s Ten – both of which were released the previous month – these records inarguably shaped the musical path of…

Vintage Humbucker Stories

Every pickup we make tells a story, and our line of vintage pickups is particularly stocked with interesting tales. We asked our sales manager, Alex Semple, to share the stories behind some of our most popular vintage-style models. 

50s & 60s Single Coils for Strat

By Dave Eichenberger Somewhere between 50 and 60 years ago was a magical time in music. Rock music was just getting popular in the mid 1950s, and Guitarists demanded a more modern look and sound from their instruments. Leo Fender tapped into Southern California’s car culture with their new and exciting colors and slapped them…

Why Your Chorus Needs Dynamic Expression

When you play guitar there’s an interaction between your hands, the strings, the pickups and your amplifier and speaker. There’s something primal and instinctive about it: pick delicately and your sound responds in kind, but pick harder and the intensity of your sound magnifies and matches your mood.

Learning Piano Will Make You a Better Guitar Player

By Dave Eichenberger There are lots of reasons why we chose guitar over piano. Piano players have to deal with strict teachers with rulers that slap our wrists every time we use the wrong fingering. Piano isn’t portable, and other than kicking the stool behind you and standing up, there are no rock-approved stage moves….

Talking Tone With Blues Saraceno

By Martina Fasano Most of you will know Blues Saraceno from his solo work, his time playing with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker (Cream), or his stint with poison. A lot of fans will remember his Parallel Axis Blues Saraceno pickups, and his regular appearance in guitar magazines around the world. Don’t let Blues hear…

The Best Distortion Pedal? | Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage | Review

What’s the best distortion pedal on the market? Tom Quayle from Guitar Interactive, has a look at the new Seymour Duncan PALLADIUM Gain Stage Guitar Effects Pedal to see if it makes the grade.

Killing Floor High Gain Boost Tone Report Review

Tone Report reviews the Seymour Duncan Killing Floor High Gain Boost.

Active Or Passive Bass Pickups: Which Is For You?

When the electric bass as we know it was first invented by Leo Fender and co, there was no such thing as ‘active and passive’ bass electronics; there was just ‘what was there.’ If you wanted to fine-tune your sound on a single-pickup Precision Bass, you had a passive tone control whose job was to reduce the…

Vintage Guitar Approved Gear

Vintage Guitar Approved Gear features the Seymour Duncan Catalina Dynamic Chorus pedal.

Pickups For Jaguar, Jazzmaster, Mustang & Duo-Sonic

Fender’s range of classic ‘offset’ guitars is enjoying quite resurgence lately. Models like the Jazzmaster, Jaguar, Mustang, Bass VI and Duo-Sonic are popular with indie guitar players as well as those who play blues, classic rock and roots-rock. These guitars all have scale lengths that differ from the typical Fender 25.5″ and they typically have quite distinctive…

Forza Overdrive Now Available Everywhere

Our Forza Overdrive is a full-range, highly adjustable and transparent overdrive pedal that maintains the natural voice of your guitar even while it boosts your gain. Compared to the 805 Overdrive it has a more open, earthy voicing. Its three-band EQ lets you boost or cut the Bass, Middle and Treble and it has plenty of crunch whether…

Chris Letchford’s Strandbergs

A while ago we saw this great photo of some of Chris Letchford’s (Scale The Summit) Strandberg guitars and we just had to know more! We reached out to Chris to ask about the guitars in the pic and here’s what he had to say:

The Birth of the Black Winter

Seymour Duncan offers many different pickups for many different kinds of players, and a lot of the time those pickups are built with a particular tonal mission in mind: a pickup for blues, for hard rock, for jazz. But perhaps the most specific ‘genre’ pickup in the Seymour Duncan catalog is the Black Winter. This…

Inside The Alnico II Pro Slash Signature Set

It’s impossible to overstate the influence that Slash has had on the world of guitar. When Guns N’ Roses first hit the big time, hard rock players generally favored pointy guitars with Floyd Roses and bright, flashy paint jobs. In contrast, Slash adopted more of a ‘classic rock’ vibe with his choice of Les Pauls…

Guitars Of Summer NAMM

By Martina Fasano Summer NAMM. It’s almost like the overlooked middle child of the family when compared to the “Golden Child” that is Winter NAMM. That being said, many of the company reps I have spoken to over the years will tell you that Summer NAMM is actually a better place to do what they’re…

Seymour Duncan Announces New Saturday Night Special Pickup Set

SANTA BARBARA, CA July 11,2016 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the Saturday Night Special, a new pickup set with alnico 4 magnets.

Meet Mark Holcomb’s New PRS SE Signature

Flash back to Winter NAMM 2015: one of the hottest, most talked-about guitars on show was Periphery guitarist Mark Holcomb’s limited edition Paul Reed Smith signature. Here was an instrument that filled a previously un-catered-to niche in the PRS line-up: a 25.5” scale length (compared to the regular 25”), a 20” fretboard radius (against a…

Tone Report Weekly–From Pickups to Pedals

Tone Report Weekly gives a synopsis of Seymour Duncan’s pickups to pedals story.

Summer NAMM 2016: Seymour Duncan Killing Floor

Sweetwater reviews the Killing Floor at Summer NAMM 2016.

Seymour Duncan Palladium, Forza, and Killing Floor Pedals at Summer NAMM 2016

At this year’s Summer NAMM in Nashville, Reverb was on hand to showcase the Palladium Gain Stage, Forza Overdrive, and Killing Floor High Gain Boost pedals all of which are primed to alter gain stages and shape tone.

First Impressions On The Seymour Duncan Killing Floor High Gain Boost Effects Pedal

Pro-Audio Land reviews our Killing Floor pedal at Summer NAMM 2016.

Seymour Duncan Introduces the Killing Floor Boost Pedal

SANTA BARBARA, CA June 27, 2016 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the Killing Floor High Gain Boost, an elevated boost pedal designed to give you an extra kick in output and a beefier tone.

Treasure Hunt Spotlight… Seymour Duncan’s The Killing Floor

The Retailer proudly presents their Summer NAMM 2016 new product spotlights, featuring the Killing Floor.

Talking Tone With Bad Religion’s Brian Baker

By Elysse Miller I feel fortunate to have grown up during the punk and industrial heyday. One of the pillars of punk, Bad Religion, recently embarked on a new tour that started in Ventura, California. I watched in admiration as these legends played for hours, spanning their entire catalog and hitting their fans with the…

Guitar Interactive Magazine Review Palladium and Catalina

Guitar Interactive reviews our Palladium and Catalina Pedals. See the four star reviews here.

Dogman By King’s X: An Underrated Classic

By Jay Hale If one had to list what were the most criminally underrated albums of the 90s, King’s X’s Dogman would be high on the list. Whether due to the changing tides of music at the time, the advent of grunge, the ripple effect of the death of glam metal, etc, it slipped under…

The Pickups Of Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine

Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine changed the path of metal rhythm guitar: the kinds of chords and riffs, the attack and aggression of the picking style, and the crunch and bite of the tone itself. For many years – until he developed his signature Dave Mustaine LW-MUST Livewire pickups with us – Dave used the JB and…

Win A Signed Forza Overdrive!

By now you’ve most likely heard our new Forza Overdrive, developed in partnership with Chicago Music Exchange. It has clear highs, deep lows and a slightly scooped midrange which lets you dial in broader, more dynamic overdrive tones, from ‘edge-of- breakup’ to classic late 70s hard rock and beyond. And now you can win a Forza of your…

That Poor, Misunderstood Telecaster Rhythm Pickup

By Dave Eichenberger In the beginning, there was the Esquire. Almost 70 years ago, the genesis of the Telecater started with its one-pickup father, which contained a single bridge pickup with a 3-way switch giving us a few sounds that couldn’t be found on the later Telecaster.

Seymour Duncan Releases Bonamassa Signature Skinner Burst Pickup Set

June 1, 2016 (Santa Barbara, CA) – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the release of the limited edition Joe Bonamassa Signature Skinner Burst humbucker set. This set is an exact replica of the pickups in his popular Principal Skinner Les Paul. These are wound on the historic Leesona machine that wound the original Skinner humbucker.

Adrian Galysh Returns With “Into The Blue”

  By Jay Hale Adrian Galysh is seemingly one of the busiest guitarists in the Los Angeles area.  Followers of his social media streams get regular notifications of gigs at the legendary Baked Potato and guest spots at Hollywood’s Ultimate Jam Night, as well as for sets he plays at local wineries and aeronautic events.

Let’s Help Laith Al-Saadi Win The Voice!

We at Seymour Duncan would like to show our support for our friend Laith Al-Saadi, who has made it into the top four of The Voice. And we want him to win. Laith utterly rips on guitar, and his love of the instrument comes through in every note he plays. His voice is incredibly soulful…

Active Jazz Bass Pickup & Preamp Roundup

By Dave Eichenberger In electric basses, there are basically (haha) three different ways to design a pickup system. You can go with passive pickups, passive pickups with a preamp, and full-on active pickups. All are valid ways of doing things, and while bassists may argue the merits of each system, the good news is that…

Talking Tone With Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris

If you play metal bass, you owe a debt of gratitude and maybe a pint of Trooper beer to Steve Harris. Steve is credited with creating the infamous ‘gallop’ rhythm used throughout metal, and even if his contributions started and ended there, he’d deserve a place in the history books. But he’s done so much…

Top 5 Seymour Duncan Humbuckers

Seymour Duncan pickups are synonymous with hot rodding a guitar. Aftermarket pickups and other upgrades first gained widespread popularity in the ‘70s, and Seymour Duncan were one of the first companies to the playing field in a large scale capacity. The JB is famously the most recorded pickup of all time, but what are the best Seymour Duncan pickups for you?
There are so many pickup options out there, and it can be intimidating trying to figure out which to choose! Whether or not it’s aftermarket pickups in general, Seymour Duncan’s lineup, or different pickups well suited for different genres.
Today we cut through some of the confusion, with the top 5 Seymour Duncan humbuckers!

Giving Back… Seymour Duncan

Notes for Notes is dedicated to designing, equipping and staffing after-school recording studios inside Boys & Girls Clubs. It allows young people to access professional music-making instruments and equipment. and helps educate youth about careers onstage and behind the scenes in the music industry.

No Pain, High Gain

Seymour Duncan’s Palladium Gain Stage Pedal

10 Great Canadian Guitarists

By Martina Fasano Canadian Music Week descended upon Toronto once again from May 2-8, 2016, and it got me thinking about some of the best guitarists Canada has produced over the years.

Seymour Duncan and Chicago Music Exchange Launch the Forza Overdrive Effects Pedal

SANTA BARBARA, CA May 2, 2016 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, and Chicago Music Exchange, announces the release of the new Forza Overdrive effects pedal. This pedal will be available for purchase from Chicago Music Exchange between May and August.

Keith Merrow Demos The Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage

A lot of pedals make the claim that they’re designed to give you the feel of an amp, but the Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage is probably the first pedal I’ve played that’s really come good on this claim.

Building an Acoustic Pedalboard

By Dave Eichenberger Using pedals with an acoustic guitar is a pretty counter-intuitive thing. After all, it is an acoustic guitar, and it gets its name from the sound of the guitar in a room, with the reflections blaring out from the soundboard in all directions of the room. A pickup or even a microphone…

Hear Seymour Duncan’s Palladium Gain Stage Pedal in Action

In this exclusive video, made just for Guitar World, guitarist Steve Booke demos the Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage pedal.

The Tones Of Generation Axe

By Martina Fasano Yngwie Malmsteen. Steve Vai. Zakk Wylde. Nuno Bettencourt. Tosin Abasi. Any one of those names mentioned individually is enough to have shredders of any generation sit up and take notice. Imagine all five of the aforementioned individuals going on tour together? That’s exactly what the Generation Axe tour is doing starting April 5,…

Talking Tone With Gus G

By Martina Fasano Gus G has been very busy lately, and that’s just how he likes it. With credits to his name like Ozzy Osbourne, Firewind, Nightrage and Arch Enemy, Gus G is no stranger to the higher profile names in the heavy metal arena. His virtuosic abilities and dedication to his craft is apparent…

Seymour Duncan Pickups for Jazz Guitar

By Dave Eichenberger Contrary to popular belief, there are other types of music other than rock, metal, blues, and country. While not as popular as it was, say, 40 years ago, there is still a sizable jazz guitar community out there. Of course, jazz has been played on many types of guitars, and archtops, while…

Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage Pedal

Seymour Duncan introduces the Palladium Gain Stage, a pedal designed to replicate high-gain tube amps.

Summer NAMM

From busy aisles filled with the latest musical gear and pro audio products to star-studded events and the lure of Nashville nightlife, 2016 Summer NAMM––the industry’s midyear gathering––has something for everyone. Set your business up for success in the busy fall and holiday selling season by attending 2016 Summer NAMM, June 23-25. Learn more about…

Seymour Duncan releases Palladium Gain Stage guitar pedal

We saw it in the flesh at NAMM, and now Seymour Duncan has announced the Palladium Gain Stage will be hitting stores very soon.
The pickup mogul reckons it’s “the first stompbox that actually captures the feel and responsiveness of a high-gain tube amp”, with three gain stages and a fully featured EQ with sweepable mid frequency.

Meet The Palladium Gain Stage Pedal

“It feels like a real amp” is a big claim made by a lot of pedals, but our engineering team has worked themselves to exhaustion to really nail the sound and response of a real amp when developing the Palladium Gain Stage.

Seymour Duncan Releases Innovative Palladium Gain Stage Pedal

Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the release of the Palladium™ Gain Stage effects pedal. Palladium is the first pedal to authentically replicate a high gain tube amp, allowing for the extra dimensionality that is missing in effects pedals today.

Arch Enemy’s Jeff Loomis Discusses Signature Seymour Duncan Pickups

Former NEVERMORE and current ARCH ENEMY guitarist Jeff Loomis recently talked about his new signature Seymour Duncan pickups.

Things To Think About Before Recording

By Jon Moody You did it, you finally did it! You booked recording time in a studio, filled out all the pre-production forms and possibly even sent in a deposit (if required) and your album is getting recorded. Or, maybe you just finally confirmed a date when you’re going into a friend’s basement to lay…

Seymour Duncan Palladium – High gain in a small box

Announced at NAMM this year and already voted a winner by Guitar World magazine: The Seymour Duncan Palladium pedal is designed for those that like tight, high-gain, driven guitar tones.

Jeff Loomis: Seymour Duncan’s Newest Signature Artist

By Martina Fasano Whether it’s with Sanctuary, Nevermore, through his solo work, or most recently with Arch Enemy, Jeff Loomis has developed the reputation of being on of metal’s elite guitar players. His column in Guitar World magazine, “Merchant of Menace” provided a great many shredders with the tools they needed to try and emulate…

Guitar World Congratulates Super NAMM Award Winners

NewBay Media is pleased to announce the winners of the 2016 Super NAMM Awards.

Seymour Duncan Releases Jeff Loomis Signature Blackouts Series Pickups

Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the release of their new Jeff Loomis Signature Blackouts™ series of active humbucker pickups. This series consists of high–output active humbuckers developed to deliver the dynamic performance unique to active pickups, with the look, tone and feel of a great set of passive pickups.

Classic Solos Played With The JB Humbucker

By Jay Hale The Seymour Duncan JB humbucker is beyond iconic in the rock world. Its tone is so distinctive, so inherently familiar and pleasing it’s almost what you expect to hear on a rock recording. Since its introduction in the 70s it has appeared on so many recordings you probably don’t realize it. Not for…

Voices of Metal: Kimberly Freeman of One-Eyed Doll

By Martina Fasano I first met Kimberly Freeman very briefly at the NAMM show, just after she signed some autographs together with the members of Doll Skin and rock legend Lita Ford. Everyone around (fans and industry types alike) was absolutely astounded at how fan-friendly she was: handing out necklaces to fans that had waited…

The Seymour Duncan Catalina Chorus Pedal… Revealed

Oh boy, oh boy. Look at this little blue beauty from Seymour Duncan – the Catalina Chorus pedal. The pedal is touting a new Dynamic Expression feature. Max Gutnik, SVP of products and CRO of Seymour Duncan notes that, “Dynamic Expression feature gives players the ultimate control – from subtle to bold, and everything in-between, without changing settings every other song or riding the footswitch all night.” This sounds awesome, and the type of problem Gutnik is describing is all too common for many chorus pedals on the market.

Win A Seymour Duncan Pedal & Creation Pedalboard

Do you want to win the Seymour Duncan pedal of your choice and a custom pedal board by Creation Music Company? We’ve teamed up with Creation to run a giveaway together. which you can enter here. You can see our range of pedals on this page, including gain pedals (the Pickup Booster, 805 Overdrive, Dirty Deed Distortion and Palladium Gain Stage),…

NAMM ’16 – Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage and Catalina Chorus Demos By Premier Guitar

Rich Osweiler of Premier Guitar demos Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage and Catalina Chorus Pedals at Winter NAMM 2016.

Talking Guitar With Lita Ford

By Martina Fasano Lita Ford began her career in the seminal all-female punk band The Runaways, together with Joan Jett, Sandy West, Cherie Currie, and Jackie Fox. That would have been enough trailblazing for most people, but not Lita.

Friends of SD: Knaggs Guitars

Knaggs Guitars makes some pretty remarkable instruments. While many of their creations use standard woods that you see with many other companies, they have an eye for the artistic as well.

The Development Of The Catalina Dynamic Chorus

The most exciting thing about working for a company that makes pickups and pedals is the opportunity to participate in new product development. There are many different elements to this process: the brainstorming, the prototyping, the look, the written materials, the media clips to let folks know what it sounds like. The Catalina Dynamic Chorus…

Voices Of Metal: Nikki Stringfield

Photo by Brad Jurjens Nikki Stringfield is a great guitarist with some very impressive credits already to her name and an undoubtedly exciting musical future to come. As one part of the guitar duo in The Iron Maidens, Nikki shreds on Maiden classics all around the world. She also plays in the reactivated Femme Fatale and makes…

Yngwie Malmsteen: Guitar God

The next Guitar Gods Festival takes place in Miami, Florida on February 19th, 2016. The brainchild of April Malmsteen, it’s a wall-to-wall showcase of virtuosity featuring performances by Steve Vai, Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain, Gus G, Rudy Sarzo and of course Yngwie Malmsteen. And the centerpiece of the Guitar Gods Festival is the online…

Top 51 Best Guitar Effects Pedals of Winter NAMM 2016

In the tradition of our definitive best guitar pedal round-ups for Winter NAMM 2015 and Summer NAMM 2015, Best Guitar Effects is bringing you the decisive review of the best guitar pedals that really stood out at this year’s NAMM Show.

Seymour Duncan at NAMM 2016

Last week we packed up and headed down to Anaheim, California for the 2016 Winter NAMM Show. We had a great time meeting with artists, dealers and media, and letting folks try out brand-new gear like the Catalina Dynamic Chorus and Palladium Gain Stage pedals at our pedal testing stations.

The Seymour Duncan Loaded Pickguards

Why does everything have to be so hard? Why can’t I have those pickups and wiring already finished? All of those wires and switches frighten and confuse me! Well, whether you don’t like to wire up your own guitar, or just want a great sounding already-wired-up pickguard that is tested and ready to go, Seymour…

Cathy Duncan to be Honored at 2016 She Rocks Awards

CEO of Seymour Duncan to be celebrated for her 40 years in the industry

Cathy Duncan to be Honored at 2016 She Rocks Awards

  Cathy Duncan to be Honored at 2016 She Rocks Awards CEO of Seymour Duncan to be celebrated for her 40 years in the industry SANTA BARBARA, January 22, 2016 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces that CEO, Cathy Duncan, will be honored at the 2016 She Rocks Awards. The…

NAMM 2016: Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage Overdrive and Catalina Chorus Pedals Revealed

Seymour Duncan expand their pedal repertoire with the Palladium Gain Stage Overdrive and Catalina Chorus Pedals.

Seymour Duncan NAMM Schedule

It’s that time of year again! If you’re heading to the NAMM Show to see the latest in musical instruments from nearly every manufacturer in the world, drop by and say hi! We’ll be at Booth #5560, and you’ll be able to check out our new Catalina Dynamic Chorus, Jeff Loomis Blackouts and more. Here’s…

Seymour Duncan Releases The Catalina Dynamic

During the time of NAMM commonly release new products. It’s an exciting time for everyone. During this time I do receive press releases, so I’ll be posting a few! Last weekend I received this announcement by Seymour Duncan about their new chorus pedal – The Catalina Dynamic!

Seymour Duncan Annouce The Catalina Chorus – A Lush Dynamic Chorus Guitar Pedal

Seymour Duncan are probably the biggest name in aftermarket pickups, but that certainly doesn’t show off the range of their expertise. Alongside being giants of the pickup world, they’ve also delved into creating guitars, amps and effects pedals over the years. Recently after revitalising their pedal range over the last year or so, a new pedal emerges!

Meet a Seymour Duncan Engineer – Wayne Rothermich: Shapeshifters, Mars, and Margaritas

Good design is often reflected in the intuitive nature of how something works. My first foray into design occurred when my father asked me to hold the flashlight for him while he fixed the wiring on a ceiling light fixture. I decided, in my 4-year-old wisdom, that putting the huge flashlight on the ground with…

Up In The Sky And Down There On The Pedalboard…

We started designing our Catalina Dynamic Chorus more than a year ago, and the process of development and refinement has resulted in a nice little piece of synchronicity that we didn’t even think of when we came up with the name: the Catalina pedal has arrived on the exact same day that Comet Catalina makes…

Seymour Duncan Releases The Catalina Dynamic Chorus Effects Pedal

Some guitarists like their chorus to be subtle and traditional. Others prefer bold and unique. The Catalina Dynamic Chorus is designed to do it all: classic chorus and vibrato, deep 80’s goth, simulated double-tracking, watery grunge cleans and rotating speaker simulations.

Seymour Duncan Releases The Catalina Dynamic Chorus Effects Pedal

Seymour Duncan Releases The Catalina Dynamic Chorus Effects Pedal SANTA BARBARA, January 17, 2016 – Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of pickups and pedals, announces the release of the Catalina™ Dynamic Chorus pedal. The Catalina effects pedal includes a uniquely innovative Dynamic Expression™ mode that allows you to control the depth of the effect through…

Small Fixes For Big Problems

  Guitars are complicated instruments: there are so many parts needed to make it work that it’s no wonder sometimes a part breaks down or wears out. Fortunately, a lot of problems can be solved with very little effort and cost, so you can make sure your guitar doesn’t end up with one of the…

Effects Basics: Chorus

You’ve heard that sound before: that watery, bubbly, thick guitar sound slathered over almost every clean guitar part from the late 1970’s throughout the 1980’s. That is the sound of a chorus effect, and when I was young, it was everywhere. It was the second pedal I ever bought (right behind the Next Distortion X),…

My Top 10 Tips for Effective Rehearsal

Performing live is harder than it seems. Sure, the band makes it look easy, and everyone has the perfect parts at just the right time. Bigger acts know just where to stand for certain lighting effects, and the guitarist is always under the spotlight for The Big Solo. However, what you might not know is…

The Complete Guide to Guitar Upgrades

Even some of the nicest guitars are not above the fray of guitar upgrades. In most cases a guitar, right out of the box, isn’t going to be perfectly suited to your own preferences and playing style. Like an archer tweaks and adjusts his bow, so a guitarist will customize and upgrade their instrument until…

Friends of Seymour Duncan: Hamer Guitars

Let me begin by saying that I have absolutely no qualms about admitting my love for all things rock and metal, including the various bands that rose from the streets of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip in the 197s and 1980s. Along with that love, comes my admiration for some of the most beautiful and well-built instruments…

Theory Basics: Intervals of the Major Scale

To many guitarists, the major scale is something they simply don’t use. However, in Western music (that is, music that originates from the Western Hemisphere), it is the scale that is the basis of all others. If you learn the notes of the major scale, you can find all sorts of scales lurking beneath just…

How to Play Like Clutch’s Tim Sult

As a founding member of the bands Clutch and The Bakerton Group, Tim Sult has been making righteous noise for rock-minded listeners since 1991. His riffs are catchy, potent, and they resonate with a certain pragmatic personality that is both approachable and immediately identifiable. Over the last 25 years, Sult has refined and honed his style from…

Effects Basics: Reverb

One of the earliest and most popular effects for cleaner styles is reverb. When Fender started making amps with a reverb unit built inside the amp case, we had the birth of surf music, and instrumental rock. This was a huge influence on guitars sounds for decades. and fueled the British Invasion bands that swept over…

Cage Match: Vintage Output vs Hot Single Coils

I read online forums a lot and I always have to laugh to myself when I read that someone wants a chime-filled single coil sound from their hot humbucker, or when someone wonders why their Les Paul sounds nothing like their Strat. True, I didn’t know these answers when I first started, and there were no…

Meet The Custom Family

Few pickups are so amazingly well designed that they take on almost any magnet you throw at it as the SH-5 Custom. There are three totally unique pickups available in the Custom family, all of which share the same basic ‘DNA’ – the coils and baseplate – but differ in its type of magnet.

Fall 2015 Seymour Duncan Bass Scholarship Winner

This year’s winner of the 2015 Musician’s Institute/Seymour Duncan Bass Scholarship is Santa Clarita CA’s own Jeremy Bauer. As a student of MI’s Bass Program, Jeremy says his goal will be “to soak in every bit of knowledge I possibly can from all my instructors and fellow musicians. I would like to leave MI as…

KISS’S Tommy Thayer And The Seymour Duncan JB Model

KISS’s Tommy Thayer has one of the coolest jobs in the world: he gets to hop up on stage every night and occupy the persona of the Spaceman, one of KISS’s four classic characters. Although the role was originally inhabited by Ace Frehley, and Thayer is mindful of paying tribute to the classic guitar parts…

Let’s Talk About Sustain

It’s fairy common to read about sustain in guitar reviews. Some guitars have lots of it, some have less. We sometimes perceive that a guitar is better if it has lots of sustain compared to if it doesn’t. Let’s pull on a thread to unravel the tapestry of what ‘sustain’ means in a technical and musical sense.

Talking Tone With Queensryche’s Michael Wilton

Seymour Duncan and Queensryche have had a long and fruitful partnership over the years: our pickups have been a part of the Queensrÿche sound for decades, and the band met vocalist Todd La Torre at our NAMM party a few years back.

Don’t Listen to Guitar!

Sometimes we have to break free, right? While we (hopefully) include a healthy dose of guitar-based music in our listening habits, sometimes it can be refreshing to understand how other instruments approach music.

How To Choose An Acoustic Pickup

Seymour Duncan takes all the guesswork and stress out of finding the best pickup for your acoustic guitar.  Let’s face it, chances are if you own an acoustic guitar, are it’s special to you. It feels like a part of you. When you decide to amplify it, you want to capture its tone as best you…

Friends of SD: Sinuous Guitars

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. The guitar above has not been left out in the sun and is not melting. What you are seeing is the ergonomic design of Greg Opatik and the flagship instrument of his new company Sinuous Guitars from Grand Rapids, Michigan. While focusing on the inherent shortfalls of traditional designs, Greg’s…

The Jam-To-Record Transition: 5 Tips to Recording Electric Guitar

Virtually every guitarist alive has a go-to sound that they enjoy jamming with on a daily basis. While there are no limits to the sounds we guitarists can come up with, there are some basic guidelines to keep in mind when we cross the line from jamming to recording. Before we go any further, this…

How To Tune A Guitar

To guitar players who have been playing a few months or more, there is nothing quite as irritating as listening to an out-of-tune guitar.

Preparing For The Worst To Sound The Best

There are a few things that you can do to set yourself up for success in 99.9% of the situations you may encounter in both the standard gigging circuit and touring circuit.

5 Neck Humbuckers Compared

These new demos compare five versatile neck pickup options in rock, blues, metal and clean demonstrations. The Marshall is used for clean tones, Cornford for blues, Orange for rock and Peavey 5150 for metal. The Jazz Model neck humbucker uses an alnico 5 bar magnet and a special coil wind for an articulate, glassy treble…

8 "Easy-To-Play" Songs To Add To Your Guitar Repertoire

In our first segment of “Easy-To-Play” Songs I presented seven songs across several genres to get you on the fast track to campfire and family gathering greatness. You may have even been able to learn a few new tricks to use at your first open mic night, or followed some of the video links to…

Your Band In A Full-Page Guitar World Ad!

Want to be in our next ad in Guitar World magazine and win yourself a pedal or seven?

Silver Zephyr SPB-1 or Zephyr Voltron

There are a lot of options in the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop for us bass players. Whether you want something that’s fairly simple (like SPB-3 pole pieces with the SPB-1 wind) or something crazier, the folks at the Custom Shop can make it. With that in mind, when I was spec’ing out the parts for my new bass build, I knew we had to have some very special pickups in it. And it hit me:

Guide to Online Guitar Lessons

Guitarists today age are lucky. We have the world in our back pocket.

Introducing The Dave Murray Loaded Pickguard For Stratocaster

Now anybody can easily customize their Strat with Dave Murray’s preferred pickup set with the Seymour Duncan Dave Murray Loaded Pickguard For Stratocaster.

Appetite For Destruction: Seymour Duncan Pickups & Guns N’ Roses

How does Slash get that sweet warm sound? How does Duff McKagan get that booming clarity? Gilby Clarke’s tone? And for the newer fans, how does DJ Ashba get his Les Paul to sound like that?

The Return Of The Ibanez Talman

A lot of players really love the Ibanez Talman line of electric guitars. And now it’s back!

Jerry Donahue On Telecaster-Style Bridge Intonation

We asked “Bendmaster of the Telecaster” Jerry Donahue to share some of his secrets for setting up a Telecaster bridge and keeping it properly intonated.

Glossary of Tone Terms

Here’s a handy guide to some of the terms you’ll hear in the guitar universe.

The Most Interesting Whammy Bars In the World

Whammy bars, or more properly called vibrato systems, are one of the oldest methods of manipulating the sound from the electric guitar itself.

Hey Man, Nice Rack: A Selected History of Rack Effects

Just like guitars, effects come in all shapes and sizes. For guitarists, the first effects were built right into amplifiers. Reverb and tremolo were about all you could hope for, and about a decade or so after that, the fuzz box made an appearance. While these effects seem downright quaint by today’s standards, they are…

The 5th Annual Seymour Duncan Notes For Notes Benefit

Here are some photos from the Seymour Duncan Notes For Notes Benefit VIP reception and concert with Peter Frampton. Thanks to everyone who came out and enjoyed some great music in support of Notes For Notes!

7 "Easy-To-Play" Songs To Add To Your Guitar Repertoire

Perhaps Robert Tepper said it best in his song for the film Rocky IV: “There’s no easy way out/There’s no short cut home” For guitar players, most of the time, this is most definitely true.

Chase Fraser of Decrepit Birth and Continuum

Chase Fraser is a busy man. You would be too if you were holding down guitar spots in not one, but two full-time Technical Death Metal bands. Since 2010, Chase has been holding down the rhythms in Decrepit Birth, and was already the mastermind behind the super group Continuum, featuring members of Son of Aurelius,…

How To Practice And Actually Become a Better Musician

Practice makes perfect. Unless you’re doing it all wrong.

Mark Holcomb (Periphery) Q&A with Special Guest Keith Merrow – June 22

Periphery’s Mark Holcomb and special guest Keith Merrow will join us on our forum on Monday June 22 for a live Q&A about Mark’s new signature pickups.

That’s Different: 10 Strangest Production Guitars

Tradition and the world of guitar are funny things. Innovation can breed new classics for future generations. Then we have the guitars on this list.

New Seymour Duncan Pickup SETS

Getting the best sound out of your guitar has just become easier. Seymour Duncan has taken the guesswork out of matching the correct pickups together and has introduced a line of matched sets that are built to work together and sound great, right out of the box. While you will still be able to obtain…

Steve Hunter: Gretsch Guitars & The Blues

If you don’t know the name Steve Hunter (you probably do) you certainly have heard his music. Known by many as “The Deacon” he’s played on several Alice Cooper albums and also for Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel (he’s on “Solsbury Hill”), David Lee Roth and Aerosmith, among many, many others.

Steve Hunter: Gretsch Guitars & The Blues

If you don’t know the name Steve Hunter (you probably do) you certainly have heard his music. Known by many as “The Deacon” he’s played on several Alice Cooper albums and also for Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel (he’s on “Solsbury Hill”), David Lee Roth and Aerosmith, among many, many others.

Cage Match: Staggered vs. Flat Polepieces

Single coil pickups come in many configurations. You might like yours produced the way they were back in the 60s, or you might like ultra-modern high output silent ones.

Right Hand Tonal Options

When you’re inspired, you reach for your “favorite” instrument. You have your “favorite” set up, strings, tone, etc.. But what about those times when your “favorite” just isn’t working?

The Fractured Sound of the Whole Tone Scale

Scales are strange beasts. History shows us that the practicing of scales consists of playing the same notes in the same order while a ruler-armed teacher barks “Faster! FASTER!” at us all the while assuring ourselves that the study of scales builds character, and one day it will all be worth it

Friends of SD: Godin Guitars

Canada isn’t a country we normally associate with high-end guitars, although they should be. Godin have been making guitars in Quebec since the early 1970s, and have expanded to three factories in the region, as well as one in the northeastern US. Godin Guitars seems to be constantly coming up with new designs, from their retro Richmond…

Cage Match: Batteries vs. AC Adapters

This article will look at all sides of the pedal-powering game, and hopefully help you decide what can keep those LEDs at our feet shining brightly.

Win A Pedal Pack With Premier Guitar

Our pals at Premier Guitar are giving you the chance to win six Seymour Duncan pedals.

Introducing The Shapeshifter Tremolo

Introducing the new Shape Shifter Tremolo pedal! Whether you’re looking for a flickery vintage shimmer, extreme choppiness, backwards swells or rhythmic stabs, the Shape Shifter is designed to do it all.

Wes Hauch Demos The Dimebag Signature Set

We all have our guitar heroes, and our buddy Wes Hauch has been quite upfront about his love of Dimebag Darrell.

Flying High On The Majestic Pegasus

When it comes to low-tuned, high gain metal many people think a high-output humbucker is the best type pickup to go with. It’s certainly great for some styles, but what if your style involves a lot of complex chords? Sometimes a high-output pickup and high-output amp can turn your well-chosen combination of notes into complete mush. And…

Adjusting Your Action: Shimming and Micro Tilt

There are many different factors that go into the playability of a guitar, including the string height, the quality of the frets, the smoothness of the fretboard edges, the shape of the neck – the list goes on and on. One often-overlooked aspect for bolt-on guitars is the neck angle; get it wrong and you…

A Guide To Playing In The Cold

It is always cold somewhere. Well, unless it’s spring or fall, but it can still be cold. As they say, the show must go on. But how are we supposed to rock (or pretend to) if we are freezing our butts off? If you are a performing player (or soon hope to be), you will…

Great Pickups For Punk Rock

When it comes to playing punk there are a lot of people who would say that the only important thing is attitude. You don’t often hear about the guitar, its pickups or the amplifier being played through should matter, and to worry about this things is not punk. This may have been the case back in punk’s formative…

Effects Basics: The Compressor

I am often asked by students about compressor pedals. What do they do? Do you use them for solo boosts? If I want a lot of sustain, do I crank the sustain knob? Sustain is good, right? I always tell them more or less the same thing: Compressors aren’t sexy. They don’t make your guitar…

The Daemoness Valkenbyrd VII

This Daemoness Valkenbyrd VII. It’s finished in “Skeletorburst,” echoing the hues of the foreboding skies above Eternia’s Snake Mountain.

Should I Change Pickups or Buy a New Guitar?

As a guitar teacher, I get asked this question a lot. Since pickups can radically change or expand the tonal options available from an electric guitar, would it be better to just change the pickups or save up for a whole new guitar?

P-Rails Now Available With Triple Shots

Let’s face it, we can’t all have a half dozen guitars with us everywhere we go. We’d all like one for the rude and and fat single-coil sound of a P-90 that is perfect for blues, rock and punk; another with single-coils with the brightness and snap for rock and blues; and yet another for the fat and…

The Anatomy Of Single Coil Pickups

We discussed the anatomy of humbuckers in a general sense a while back, and because there are so many varieties of single coil pickups, we thought it was time we should take a look at single coil designs too. Let’s have a look at the internal structure of the single coil in general as well as the various main…

The 1970s: The Lost Decade in Guitars

While I wasn’t playing guitar in the 1970’s, I certainly was around. I mean, I started playing in 1979 on a cheap nylon string (I still have it) and progressed to my older brother’s late ’60s Japanese electric that never quite played in tune. In the 1980’s, a friend of my parents got me a…

Preparing for Your First Gig

You’ve practiced for years. You’ve scoured thrift stores for the right wardrobe. You have a new set of strings, an amp that goes to 11, and you are ready to rock! There can’t be much more than that when preparing for your first gig, right? I mean, how hard can it be?

Guitar Company Feature: Rick Hanes Guitars

Guitar players have known for decades that when we want to make our guitars sound better, the first place to turn to is Seymour Duncan. In fact, this has been so true for so long, a lot of guitar manufacturers are now saving us time by building their instruments with Seymour Duncan pickups already installed. These companies range from solo…

Introducing The .strandberg* Varberg

If you haven’t got your paws on a .strandberg* guitar with an EndurNeck™ before it’s a strange experience simply because contrary to what your eyes may tell you, it doesn’t feel strange.

Chatting With Carrie Underwood Guitarist Jimmy Herman

Those are just a few of the words that help define the man. You may know him best as Carrie Underwood’s guitarist, but he has also shared the stage with Keith Urban, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, and Brad Paisley, just to name a few. I had the opportunity and honor of asking Jimmy about guitars and guitar playing, and one thing is certain: his passion for what he does is infectious.

Playing What You DON’T Know

Advancing as a guitar player is never seen as a slow and steady climb. It is more like a series of steps with pretty long spaces in between. While it might seem like you don’t get better for weeks or months at a time, one breakthrough can lead to months of inspiration.

My Favorite Pickups For Indie

A look at pickups that are appropriate for Indie guitar styles.

Effects Basics: The Volume Control

This article will explain exactly what these knobs do (duh!) and how you can use them to fool your audience into thinking that they are listening to a cello, steel guitar, or keyboard. Once you get to know these knobs well, it may even affect future guitar purchases!

Seymour W. Duncan’s Interview With Seth Lover

In June 1978, Seymour W. Duncan visited Seth E. Lover – inventor of the Gibson ‘Patent Applied For’ humbucking pickups – at his home in Garden Grove, California. Here is that discussion for your reading pleasure.

Getting A Big PAF Sound With The Little ’59

I recently completed a custom guitar build, a Charvel San-Dimas style guitar which I spec-ed out with a humbucker/single (HS) set up. I wanted a single-coil-sized humbucker for the neck, and the first pickup I’m trying in this position is the Little ’59 for Strat.

Single Coils That Work Well With Humbuckers

So you’ve been lured by a guitar with the HSS (humbucker/single coil/single coil) pickup configuration. This mullet-of-the-guitar-world (business in the front, party in the rear) is as old, as, well, the mullet. Can you really have it all in one guitar?

Great Pickups For Lapsteel Guitars

I suppose it’s easy to forget the origins or the modern electric guitar. After all, the first real electric guitar is still open for debate, all though I guess we can all safely assume it’s the Slingerland Songster Model 401 by now. Which is perhaps striking, since that guitar was preceded and followed by ‘electrified’…

My Favorite Pickups for Fender Stratocasters®

I was a humbucker-kinda guy for years. Sparkle, chime, glassiness and notched tones? Not my thing. I needed power, aggression, tightness, harmonics, articulation! But when I finally got a great Strat I understood the attraction. Personally I still can’t cope with the standard bridge pickup in a Strat. The way I use a Strat and…

Seymour Duncan NAMM 2015

It’s that time of year again where musical instrument manufacturers get together from all around the world to showcase their gear and you can bet Seymour Duncan will not disappoint with 9 new products to introduce at the show. We will also be having performances from Nick Johnston and Danny Young daily as well as…

Some Hero Worship: Brian May

I doubt there’s a guitarist in this world who doesn’t owe Brian May a debt of gratitude in one form of another.

What To Expect At An Open Jam

Here is what to expect (and how to act) when you show up in an unfamiliar place, playing unfamiliar songs with musicians you have (likely) never met.

My Favorite Archive Releases of 2014

People here at Seymour Duncan are not just obsessive about tone, but also about music itself. After all, you have to love music to be able to make tools to make it. But the good thing is that everyone’s tastes are different.

The Lemmy Kilmister Bass Pickups

The sound of Motörhead is defined by the high-output fat tone and midrange grind that Lemmy Kilmister has delivered for decades with songs like “Ace of Spades” and “Iron Fist,” combined with a fast pick attack on his RickenbackerⓇbass. We started with carefully analyzing the pickups in his bass and then made them even ruder…

Making Sense Of Seymour Duncan Pickup Coding

Perhaps an explanation of Seymour Duncan’s naming and coding standards is in order…

Cage Match: Non-Master Volume vs. Master Volume Amps

Amplifiers have certainly come a long way. Actually, a lot of things have, if you check out the picture above. Notice how Son and Dad are playing a game the girls clearly can’t understand as they wash the dishes in the back, smiling at how much fun the boys are having. Try getting a picture like this past any modern marketing department now!

The Sound of Synyster Gates

Synyster Gates along with his partner in guitar crime, Zacky Vengeance, burst out of Huntington Beach California and on to the metal scene with Avenged Sevenfold in 2001 with the release of “Sounding of the Seventh Trumpet” Known for their metalcore as well as their more jazz and prog-rock influences, Avenged’s music features intricate arrangement, duelling harmony guitars, and inventive arrangements. They’ve been featured on Ozzfest tours, won Revolver Golden God awards for the guitar playing, and Synyster has spawned his own gear and clothing line. The dude gets around.

The Perpetual Burn – a review from a non-shredder’s perspective

Jason Becker is one of those players that has inspired countless guitar players. His command of the guitar blew people’s minds, and when ALS so tragically took his ability to do almost everything, he, with the help of his father still found a way to keep on communicating with people, and create new music, continuing…

“Locking” Up A Floating Bridge

Floating bridges are great. You can make all sorts of weird and wacky noises diving and raising the whammy bar. From simple pitch variations to harmonic squeals, car engines revving and fluttering noises, floating bridges provide hours of fun.

Talking Tone With Jon Skibic of The Afghan Whigs

For 15 years the Afghan Whigs contributed their brand of darkly-themed alt rock to the music scene. After a 13 year hiatus they have returned with a bang, a new album and Jon Skibic on guitar. Jon has a long history on the music circuit playing with the likes of Rock of Ages and Twilight Singers with Greg Dulli.

2014 Holiday Gift Guide

If you’ve overheard your special someone talking about a specific pickup set they’d like, or your spouse has left a print-out of one of the Seymour Duncan web pages with the words “I want this!” written all over it, please do yourself – and that special someone – a favor and get them a set of the best pickups around. For everyone else, here is the official Seymour Duncan Holiday Gift Guide.

Guitarists Using Seymour Duncan Pedals

It’s only been a year since the Dirty Deed distortion pedal came out, and since then it has been followed by the Vapor Trail, 805 Overdrive, Pickup Booster, Vise Grip and now the Shape Shifter. In that time dozens of well-known artists have taken a liking to one or more of the new guitar pedals. here’s a current who’s…

There Is No Substitute For Hard Work

This article explains some of the work required to becoming a working professional, and to continually improve our aptitude on guitar, learn about gear, and optimize our tone. Who knew it was going to be this hard?

Great Expectations: An Interview With Hunter Hayes’ Guitarist Devin Malone

Devin Malone’s phrasing, solos, and melodic emotion have weaved their way into the fabric of songs by Keith Urban and most recently, country star Hunter Hayes.

Interview with Simple Plan’s Sebastien Lefebvre

The platinum-selling, “new-punk” stylings of Simple Plan first made their appearance on the music scene in 1999. The band played the Warped Tour and never looked back.

Changing the Tone of Your Wah Pedal

The wah pedal is a long-standing fixture on many pedalboards. The Cry Baby wah was the very first pedal I bought – and I still have it – but I’ve always preferred a “darker” tone in my wah sound. I find that when you “open up” the Cry Baby (toe down position), it’s too “pitchy.” Yes, I know, that’s not a word, but anyone who has run into the high-pitched squeals of an open Cry Baby wah knows exactly what I’m talking about. I could have replaced my wah pedal with something darker, but like many guitarists I didn’t want to spend $250 on another piece of gear. Correction: I wanted to spend the money on gear, but I can only hide so many guitar-related purchases a year, and adding another wah pedal seemed redundant.

The Stack Plus Family Noiseless Pickups

If you crave a single coil tone but you wish to use a lot of gain, or you would simply prefer your clean tone to be all guitar and no hum, the Stack Plus series is for you.

Feed Your Frankenstein: Ten Halloween Sounds You Can Make With Your Guitar

Have you ever wondered how they make all of those cool sound effects in your favorite thrillers? On those backlot tours I learned that there are entire crews of people dedicated to that very purpose for every horror film that is made. The cool part? You can use your guitar to make some of the very same sounds you’re used to hearing during your favorite horror movies.

Guitar Anatomy (Parts of an Electric Guitar)

There are so many little parts on an electric guitar that when you’re a beginner it can be a daunting task to figure out what each part is for! It never hurts to take a closer look at anything, so why not dive into the anatomy of an electric guitar?

Voices of Metal: Windhand

Windhand erupted into the world several years ago with their dark melodic and deeply crushing guitar sounds with distant vocals. Their self-titled EP made them well recognized in the Stoner/Doom Metal scene but their ability to infuse other styles also has earned them many fans.

Anatomy Of A Humbucker

Maybe you’ve always wondered what some parts of a humbucker do, maybe you want to get some solid ground under your feet before attempting a magnet swap or maybe even a hybrid, or maybe you’re simply curious. In any case, I want to make this article your stepping stone.

The Best Pickups for Note Separation Metal Edition

If you frequent guitar related forums and blogs one thing you may see being discussed is note separation. But what is note separation, and why would a guitar player be looking for this in a guitar pickup?

The Zephyr Silver Pickups

Zephyr came from a challenge issued to Vice President of Engineering Kevin Beller to come up with a pickup that wasn’t constrained by the usual consideration of costs or materials – just dream it, design it and build it.

Five Fun Floyd Rose Tricks

If you’re not a fan of the Floyd, you might want to look away. Because this post is about how to make a whole bunch of freaky alien horse noises with your Floyd Rose.

4th Annual Seymour Duncan Notes For Notes Benefit Concert

Can you imagine being a kid again and having a place you could go to get free lessons, to play any instrument for free and record your own music with the help of professionals? When we first heard about the charity Notes for Notes, we got pretty excited. They provide some seriously awesome opportunities for…

This Sounds Odd: Understanding 9th Chords

Contrary to where modern guitar has gone, it started life as a rhythm instrument, bashing out chords on a large archtop (or larchtop*) in the back of the band. Yes, it is hard to believe that at one time, the idea of sweep picking lydian-dominant arps at 200 bpm was unheard of, and the idea of having a great chord vocabulary (and being able to improvise with those chords) was essential to be considered a great guitarist that could work steadily and support all of those spotlight-stealing brass players. These days, being an amazing rhythm player is downplayed in favor of other aspects of guitar playing, but understanding some small things about chords will only let our solos stand out more, and give us more interesting things to play over. If you haven’t read it yet, I would also suggest reading my article about 7th chords, as this article will build on those concepts.

The Seymour Duncan Acoustic Pickup Line

Seymour knows about tone. But not just about tone coming from several Marshall stacks in front of chia-haired rockers. Besides specializing in the perfect sound for electric guitars for over 40 years, Seymour Duncan knows how to get the perfect acoustic tone for your live performances and recordings.

An Audience With Rob ‘Chappers’ Chapman

One of my personal highlights of the NAMM show back in January was the Chapman Guitars stand. Rob Chapman is very well known in the UK as a guitarist for two reasons: his involvement in various bands – currently the excellent Dorje – and his superb gear demonstrations and reviews on YouTube.

The Seymour Duncan 805 Overdrive Review

Make some room on that pedalboard, folks, because the Seymour Duncan pedal line is expanding. The new 805 Overdrive joins the Dirty Deed Distortion, Vapor Trail Analog Delay and the Pickup Booster while bringing much-needed updates to the standard overdrive formula.

The Versatility Of The Black Winter Bridge Model

In January 2013 Seymour Duncan announced the Black Winter pickup set. Initially only available in Scandinavia, the Black Winters were designed specifically for extreme metal players, providing players with the ability to go from crushing aggressive riffs to super articulate lead work. The Black Winter set created such a swell of interest from players all over the world that Seymour Duncan recently announced a world-wide general release.

Direct-Mounting Pickups Part II: The JB meets the PMS (Pickup Mounting System)

The SH/TB-4 JB is – no joke – THE most popular replacement pickup ever. No, no just the most popular in the populous Seymour Duncan humbucker lineup, but the most popular aftermarket pickup available. Has been for 30 years. Seriously, that top shouldn’t be open for debate, really. A certain British guitarist with the same initials was known to have used one of the originals in the 70s, and since then it’s been a staple of rock music. Other pickups can only get in the neighborhood of the iconic nature of the JB. It’s everywhere, whether you know it or not, and for good reason. It’s all over more classic and current recordings than you can begin to imagine, so cool is this pickup. It is, in fact, the SOUND of ROCK.

Cage Match: Playing It Just Like the CD or…Not

Simply, do you like bands that play everything exactly like the CD or do you like when bands (and their guitarists) take chances and deviate from the recorded version? With songs you might right and record, is there a conscious effort to replicate everything note-for-note live? Or is the recorded (or written) version simply a…

Shredding It Full Shred Bridge Style

Sometimes there’s a need for a hammer, other times there’s a need for a scalpel. A scalpel can cut cleanly with precision. Sure it’s doesn’t smash through things like a hammer does, but when used correctly a scalpel can be just as devastating. The Full Shred would be Seymour Duncan’s scalpel in its tonal bag of tools. It doesn’t have the highest output, but its precision lets it hit a lot higher and harder than its weight category.

Reader’s Choice: Cover Tunes That Are Better Than The Originals

The true test of covering someone elses’ song is making it your own. That’s no easy feat, and while there’s a tonne of cover versions of classic and contemporary tunes, only a few stand the test of time. Even more rare are the ones that eclipse the original. Recently we asked Seymour Duncan readers what their…

SD Mini-Humbuckers and the Hofner Beatle Bass

The Hofner Violin Bass is an icon in and of itself, due to one particular musician that happened to do pretty well in the 60s. It’s also an interesting instrument, because while it is classified as a short scale (30″) instrument, it actually requires a set of strings that would be classified as medium scale…

The Difficulties In Amplifying An Acoustic Guitar

Acoustic guitars have always presented a problem when playing at higher volumes. Back in the day (as the kids say), if you wanted a louder acoustic guitar, you bought a bigger acoustic guitar. Bigger bodies = more volume, as there is more wood to vibrate and project the sound towards the listener. But what if you have to play a big club or theater with hundreds or thousands of people? Huh? HUH? You could get a guitar the size of the stage itself, but I bet you wouldn’t like how it sounded! This article will explain some of the difficulties that acoustic guitarists face when wanting just to be heard.

Hello, NYC Bass Pickups

The NYC Bass pickups are the same thing that we’ve been making for some of the world’s finest handcrafted basses. They each use a dual coil J-type pickup design with a double row of Alnico Pole pieces. The resulting pickups provide a more organic tone and they are very versatile without sacrificing output level and…

Talking Tone With Yngwie Malmsteen

There aren’t many players who can say they’ve spearheaded an entire genre, but Yngwie J Malmsteen is among this esteemed few. Yngwie synthesised the worlds of classical melodicism and heavy rock energy in ways that had only been hinted at before, and in doing so he ignited a guitar revolution. With Yngwie currently on the road for his Guitar Gods tour with fellow virtuosi Bumblefoot and Gary Hoey, we caught up with the maestro to talk tone.

How Do Humbuckers & P90s Differ?

The humbucker, with its single bar magnet under the coils, is generally less gritty, crunchy, raunchy or dirty than the P90. Let’s compare a few ‘vintage’ styled pickups Seymour Duncan has to offer.

What Is The ‘Woman Tone’?

The world of guitardom has all sorts of cool descriptive words to characterise tone: The Brown Sound. Djent. Crunch. Chunk. Quack. Spank. Wah Wah. It’s all part of the unique vocabulary we share amongst ourselves. The Woman Tone isn’t quite as self-descriptive as the others though. Personified by Eric Clapton’s tone on various Cream Tracks such as “Sunshine Of Your Love,” it’s a harmonically rich, slightly muffled, honking, squonking tone.

Bass Tone Caps: From The Top

Many guitarists know the simple truth; change your tone voicing by switching out the capacitor on your tone pot. This has led many guitarists on a long quest for finding the ultimate cap to achieve their tone. Usually though, most bassists never think that changing the capacitor on their tone knob will unlock the tone that they’ve been seeking. We’ll talk about some of the benefits of using different value tone caps in your bass, as well as a couple of easy tips to give you some more options.

Getting To Know SD – #1: MJ

Here at Seymour Duncan we think of ourselves as family – not just within the company, but with everyone who loves music, whether it be bedroom players, the geezers at the local open mic, the hero on a stadium stage in front of hundreds of thousands of fans, or those same fans themselves. As readers of our blog, we want you to think of us as family too. The aim of this series is for you to get to know us a bit better, so this will be an occasional series where we profile the people who make Seymour Duncan the special company it is.

Seymour Duncan Musician Scholarships

Part of what we believe in is supporting musicians and those who have a deep desire to learn and constantly develop as a musician. That’s why we have teamed up to offer several scholarships at Musicians Institute. If you think spending each and every day in Hollywood at a college full of musicians and studying…

Introducing The Seymour Duncan Custom Shop SLUG

Its DC Resistance comes in at a whopping 48k. It’s the most powerful passive humbucker we’ve ever produced. It lives for stoner/doom metal. It’ll drink all your beer and go through your stuff, but it’ll also help you move house because it’s cool like that. It once hog-tied a Rancor. It patched things up between Mork and Mindy when things were looking a little rough. It likes long walks by the swamp. REAL long walks. It was the one who nicknamed John Wayne ‘The Duke.’ It’s SLUG.

Cage Match: Individual Pedals vs Multi Effects

Guitarists have long wanted to affect the sound of the electric and acoustic guitar with outboard gear. Whether it is compression from analog tape and the tube-powered mixing console itself back in the day, to the staggering array of pedals and devices available today, guitarists can at least agree that there are no lack of choices. While the outside world (I mean, non-guitarists) don’t understand our obsession of arguing what sort of transistors are in our fuzz boxes, or how many effects we can have on at once, we get it. Almost to a fault. While this article is certainly not for the guitar-cord-amp type, it splits up the effect argument into 2 well-matched camps, the individual pedals and the multieffects. Remember though, words can only go so far- in the end, you have to plug in for yourself.

Review: Alternative 8/Screaming Demon Set

For a while I’ve been looking for the perfect allround set to go in either a Les Paul or Super strat and I believe I stumbled on the set that ticks all the boxes for me. I wanted a bridge pickup that was hot but not overly so. Great harmonics, singing leads with enough edge to cut through the mix without sounding too thin or thick. I want my rhythm parts to be chunky and crunchy but when I roll back the volume I want clarity.

Jason Becker: The Interview

In 1987, Jason Becker was one of the fastest rising stars of the world of guitarists. Having joined Cacophony with Marty Friedman at just the age of 16 and played on Speed Metal Symphony and Go Off, his skills were on full display. Becker was a highly experienced neo-classical metal guitarist who would incorporate every…

6-String Nazgûl, Sentient and Pegasus Now Available

You no longer need a 7 or 8 string guitar to get the punch you in the chest ruthlessness of the Nazgûl or the enhanced dynamics and string separation of the Pegasus. As of today these pickups are now shipping to stores in 6-string versions. The Nazgûl was developed for extreme metal players who required…

Mode Mania: Hearing the Unique Sounds of Each Mode

Misunderstanding the modes of the major scale is common among guitarists. We practice them in all keys, up and down the fretboard, in sequences, with different rhythmic groupings. The secrets to these mysterious inversions of the major scale lie in the chords they are played over. This article will explain some ways we can hear the unique sound of each mode, and develop interesting chord progressions that allow us to hear them in their native habitat.

Cage Match: The Battle of Bling

Let’s face it: guitars are fashion accessories, and guitar makers know this. It isn’t good enough that we’re on stage rockin’ the place, we gotta look good doing it. Guitarists choose their instrument for many reasons but we all know the player that puts looks above all else. Instead of focusing on, say a Flying V vs Les Paul debate, this one will take a turn towards the flash.

Bruce Bouillet And The Order of Control

If you were a fan of shred guitar, particularly Racer X in the 80s, you’re aware of Bruce Bouillet. He’s the only other guy in the world who could keep up with Paul Gilbert! The man not only has astounding, world-beating chops, but exceptional melodic sense as well.

Top Ten: Bassists You Should Listen To

Maybe it’s because I’m feeling nostalgic now that David Letterman has announced his retirement, and with that comes the retirement of his infamous Top Ten List. Maybe it’s because I enjoy sharing my opinion on bassists you should listen to, and like reading a lot of angry retorts. But maybe, as a musician that works hard to continually improve, listening is one of the easiest things we can do to achieve that goal. And with that in mind, I present to you yet another TOP TEN list, but this one’s a bit different. These are guys/gals that you probably haven’t heard of, but you owe it to yourself to listen to them.

Seymour Duncan At The Dallas International Guitar Festival

If you’re headed to the 38th Annual Dallas International Guitar Festival, come and see us! The festival is on from Friday May 2 to Sunday May 4 at the Fair Park Dallas TX Automobile & Centennial Buildings, Dallas, TX.

Evolution In Music Pedagogy

I started my walk on the musical road to perdition not as a guitarist, but as a singer. I received a fairly traditional, classical education. I learned to read notes, solfege (learning relative intervals: think of the famed scene of the Sound of Music where the children learn to sing via Do-Re-Mi: that’s solfege!), all the modes. When I switched to the rock and metal side of music I experienced major troubles: I couldn’t get rid of my belcanto-techniques.

Hot-Rodding the STC Preamps

When you’re a gear-head, nothing is ever – EVER – completely perfect. Sure, you’ll throw in the Steve Harris Signature Pickup into your P Bass, and enjoy the tone (and for my impressions, click here). But then you’re thinking, “Wouldn’t an STC preamp completely unleash the beast?” and you’d be right. But you’re left with…

Play Nice With Others

Mom always told you when you were young (and probably also when you were old enough to know better), “Play nice!” And while it was probably given to you in the context of a sandbox, or during a Transformers debate (because while everyone longs to be Optimus Prime, they yearn to rule the world with the cold hand of Megatron), it translates directly into the role of a musician, especially when it comes time to play with musicians you’ve never met or played with before, or when you walk into a situation that you’ve never been in. And that ability to “play nice with others” will provide invaluable as your musical palette expands.

Chords of the Harmonic Minor Scale

In the last music theory blog article, I introduced you to the odd and sometimes dissonant chords derived from the melodic minor scale. This time we’ll look at the prettier-but-slightly-aloof older sisters of the melodic minor chords: harmonic minor chords. This article will explain how to derive the chords from this dramatic scale, and provide some…

#AprilFools2014: The Seymour Duncan Triple Cream Humbucker

For many years, players have been asking us to make double-cream humbuckers: pickups with two cream-colored bobbins. We make single coils in cream of course, but for certain reasons we’re not allowed to make double-cream Seymour Duncan humbuckers. So we’ve decided to go one better by introducing the Seymour Duncan Triple Cream Trademarkbucker. Featuring three whole coils of rich creamy goodness, this pickup is available exclusively from the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop.

Five Questions With Jerry Donahue

Jerry Donahue has had quite the career. Playing with folk rock bands such as Fotheringay and Fairport Convention, and working with artists like Robert Plant, Joan Armatrading, The Proclaimers, Elton John, George Harrison, Hank Marvin, Cliff Richard, and Roy Orbison just to name a few. Add The Hellecasters to the mix and you’ve got one very impressive catalog of work. His preference of the Telecaster shape, and his mastery of string bends has helped give him the title “Bendmaster of the Telecaster.”

Playing in the Present

What? Of course we are playing in the present. I am playing right now! Is that present enough for you? Playing in the present isn’t nearly as hard as it sounds, but it does require some focus and effort. Well, this article will help our playing stay in the present, as well as some tips to play in the past and for the future too. Hold on, as it is going to get bumpy.

Five Questions with Chris Shiflett

Chris Shiflett has had quite the music career. From California punkers No Use For A Name to punk rock super-group Me First and the Gimme Gimmes to hitting the big time as a member of the Foo Fighters and now experimenting with country music as Chris Shiflett and the Dead Peasants, Chris has not been afraid to branch out in different musical directions.

Five Questions With Five Finger Death Punch’s Jason Hook

Five Finger Death Punch is hot off the release of their fifth full length release in just seven years, The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell, Volume 2,  and are currently busy banging heads across the entire Earth. Even with his extremely busy schedule, Five Finger Death Punch’s fleet-fingered lead guitarist Jason…

What Are Potentiometers?

As guitar players we’re familiar with the volume and tone controls on our guitars. Potentiometers (pots) – or variable resistors – have been used for decades on guitars, effects and amplifiers. There are two distinct types of potentiometers that we typically use for these applications: linear (often abbreviated as “lin”) and logarithmic (log or audio). Each of these types of potentiometers are used for specific applications, but first let’s break down what a potentiometer is, and how it works.

Greatest Music Videos Of All Time

There was a time directly preceding the age of the Internet where the music video was just as important of an expression of creativity as the song itself. In many cases a good music video could cause a good song to become a hit thanks to avenues like MTV which would then put it into heavy rotation.

Adrian Galysh: The Tone Poet

Adrian Galysh is a name heard quite frequently around Los Angeles, as a busy studio player and sideman with Uli Jon Roth. He’s also beginning to develop a substantial internet presence via Facebook and YouTube, and you’ve probably seen his signature spalted Maple-topped Brian Moore guitar show up in your Twitter feed if you follow any of the “guitar money shot” feeds.

My Versatile HSS Wiring Scheme

Guitars with one humbucker and two single coils always seem to be a compromise. The idea is to get that chimey, jangly, quack from the neck and the middle single coils and the rock and roll from the humbucker in the bridge position. The HSS (which stands for humbucker-single-single) pickup configuration gained popularity in the 80s, much like everyone’s favorite haircut, the mullet. And much liked the maligned mullet, we get, in theory, business in the front and party in the rear. This article is my take on this pickup configuration, and how I came up with a way it could work for me.

Using Amps And Pedals Together

When I was younger, I absolutely refused to play with pedals: stompboxes, distortions, overdrives, boosters: anything that would make your amp go to ’11.’ I simply didn’t want to understand why you should or would use them. “I always chose my amps based on their ability to crunch and the voice of the overdrive, so why bother,” I thought. “Wanna have more distortion? Crank up the gain pot of your amp. Not enough gain? Wrong amp!” It was that simple for me. My turn-around point came somewhere last year. I saw more players use the backline of a venue or the house PA with a bunch of pedals in front of them, and sometimes with a tiny 15 watt tube amp with a nice clean sound. I couldn’t see why that approach had benefits until I borrowed a few pedals to see how that worked. So, let’s take a look at how stompboxes worked for me.

Tips From The Recording Studio

Howdy folks – Johnny Hawthorn here giving a little insight on what to prepare and look out for when you get called into the studio for a recording session (even if you are just going in to record some songs with your band). Time is one of the critical factors usually when recording and the…

dUg Pinnick On New Band KXM

The concept of a “Supergroup” with notable exceptions, usually sounds better in theory than in practice. All-star line-ups convene with all the makings of greatness that due to egos or whatever never quite lives up to expectations. However, when the players are George Lynch and Dug Pinnick with drummer extraordinaire Ray Luzier, you’ve got a notable exception indeed.

What is ‘Strat Quack’, Anyway?

You’ve heard the term before: ‘Strat Quack.’ Judging by the name you’d think it’s a sound you won’t get from your stock Les Paul or shredstick, and you would be right. While those guitars have their own unique sound, there’s a reason many players pick the Strat time and time again. This article will try…

The Versatility Of The Black Winter Neck Model

Originally released only in Scandinavia in January of 2013, the Black Winter pickups were designed for extreme metal players, providing a sound that was suited to the sorts of metal coming out of this region of Europe. The public interest was so high that the Black Winters received a world-wide general release soon afterwards. Let’s…

Seymour Duncan Shop Floor Custom Options

Do you need something just a little bit special from your pickup but not anything that requires the full Seymour Duncan Custom Shop treatment? If so, there are plenty of little customisations that you can request when you order a regular pickup through your preferred dealer. Called Shop Floor Custom, this service lets you tweak various aspects of your pickup order and we’ll make it on the regular shop floor, just for you, alongside our regular production pickups. It’s a handy alternative if you want something a little unique but your budget doesn’t stretch to ‘Custom Shop.’

Look Who’s Using Seymour Duncan Pickups

Since there are so many guitar builders out there it could be a daunting task to find out who is using Seymour Duncan pickups. To ease the effort we compiled an extensive, albeit far from complete, list of builders who use our pickups. Gibson Guitars Gibson is one of the biggest guitar companies in the…

Talking Bass With Duff McKagan

Duff McKagan is a bass legend, alright? If all he ever recorded was Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” he would go down in the history books: Slash’s introductory guitar riff is of course great but it wouldn’t have quite the impact that it does if not for Duff’s weaving lines before the song kicks into full gear. But Duff is much more than that.

My 10 Favorite Power Trios

A common phrase is that there’s no account for taste, and rightfully so. I used to be fond of the more ‘traditional’ heavy metal and hard rock styles, loaded with postproduction processing and a lot of thick production. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a good deal of Queen, the Darkness or Iron Maiden every…

Designing An Amplifier: An Interview With CMW Amplifiers’ Chris Winsemius

During my blogs I predominantly discuss guitars and pickups but all would be pointless without an amp (and cab!). In this blog I will introduce you to an amp builder, amp tech and friend of mine. Chris Winsemius is the founder and owner of CMW amps. Founded and based in the Netherlands, he has build…

Bruce Kulick Launches Antiquity-Loaded Signature Guitar

Bruce Kulick has just launched a new signature guitar with Rebel Guitars, and it features an Antiquity JB humbucker as its sole pickup, screaming out with its powerful, punchy tone from the bridge position and with only a volume and a tone control to keep it company. The Rock ‘N Roll Relics Bruce Kulick BK model is being made in an extremely limited edition of 25, hand-numbered by Bruce and with a certificate of authenticity. It’s inspired by one of Bruce’s favourite KISS-era guitars, and each one will be aged and distressed to look like the original.

Why Should I Replace My Pickups, Anyway?

The decision to replace pickups in your guitar is one only you can make. This article will attempt to describe some of the instances where it would make sense to replace these tone-producers.

Winter NAMM Show & Artist Performances

If you’re heading to Anaheim, California for the Winter NAMM Show this year you’ll find us at Hall B in Booth 5661 with plenty of new exciting products for you to check out. And if you can’t be there we’ll be posting about the show on our social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter….

Chords of the Melodic Minor Scale

Scales by themselves are not much more than finger exercises. However, you can unlock the sound of each and every scale by learning to use what chords to use them over. The secret to this arcane knowledge is in the scale itself. This article focuses on a very popular but certainly very strange sounding scale, the melodic minor, and how we can figure out some chords to play behind our rockin’ solos.

Offset Guitars: My Selected Bunch!

When Leo Fender designed and released his Stratocaster in the early 1950s, I doubt he could have been aware of the design standards he would set for the years to come. His asymmetrical Stratocaster was soon followed by the Jaguar, Jazzmaster, Coronado and many others. These guitars were as different as possible but had (at least) one common denominator: their body shape was very asymmetrical, yielding a very comfortable guitar! I wish to take a moment to highlight these guitars’ differences, unique features and tonal characteristics!

Watch The New Gus G Video Now!

Gus G. will release his debut solo album I Am The Fire in March, but you don’t have to wait until then to hear what Gus has got in store for us: he’s just released a video for the opening track, “My Will Be Done,” featuring Mats Levén [Clandesmass, Ex-Yngwie Malmsteen/Therion], which you can check out right here!

Humidity: How It Can Create Serious Problems!

As winter is now in full swing in the northern hemisphere, the time has come to take a closer look at how you store your precious, cherished instruments. As the cold creeps into our homes we tend to close down all windows and pump up the central heating. Unfortunately, many players tend to forget some basic precautions to safeguard their guitars from harm, sending many guys on their way to a guitar tech or luthier during the winter!

That Single Pickup Magic

Once upon a time there was a great war. This war was a marketing war, all based on the quantity of a guitar’s equipment. Up until late 1953, the two major players were tied with two pickups, when one side introduced a three pickup guitar. Things were again tied between the major players at three…

The 1962 Fender Jazz Control

The Fender Jazz Bass is one of the three most iconic bass types known in the musical world (with the other two being the mighty Precision Bass, and the Music Man Stingray). With that, there are a number of truly excellent replacement pickups to install in order to get your desired sound (with many of…

10 Signs Your Guitar May Need Some TLC

Let’s highlight the 10 most common signs that your guitar will exhibit that warns you that it might be prudent to go see a good guitar tech or luthier.

Cage Match Bass Edition: Rounds vs. Flats

There is never a more polarizing thread that comes up in bass forums than the one that starts with “what is better?” and ends with “Rounds or Flats?” In this article we’re going to talk about the differences between roundwound and flatwound strings, the pros and cons between the two and then offer up a couple suggestions where either of them would fit the bill nicely.

Gifting Your Guitar Buddy

It’s getting to be that time of year again, and people who are friends (or co-workers) with guitarists get nervous. What to give?

Feedback vs Microphonic Noise

Feedback and microphonic noise are two terms that seem to be used and misused as people seem fit. I want to take a look at the mechanics behind feedback and microphonic feedback and how to use feedback in your playing, or simply get rid of it all together. Feedback and microphonic feedback are terms used…

Washburn Announces Ola Englund Signature Series

Ola Englund is a dangerous man in the hands of a capable axe. And by teaming up with Washburn he has focused his sights on creating a guitar that can satisfy the needs of many metal guitarists. This guy knows gear too, Ola has reviewed hundreds of instruments, amps and pedals on his immense YouTube…

Cage Match Bass Edition: Traditional vs. Balanced Tension

Oh man, if there’s one phrase that’s quickly become the “buzz” on forums over the past year or so, it’s ‘balanced-tension string sets.’ And there are people on both sides of the camp; those that say that balanced tension has revolutionized their playing, and others that say that the packaged set at the local music…

Framus Mayfield Giveaway

Whether you have been naughty or nice you have equal chances of winning this Mayfield Legacy. We’ve teamed up with Framus to give you a chance to put this Vintage Sunburst under the tree and make some great music. The Legacy is a semi hollowbody with laminated Mahogany top and back, solid Mahogany sides, a…

Chord Substitutions: More Fun with the V Chord

We learned in a previous article about the benefits of substituting one chord for another. For one, it makes playing rhythm (what guitarists play most of the time) non-repetitive and exciting. Eventually, as we learn more and more chord forms, it makes rhythm playing as thrilling as soloing.  As our groovy new harmonic sophistication reaches…

Five Questions with Nine Inch Nails’ Robin Finck

Nine Inch Nails recently released their long awaited album Hesitation Marks, and are currently touring North America with their Tension 2013 show. After this they will be teaming up with Queens Of The Stone Age in 2014 for a double assault on Australia and New Zealand. With the tour in full swing I thought it would be good to ask Seymour Duncan artist and longtime Nine Inch Nails collaborator Robin Finck a few questions about him, his gear, touring with Nine Inch Nails, and of course pickups!

The Seymour Duncan Custom 5 Pickup

While I went on and on in one of my previous articles about the Custom Custom bridge pickup, I’d love to introduce one of its fraternal twins, the Custom 5. I think of it like this: The Custom Custom is like a bowl of clam chowder: rich, and creamy. The Custom 5, while the same…

The Seymour Duncan ’59 Trembucker

The Seymour Duncan ’59 is a classic. It’s an idealized representation of THE classic, a Gibson PAF — built to the actual specifications of the original design rather than copying one example of a production original which was built with wide tolerances, not all of which were stellar. These days it’s still the first suggestion when…

Aristides Unveils The 070 7-String

Aristides Instruments from The Netherlands have just previewed the 070, a 7-string guitar that will be officially launched at the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Show in January. Made from a single piece of Arium, it’s a 26.5” scale instrument available with passive or active electronics – including your choice of our passive Pegasus bridge and Sentient neck pickups, or active Blackouts.

Warbringer On Making ‘IV: Empires Collapse’

We had the chance to catch up with Warbringer to chat about the experience of making their fourth album, IV: Empires Collapse, and some of the creative decisions with composition, gear selection and the process of making a studio album – Hope you enjoy and definitely check out the album – it definitely evokes a…

The Impact of Metal on a Floyd Rose-Equipped Guitar

Guitars are complicated things. Different woods, different construction methods and the type of bridge all have an effect on tone, as do the the obvious things such as pickups and pots. What some people may not realise is that the type of metal your bridge, saddles, baseplate and sustain block are made of also have…

Talking Tone With Skeletonwitch

Skeletonwitch has been making a name for themselves on stages from Ozzfest to the Jägermeister Presents Tour and all points in between since their formation in Ohio in 2003. That was when guitarist Scott Hedrick met his future bandmate and fellow guitarist Nate Garnette at Ohio University. They released their first album in 2004 and have…

A Big Argument for Small Bass Amplifiers

Here’s an actual conversation I had with a friend (and fellow bassist): Him: I just got a 1,200 watt head and 4×12 cabinet for my band. Me: Don’t you have PA support? That seems like overkill. Him: No way, it’ll be awesome. Two months later: Me: How’s that new amp? Him: I can’t turn it…

Perri Ink Debuts First Custom Bass Guitar

PERRI INK. Custom Guitars has just launched their first even custom bass, the ROCKY IV. It has a contoured solid Alder body, a one-piece Maple neck with black block inlays and a 34″ scale length, JENZ machine heads, a Seymour Duncan Music Man® pickup and EQ circuit, and absolutely stunning 12K Gold leafing by the world famous SoCal painter Sonny Boy.

Background Noise: Closing The Loop

When we play our electric guitar through an amp, we are being bombarded with sound. Not just the amazing, lovely guitar tone we all love so much but if we’re not careful, also with a huge dose of noise too. Noise can be hum, hiss, buzz or just white noise. There are several causes for…

Talking Vengeance With Trivium’s Corey Beaulieu

Trivium‘s new album, Vengeance Falls, maintains the Trivium tradition of being simultaneously fresh and yet familiar. The band has always kept a keen awareness of metal history even when exploring more modern forms, blending metalcore screams with 80s-style trash one minute, and adding melodic vocal hooks to death-metal-inspired riffage the next. Vengeance Falls is still…

Triple Shot Rings (Or How The Heck Did That Sound Emerge From My Guitar?)

About a year back, I found myself in the enviable position of being able to build my dream guitar. While looking for the proper pickups I ran across some pretty amazing and seemingly underwhelming parts that would eventually make it into that rig. Before I committed to using the new (unproven to me) technology for…

My New Cherry Red Tele-Gib

Hey friends. Been working on a new project guitar based on the Tele-Gib I built for Jeff Beck back in 1974. At the time I was working at the Fender Soundhouse in London, and Jeff Beck was over at the CBS studios recording his second album. The “Tele-Gib” was a hybrid guitar that started out…

Jody Porter of Fountains of Wayne’s Custom Tele

When Jody Porter of Fountains of Wayne wanted a Tele that could get humbucker and single-coil sounds he went with Old School Guitar Repair Restoration and Lutherie, a company that literally works from an old school.

Shredding It Full Shred Neck Style

There’s one thing I don’t want when I switch over to a neck pickup, and that’s mud. I want my bridge pickups to have a tight low end, and enough mids and treble to cut through the mix, without getting fizzy, and be able drive an amplifier hard enough to get some good chunky tones. My neck pickup on the other hand needs to have a cleaner sound to it, and retain some smoothness even under a lot of dirt.

Five Questions With Country Guitarist Joshua Ray

Seymour Duncan artist Joshua Ray is a young up and coming blues guitarist from San Diego, California. At 20 years of age, Josh has done more than many could hope to achieve. A finalist in the Guitar Center 2009 “King of the Blues” contest, he’s gone on to work with artists and producers such as Johnny Sandlin…

Pushing The Boundaries With Parallel Axis Trembuckers

“Guitarists love new things and innovative design, as long as everything remains the same.” That’s a remark one of my friends once made. It may be slightly tongue in cheek, but it is true to some extent. New technologies aren’t greeted by guitarists as enthusiastically as in other fields. But every once in a while…

When 11 Isn’t Enough: Active Blackouts

Pickups come in all kinds of flavors and styles. Some are tailored to do one specific style or tone while others are more versatile. To broaden the palate of choice, some 30-odd years ago active pickups hit the market. The tonal characteristics of active pickups make them a great choice for the more heavy music…

The Seymour Duncan SH-11 Custom Custom

The Custom Custom (or CC) is my favorite bridge pickup. There, I said it. It’s beefier than a standard PAF style, yet not so huge in output that it tends to compress everything. This article will discuss the use and sound of the CC, as well as providing some soundclips solo and within a mix…

The Seymour Duncan SH-55 Seth Lover Model

The SH-55 Seth Lover model is Seymour Duncan’s tribute to the father of the humbucking pickup. Any guitar today that uses two coils in the same housing wired to get rid of the hum associated with single coil pickups owes a bit of thanks to the original pioneer of pickup design, Seth Lover.

Successful Bass And 8-String Guitar Integration

Are you a bass player in a band that features guitarists who play 7-string or 8-string guitars? This is becoming more and more of an issue lately. And I should know: I’ve been playing 7-string guitars for about ten years now, and about a month ago I finally made the leap to 8-strings via an…

Palm Muting, or “Wait, that’s NOT an Upright Bass?!”

It’s always a cool thing to watch. I’ll play a theatre production, and as we’re playing the exit music, I’ll watch as people peek their heads over the rail, look over at me and then at their friends with a shocked expression. What usually follows is either “Where’s the upright bass?” or something to that…

Pickups for Drop-Tuning

Drop tuning involves dropping the strings down pitches to explore a whole different tonal shape and be able to do things like easily fret across strings with a single finger. This also includes alternate tunings which may in part or completely involve lowering the pitch of the strings from standard tuning (EADGBE). Playing in drop-tunings…

Dusty Hill’s Fender Custom Shop Gold Top P Bass

The Fender Custom Shop has announced a new Gold Top Limited Edition Dusty Hill Bass, modelled after the instrument Dusty is currently using on the road with ZZ Top. And like pretty much everything to do with ZZ Top, from their vehicles to their clothes, Dusty’s bass is not just any off-the-shelfer: it’s packed with…

Trends In Guitar Lineage

It’s a popular belief that history is cyclical: that a historical event will take place in the same or similar fashion in the future. The wide jeans of the 60s and 70s, afro haircuts, flower design on wall papers, minimalist design – many past design styles seem to be making a return. I won’t discuss…

Knaggs Guitar Giveaway

Seymour Duncan has teamed up with Knaggs Guitars, Maryland’s Boutique Guitar maker, to give away a special Knaggs Chesapeake Series ‘Severn Tier 1′ Trem in Aged Scotch. This instrument is one of Knaggs’ finest guitars, featuring a double-cutaway beveled Alder body with Sapele top and a Maple cap. The figured Rock Maple set neck comes with a Cocobolo…

Creative Solutions To Control Feedback

One of the worst noises known to the ears of a guitarist and fans is to hear the high-pitched scream of feedback emanating from the amplifier’s driver – unexpectedly and undesirable.

How To Read Guitar Tabs

Despite how much jazz and theater guitarists don’t like it, most players don’t know how to read standard music notation. Instead of learning by reading dots on a page, they end up relying on their ears and eyes, which has served many guitarists well. This isn’t another argument for or against standard notation (you can…

The Smashing Pumpkins’ Jeff Schroeder

Jeff Schroeder has been a member of the Smashing Pumpkins since replacing longtime guitarist James Iha in 2007. Prior to that he one of the founding members of the Lassie Foundation, who’ve released four albums and six EPs. He’s also been involved in a side project called The Beat Concerto. Jeff is using three main…

Let There Be Bass!

A while back I started getting tired of asking to borrow friend’s basses to record demos with. I’m sure they got tired of me asking, too. It made sense, given the fact that I was recording more, that a bass would be a good investment to have around the house. I originally set out to…

Listen To The New Avenged Sevenfold Album Now!

The new Avenged Sevenfold album, Hail To The King, is available for streaming in its entirety right now on iTunes. Wanna hear it? Go right here! The Mike Elizondo-produced album will be released on August 27. Synyster Gates has his own signature Seymour Duncan pickup model, the SH-8SG and TB-8SG, while Zacky Vengeance uses the SH-4 JB…

Blues and the Harmonic Minor Scale

The blues has been slowly disappearing as an element of modern rock and metal for over two decades. This doesn’t mean we can’t learn from ‘old guys’ and the simplicity of playing fewer notes with feeling and the right tone. Now the harmonic minor scale has been associated with guitarists like Ritchie Blackmore and Yngwie Malmsteen, who no doubt possess some great bluesy phrasing, but are pretty different from the blues guitarists that influenced them.

Jump Starting Creativity In, Um… Creative Ways

We’ve all been there. Staring at a blank piece of paper. Or at a guitar sitting on the stand. We know we should be trying to write something but everything we come up with is either stupid, terrible, or sounds like a million other things out there. This article will cover some ways I deal…

Retrofit Pickups – Transforming Your Guitar

There are so many guitars out there, it’s hard to keep track of it all. Strats, Teles, Les Pauls, SGs, Vs, and just as many cross breeds. All unique guitars with a unique look and unique voice. But what if you want to have the look of one but the tone of another? Sure you…

The Ultra Mega Sweep Lick Of Doom

Okay, today I’m going to give you a little freebie: my Ultra Mega Lick Of Doom. This started out as a melody I was working on for a song I never got around to finishing. Frankly, as a melody it kinda sounded a bit boring. But I soon realised that a) whenever I practiced it,…

Amos Heller On Being A Professional Musician

Amos Heller is a gentleman who’s “paid his dues.” Starting in the classical world on upright bass, making the jump to electric, moving to Nashville and playing for Josh Gracin, Mindy MacCready and currently Taylor Swift, he brings a love and appreciation for the bass as well as the entire craft of a musician. Always…

Hear The New Trivium Song Now!

Right now Trivium are streaming their new song, “Brave This Storm,” from their forthcoming Roadrunner album Vengeance Falls, and they’re also making the song available for download via their website. Or you can listen to it in the widget below. Set for release in October, Vengeance Falls is produced by Disturbed/Device’s David Draiman, and it…

Do I Need To Replace My Guitar’s Tuning Keys?

It’s a pretty common problem: you have an entry level or budget guitar and you’re pretty happy with it for now – maybe you’ve upgraded the pickups or you’ve put a few stickers on the body to cover up some dings and scratches. You’re not ready to buy a new guitar yet, but you’re starting to reach the limitations of what your first axe and do for you, and as your ear gets more and more accustomed to how the guitar should sound, you’re noticing that it’s going out of tune a lot. And it makes sense to think the tuners are the cause of the problem.

Four Simple (and Cheap) Ways to Personalize Your Guitar

There’s a lot of appeal to owning something that’s truly unique, and guitars are definitely no exception. While we may not all want something as bold as the Eddie Van Halen Franken-Strat or the Rick Nielsen checkerboard Hamer Standard, it’s hard to deny the allure of a guitar that is one of a kind. We…

Oteil Burbridge: Finding Your Voice

Breaking into the music scene with Colonel Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit in the early 90s, Oteil Burbridge is a musical force to be reckoned with. Since then, he has toured and recorded with the Allman Brothers (and is the longest running bassist in the bands history), the Kofi Burbridge All Stars, Gov’t…

10 Signs You May Be Addicted To Guitar Modding

As everyone knows, the first step is admitting you have a problem. But guitar modding addiction is, as yet, unrecognised by the medical and psychiatric fields. If you think you might need help, examine our list of symptoms to help you make your diagnosis.

The Art Of The May I Help You Riff

Music stores can be intimidating. You’re walking into an environment where all the staff there have heard every cliche’d song butchered a million times, and where it can sometimes be hard to get some attention in order to be assisted in choosing your new guitar, pedal, pick, strap, pickup, gadget or wotzit. Now, it would…

Making the Jump to Freelancing

At some point you may think that while you love your main band, taking on a second band or project is a good idea. From there you may also decide to sit in and help out some friends, help out a friend on a recording or two (or three), play a theatre show here and…

Guitar Wiring Explored: The Spin-a-Split Mod

In a previous article we looked at how to rig up a simple switch to split a humbucker to a single coil. This gives two very different sounds. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could choose not just those two sounds, but anything in between as well? This is where the Spin-a-Split modification comes in.

Ukulele Playing for Better Bassists

Behold! The mighty ukulele! Able to lull mighty beasts to sleep, be slung over the shoulder, and woo the women! It slices, dices, makes one mean cup of coffee and if you act now, it WILL make you a better bassist like it did me! *Insert record scratching* Yeah, you heard that right. Playing ukulele…

Andy LaRocque of King Diamond: Gear, Recording and Touring

Since the very beginning Andy LaRocque has been a defining part of King Diamond. His solos are melodic, full of harmony and include full use of the whammy bar. When a song comes on that he has played on you know whose playing that solo even if you don’t recognize the song. He has been featured on…

Basslines Pickups Become… Seymour Duncan Pickups

From now on, our bass pickups will no longer bear the Basslines name. They’ll be known as Seymour Duncan pickups instead.

What Is A Humbucker?

The humbucker pickup is a staple for so many guitar players around the world. But how does it actually work, and what is the history behind it? This article endeavors to give you a brief overview of all these things.

The Mystery of 7th Chords

At some point during our musical education, we come across the confusing idea of 7th chords. Major 7? Minor 7? Diminished 7? And just plain ol’ 7? Aren’t they the same? And who cares! I just play power chords anyway! True, if you just play power chords and intend to keep doing that for the rest…

What Is A Mini-Humbucker?

The tone of a Mini-Humbucker has been described as somewhere between a full sized humbucker and a single coil. Originally developed by the Epiphone company in the ’50s, they were brought over into Gibson models with the purchase of Epiphone in 1957. They are lower output but tend to be brighter, with more chime and…

What’s the Difference between a Pickup and a Microphone?

Magnetic guitar pickups and microphones seem to do the same job: they turn the sounds we’re making into electrical signals, which we then either record, or amplify and use to drive speakers (or both). They’re the first thing in a chain that takes a quiet sound and makes it louder. But can we say  that…

The Truth About True Bypass

The world of guitar is, like most things in life, full of strange buzzwords and mis-information. In this article we’ll focus on one of the most controversial of these terms: true bypass. By the end, you should understand exactly what it is, what it does, and why you do (or do not) want it in your pedals.

Breaking Down the Barriers: The Locrian Mode

Now we come to the end of my series on modes of the major scale, and this is a tough one. The Locrian mode is the least used, and probably the most misunderstood out of all of the modes of the major scale. This one isn’t tough to play, though. It is just a C…

The Bill Mumy Interview

There’s a lot of ways from which you may know of the name Bill Mumy. Perhaps from Babylon 5 if you’re a child of the 90s, or more likely from his iconic role as Will Robinson on Lost In Space if you’re older, or a fan of vintage sci-fi TV dramas. Or maybe from his…

History of Seymour Duncan Products

For 37 years Seymour Duncan has been developing products to help musicians find their voice and get the most out of their instrument. We thought it would be fun to look back at when some of our more notable products came out.

Cage Match: Cover Bands vs. Original Bands

Ah, it’s an argument guitarists have been having since we started strumming our first G chord: should we learn and continue to play songs we like for fun and money, or should we forge our own path just like our heroes did? Certainly we can debate this in a civil manner, right? Right? Game on!

New Perri Ink. Guitars With Own-Label Seymour Duncan Pickups

Perri Ink. – the company founded by guitarist Nick Perri of Silvertide – has introduced two new custom guitars, the South St and the Melrose. These instruments feature boldly different body styles to each other but they share a lot in common too: both feature quarter-sawn maple necks with reverse headstocks and rosewood fingerboards, solid alder bodies, vintage 6-hole tremolos, and a trio of Perri Ink. Label Seymour Duncan mini-humbucker pickups.

Drum Programming For Guitarists

Once upon a time guitarists had to contend with clumsy drum machines if they wanted to make a demo. Either that or, y’know, learn to play the drums. But sequencers and home studio software have changed all this. Now you can craft passably life-like drums on your laptop while sitting on your butt in your PJs on the couch.

Seymour Duncan’s Prodigal Sons: the SH-7 and the SH-9

If you were to take a close look at the lineup of pickups from Seymour Duncan, you might notice a numbering system for the humbuckers: SH-1 (’59), SH-2 (Jazz), SH-3 (Stag Mag), all the way up to SH-18. This nice line of sequential pickups gives you an indication how old a specific design is. For example, it’s pretty commonly known that the SH-2 Jazz and SH-4 JB were developed simultaneously. It doesn’t take much imagination to think that those first few pickups were designed and released in the same era, the late 1970s. But look again and you might notice two gaping holes in the lineup. The SH-7 and SH-9 are missing!

Stack Plus Pickups – Single Coil Tone Without the Hum

When noiseless single-coil pickups are discussed, it won’t be long before someone says that they can never sound exactly like a real single coil. The fact that they’re humbuckers at the core means that some of that high-end sparkle disappears. There are some things to remember at this point.

Introducing The Nazgûl

It’s not just a pickup, it’s a weapon of  tonal Armageddon. The Nazgûl was designed with a single purpose; for intense high-output-chug heavy punch-you-in-the-chest ruthless distortion. The tone is heavy and aggressive but it also retains articulation and provides the precise pick attack that is necessary for high-output metal. The Nazgûl gives chords heavy saturation…

Ola Strandberg, The Genius Behind The Ergonomic Guitar System

A couple of years ago I was looking for a replacement tremolo system to fit a Floyd Rose route. I stumbled on the tremolo system designed and build by Ola Strandberg. Even though my guitar and the tremolo system weren’t compatible after all (at least, I wasn’t willing to do the necessary, though minor, modifications),…

7/8 String Soapbar Size Now Available

Ever since active pickups came out and many guitar manufacturers starting building with them in mind, there’s been one problem – the standard size of active pickups (Phase II) is different than the size of regular passive humbuckers. Changing out your active pickups for regular passive pickups just isn’t possible if your guitar was designed…

Fun with Delay

Delay, or echo (as it should be called) is the repeating of sound. It is the sound when you yell into a canyon and you hear your voice back at you because it reflects off of the rocks. No canyons around? Well, you can simulate this sound with a delay pedal. But it is usually…

Wiring A Hollow Body Guitar the Easy Way

Have you ever looked at a hollow or semi-hollow guitar on the wall at your local music store and wondered how the heck they get the electronics in there? The short answer: it’s do-able, but not easy. In fact, it’s widely considered to be one of the most difficult jobs in the wide world of guitar maintenance. My tech charges extra for doing electronics work in a hollow-body, and he’s definitely not the only one.

The Kramer Chronicles Volume VI: The Pearly Gates Neck

In this ongoing saga of testing out Duncan humbuckers in my trusty rebuilt vintage Kramer Voyager, I’ve been through quite a few bridge pickups all paired with the ’59N, which is a great neck pickup. Not just great but super versatile, and able to blend with every single bridge pickup I tried. Great cleans, killer…

Tele Bridge Pickup Options

If you’ve got a Telecaster that you love the feel of but you’re not totally happy with the lead pickup sound, there are lots of options. In this article I’ll take you through some of them, and let you hear what a few of them would sound like too. I’m going to assume that your Tele is a “normal” one – as in, it has the big metal bridge plate with a single coil pickup in it. Where can we go from there?

Li’l Screamin’ Demon for Strat

Following on from my demonstration of the Little ’59 pickups, I wanted to continue with a few words about the Li’l Screamin’ Demon. Most discussions of single-coil-sized humbuckers tend to drift towards the pickups that make up the Everything Axe set – the Little 59, the Duckbuckers and the JB Jr. It’s a great set…

Yngwie Hits The Road And The Bookshelves

Yngwie J Malmsteen never slows down – certainly not on guitar, and definitely not in his work ethic. Yngwie is on the road right now promoting his new album Spellbound (which features some of the most extreme neoclassical guitar magic of his career), and he’s also just released his autobiography, Relentless – A Memoir.

How I Fixed My Warped Pickguard

While storing ‘loaded up’ pickguards, I noticed that one of them started bowing itself into a bowl shape. When I wanted to use it, there was no way it was going to fit on the guitar. Yes, I could have forced it, but putting slight pressure on the edges caused the middle to bubble up, so more drastic methods were needed.

Slap Bass Bassics – The Thumb

Simply put, the thumb in slap bass is the bass drum of the drummers kit. It provides that punch, it gives the rhythmic pulse that everything else is laid upon. It can be as simple or as complex as needed (please remember that comment, and repeat it to yourself a couple more times to let it sink in), but it needs to be solid to keep the beat moving. Anything else and you stand to lose the feel of the groove, which is priority number one as a bassist.

Breaking Down the Barriers: The Aeolian Mode

Welcome to the next installment of my series on the modes of the major scale. This is probably the most popular mode, and the one most associated with music we have learned on guitar. The reason being is that the Aeolian mode goes by another, more common name: the minor scale.

Pickup Comparison Chart

The following is the archived version of the Pickup Comparison Chart. The B/M/T numbers have since been re-worked by our engineering department. Seymour Duncan Humbuckers & Trembuckers Model Name (click for details) Cable DC Resistance Resonant Peak    Magnet EQ B/M/T Output User Type   6 string - Sentient Four Con. Neck: 7.75 k Neck:...

Performing in Pakistan & North Korea

Many European and North American bands will cross the Atlantic to play shows far away from home. Bigger bands even commonly tour Asia and South America. How many many bands have you heard about that have played shows in North Korea, Pakistan and Iraq? Jason Carter hails originally from Britian and over his lifetime developed…

Q&A With Alex Skolnick

Recently we were lucky enough to snag some time with Alex Skolnick (while he took a break in a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf) to talk about Testament, Alex Skolnick Trio, tone, technique, gear and just general life stuff. Alex fielded questions on Facebook from our fans, and here’s an edited transcript of the questions…

Breaking Down the Barriers: The Mixolydian Mode

In the last Breaking Down the Barriers article, I discussed the Lydian, or 4th mode, of the major scale. The Mixolydian mode is a very popular one, so you are bound to hear it more. It sounds great with many styles of music too, so you may easily find a use for it.  You can…

Greg Hetson of Bad Religion

Greg Hetson, “the Geordie Howe of Punk”, has been a staple of the L.A. punk scene since 1979. Hetson got his start playing in the influential Red Kross, leaving in ’80 to form the Circle Jerks (featured in The Decline of Western Civilization Vol. I). Since 1984, Hetson has split his time between Bad Religion,…

Buying Used Guitars Online for Fun and Profit

As 2013 begins its inexorable stretch toward the warmer days of Spring, it feels right to talk of new things; of rebirth; of bare-limbed trees emerging with new growth, brown fields awakening with the green hues of renewal, and old guitars finding new purpose in the hands of eager players with open minds and eyes…

Interview – Niclas Etelävuori from Amorphis

Blending folk and metal together into a cohesive unit is a challenging task for anyone, let alone the bass player left to keep it all together. We caught up with Niclas Etelävuori from Amorphis and talked about the new album, his process of creating his bass lines, and more.

The Action of your Neck: Unlocking Its Mysteries!

Every now and then, friends come over with complaints about their guitar: the tone is wrong, the playability is off, tuning stability issues and sometimes even cosmetic issues are brought to my attention. I’m happy to address all issues, but some issues are so easy to solve that I think it’s wise to write this…

The Kramer Chronicles Volume IV: The Custom

In the continuing saga of testing pickups in my 80s vintage Kramer rebuild, we’ve been through how the ’59, Pearly Gates, and Alternative 8 sound in the bridge position, and matched with the ‘59N in the neck. Since the Voyager’s Alder body has proven to be an interesting test bed for all the pickups so…

Dictionary of Tone Terms

When describing tone, many guitar players use a myriad of terms to describe the sonic qualities they perceive  I want to take a closer look at some of those terms and try to explain what they mean. It is worth mentioning that most terms relate to ‘feel’; the feel a pickup gives you is crucial…

This One is Just Right: The D-TAR Mama Bear

D-TAR is a sister company of Seymour Duncan, and consist of partners Rick Turner, co-founder of and luthier to the stars, and Seymour Duncan, the electric pickup maker. D-TAR stands for Duncan-Turner Acoustic Research and focuses on acoustic guitar products like pickups and preamps. The Mama Bear is sort of a specialized digital preamp and direct box for acoustic guitar, but it really does much more than that.

Drinkin’ Beer with Willie Adler of Lamb of God

Ask someone about their favorite heavy metal bands and it shouldn’t take long to hear Lamb of God. Since their founding in 1990 by Willie Adler, his brother Chris, Randy Blythe, Mark Morton and John Campbell, they’ve put out six studio albums and continued to tour around the world even despite recent troubles in the…

Slap Bass Bassics – Nailing That Tone

I think Randy Jackson said it best, when he said “Ha! Slapping, the ketchup of the bass world!” and it rings true. Walk into any music store and you will usually hear SOMEONE slapping away on a bass (and in full disclosure, sometimes that’s been this guy). It’s fun, relatively simple and while there are…

Fret Sizes and Materials

One often-overlooked factor in the feel and playability of a guitar is the frets. There are various properties of the frets that can really change how the guitar plays. Let’s have a look at some of them, and what they mean for your guitar’s playability.

Livin’ Lovin’ TONE: The Whole Lotta Humbucker

Seymour Duncan worked in the Fender Soundhouse in London. He worked on the actual guitars of many British blues-rock heroes. During that time he got to re-wind many pickups on these iconic guitars.
He pays tribute to that time and his work by offering us the Whole Lotta Humbucker.

Optimising HSS for Distortion

I put two Classic Stack Plus pickups in the neck and middle positions of my Strat, and a JB Model Trembucker in the bridge. I set up some fancy switching to split the pickups at appropriate times, and to change the volume pot from 250K to 500K when the humbucker was active.

The Kramer Chronicles, Volume III: The Alternative 8

The Alt 8 is one of Seymour’s more-recent offerings and the first of their production humbucker line to be designed around the A8 magnet. The A8 has a unique flavor, one that seems to span the gap between Alnico and ceramic magnets in that it has Alnico sweetness in the highs and ample mids, but also has a tight low end similar to a ceramic.

Your Bass Tonal Palette III – The Active Pre

Possibly the easiest drop-in for those that are upgrading to an active preamp is the two-band. Many options are available (either separate or stacked knobs) to ensure that no extra drilling is needed on your bass.

Your Bass Tonal Palette II – Passive Tone

In the first installment, we talked about using your volume knobs (or your blend) to create tonal variety in the event that you walk into a gig and are told that your amp (read: main source of tonal sound) will not be used and that a DI and set of headphones are now your best friend. But as we all know, it’s rare that a bass will have JUST a volume knob. Today we’re going to talk about the passive tone knob, or for you lucky guys with more, passive tone knobs.

Your Bass Tonal Palette I – Know your Volume

At some point, a working musician will walk into a gig, amp in hand, and be stopped. They’ll be handed a DI and a set of iffy headphones, and be told that “this is your rig.” No questions, or arguments. Please take your amp back to your car. And believe it or not, this is starting to become a regular occurrence, to the point where I bring my own headphones and preamp/DI of choice. But enough about that.

The STC-3 Active Tone Circuit

Much like a gallon of paint brightens up a room, installing an active preamp into a bass will open up the onboard capabilities that are available to the user. At the top end of tonal options sits the Seymour Duncan STC-3 Active Tone Circuit. A combination of tonal controls and customization options make this active tone circuit an ideal replacement for your existing setup, or for a new build.

Slingerland Songster Model 401: The First Electric Guitar?

It has been said that the electric guitar is a young instrument that’s still evolving. I have to agree with that it is evolving, but being young isn’t necessarily true. There are more instruments that are relatively young; the piano didn’t get it’s current design in the early 20th century, the saxophone was developed in…

Breaking Down the Barriers: The Lydian Mode

The Lydian mode is one of the most expressive modes of the major scale, and through this article, I hope to explain its exotic, yet familiar sound, and how we can use it in our modern compositions. We’ll talk about F Lydian, which is based on the C major scale.

Breaking Down the Barriers: The Phrygian Mode

Recently, I wrote a piece about the Ionian and Dorian modes, the first 2 modes of the major scale. Please check out that article as the theory in this article builds on what was explained there. Let’s dive right in by explaining the next mode: the exotic–sounding Phrygian. Remember, modes are the same scale, just…

Talking Tone & Thrash Royalty With Monte Pittman

Monte Pittman is one of those guitarists that you can rely on to cover any musical situation you throw at them. Just look at his resume: from Prong to Madonna and Adam Lambert, Pittman has the chops, tone and professionalism to slip into a song with the right balance of musical authenticity and individual personality. In November 2012 he released M.P.3: The Power Of Three, Part 1.

Five Questions with Anthrax’s Scott Ian

Anthrax have been going from strength to strength for the past few years. With the return of Joey Belladonna, the Big Four shows, and the 2011 release of Worship Music, Anthrax have been tearing it up all over the world.
Since Anthrax are returning to Australian shores as part of the Soundwave Festival I thought it would be good to ask Seymour Duncan artist, Anthrax guitarist and founding member Scott Ian a few questions.

Harmony: A Closer Look At The Perfect Fourth

When I was younger I developed a passion for harmony. I started learning how modes, scales and chords work together to create music. Harmony is the teaching of a set of rules to make music audible. Perhaps the word ‘rule’ is wrong since that word implies something immobile, the enforcement of the wills or wishes…

Two Kinds of Little ’59

The ’59 Model humbucker is a very versatile humbucker. By using the same materials and methods as the original PAF pickup, a vintage-correct sound is achieved. It has vintage-level output, which means plenty of sparkle, while still having the throatiness that humbuckers are known for.If, however, your guitar doesn’t have a space where you can…

Gary Hoey Gets The Blues. And Loves It.

We all know Gary Hoey can do pretty much anything on guitar. His cover of prototypical prog classic ‘Hocus Pocus’ was a Top 5 Billboard Mainstream Rock hit in 1993. In 1994 his soundtrack to Endless Summer II single-handedly made surf music cool again in the eyes of players raised on shred. His Ho Ho…

Relaxation and the Economy of the Left Hand, Part 2

In the last article on this subject I wrote about my approach to the left hand, concentrating on the wrist, palm and thumb. This time we’ll look at the fingers. First I’ll start out by saying that I seem to have little girl hands. I am fairly short too, at 5’7”, so those who have much bigger…

The Kramer Chronicles, Volume II: The Pearly Gates

When last we left off, I’d installed the ’59 set in my resurrected-mutant 80s Kramer Voyager. It sounded great, but the idea was to see how different combinations worked in the guitar, so we’ll be moving on to the next bridge pickup combo (the ‘59 neck remains). While the ’59s sound great, and fully nail…

Gigging at the Edge of Reason, Episode 2

Gigging at the Edge of Reason is a series I started here on the Seymour Duncan Blog to share stories of gigs that have gone terribly awry for one reason or another. Performing live is an art all to itself. My hope is that by sharing these stories from time to time, we can all…

Talkin’ Bout A Revolution: Circular Picking

In this lesson I’d like to look at one of my secret weapons. No, it’s not the magic amulet that lets me talk to animals. I’m still officially denying I have that in case that pesky wizard starts poking around again. And it’s not even my winning smile and sparkling wit. Still officially denying I have those too. It’s circular picking.

Choosing Neck Pickups For A Les Paul

Les Pauls are famous for the tone the neck pickup produces. I feel that a Strat and Tele (in my opinion the two other ‘big ones’) also have an amazing neck pickup tone, but the Les Paul really shines and sings when you add some gain to it.

The Kramer Chronicles, Volume I: The ’59 Set

When I was a kid first starting out on guitar, there was no widespread “DIY” market to speak of. That was just beginning. You basically took what you could get at your local music store, and liked it. Unless you were daring enough to try the also embryonic mail-order market and run with something you…

Inductance: What It Is And Why It Matters

A pickup is nothing more but a large strand of copper wire, wrapped thousands of times around a holder (called the bobbin) forming a coil, and somewhere stuck to the coil you have a magnet. In some very simple designs the magnet itself can be the bobbin! The wires of a pickups are extremely thin – something like the thickness of hairs, maybe even thinner. But there is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all,’ standard wire.

The Poor Overlooked Middle Pickup

I remember the day I got my first electric guitar – a cheap Status brand Stratocaster copy. It wasn’t exactly the greatest axe in the world, but I loved that damn thing. Put thousands of hours of fingergrease into it. And it only took a few weeks of being an electric guitarist to realise – the middle pickup was where a lot of my favourite sounds were.

Freestyle Ear Training

In the days before tablature transcriptions and YouTube video tutorials, guitarists had only their wits, ears, piano charts (!) and each other to count on to accurately learn their favorite tunes or material for paying gigs.

NAMM 2013: It’s going to be LOUD!

Each year the world’s makers of musical instruments and accessories gather in Anaheim, California for the NAMM Show. This year at the Seymour Duncan booth we will be having live demos from some incredible artists. If you plan on attending, we are located in Hall B at booth 5561. To see what it’s like to…

Finding The Right String Gauge For Metal Players

Fresh off a recent tour with Jeff Loomis and currently in the studio working on a new release for his band Shaded Enmity, Joe Nurre joins us to write about picking out the right string gauge for metal. When I first started using a 7 string and guitars in alternate tunings, I found myself constantly…

Building A Great Strat On A Budget

One thing I’ve been really wanting for a while now is a Strat. I’ve been playing Ibanez guitars equipped with Floyd Rose type bridges pretty much exclusively since I was 16. Now the thing is, I wanted a Strat, but not many actual Fenders or Squiers (or other guitar companies building Strat-style guitars) offered what I was after at a good (read: cheap) price. Most of the Fenders and Squiers I looked at have 9.5″ radius fretboards, which would bug me after a while. I wanted black hardware too, and Fender doesn’t seem to have many models like that anyway.

Telecaster Build Blog Part 3. From Parts To Guitar

Earlier, I showed you the steps I took to turn some parts into a guitar. I drilled the holes in the neck so the neck and body can be attached. I also installed the tuners. Just a recap: this Tele has a medium weight hard ash body and a thick single piece maple neck with 21 frets.

The Mad (Guitar) Scientist’s Lab Equipment List

It’s a little known secret that mere mortals can repair and maintain their instruments using only hand tools (sssh, this is just between us!). Heck, using prefab or custom-ordered necks and bodies, you can build them too. Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t always need a ton of unwieldy and expensive tools to work on,…

History of The Electric Guitar

The field of development concerning electric guitars is still in motion. Some innovations that were once hailed as the be-all-end-all of electric guitars were replaced by newer technologies whilst others are still being used extensively to this day. This timeline doesn’t claim to be complete by any means. There are many more companies that have…

How To Replace a Pickup’s Four-Conductor Lead

The four conductor lead found on most humbuckers is a very handy thing.  It enables us to get many tones from a single pickup (series, parallel, split, and more). If you want to make a wiring change, just cut the lead down a bit and wire up that pickup once more. But what do you…

14-string(!) Technical Prog Metal: Felix Martin

If ever you happened to be at a Felix Martin gig, you’d know something was… different. Even if when you first walked in you didn’t immediately notice Felix was playing a 14-string instrument, one couldn’t help notice the complexity of the music, as well as the level of technique displayed. Not just by Felix but…

You Want Meaty? The Duncan Custom

Imagine the best PAF sound you could think of, juiced up and in the midst of a meltdown (and I mean this in the best possible sense of the term): more powerful and aggressive, with an added vibe of wild unpredictability – it might go nuts on you, but you’re pretty sure you’d like it -and you have the mighty Seymour Duncan Custom.

Adding Texture To Your Playing With Archaic Scales!

Even the very-much known major and minor scales are just ancient modes. In this article I want to take a closer look at modes and how many players use them, but actually don’t know that they use them.

How Easy Is It To Install A Loaded Pickguard?

So you’ve got a Strat, and you want to upgrade the pickups and electronics, but hate the idea of having to solder all of the connections? The Seymour Duncan Loaded Pickguards for Strat® are exactly what you need. With the Liberator solderless pots installed on most models, the Loaded Pickguards make changing your pickups and electronics a breeze.

Make the Most of Your Studio Time

Time and money – two precious resources that musicians never seem to have enough of. Nowhere is this more apparent than when it’s time to record, especially in today’s era of tight budgets and high production values. A poorly managed recording burns time and money.

Upgrading Your Guitar

Got an old Strat or any other guitar that you love to pieces, but that isn’t quite fully dialled in yet? Upgrading your guitar’s parts and hardware can improve the tone and performance of your instruments – it can actually make them feel better, and therefore more fun to play! With a few tweaks and…

Getting Five Sounds from Two Humbuckers

I recently built myself a Tele-style guitar from parts. I used a vintage white Swamp Ash body from Warmoth, the neck from my 10-year-old USA Fender Telecaster and hardware from… well, mostly from eBay actually. I already have a Telecaster with an STR-1 Vintage Rhythm pickup in the neck position and an APTL-3JD Jerry Donahue…

Mayones/Seymour Duncan Competition

With the new year approaching we figured it would be a good time to launch a new contest. We teamed up with Mayones, a pretty well known guitar manufacturer based out of Poland (particularly well known for their quality and line of 7/8 string models). This is your chance to show the world your chops…

Own Your Tone: The Seymour Duncan Custom Shop

Seymour Duncan isn’t just about the hundreds of pickups you see in the shops and read about in the comparison charts.  If after all that research, you can’t find what you seek, it’s time for a call to the Custom Shop. The Custom Shop, now headed by Seymour’s son, Derek Duncan, is where you find your…

Vintage Tremolo Stability

The most common tremolo system is the 6-screw “vintage” tremolo that was on the original Strat and still appears on many guitars now. The influence of its basic design can be seen in more modern tremolos such as the Floyd Rose, and “vintage replacement” tremolos from such manufacturers as Hipshot, Wilkinson and Schaller. This type…

Rising Dutch Guitar Slinger Timo Somers

Timo Somers, born in 1991, started playing when he hit the tender age of 12. His father put a guitar in his hands; who could have imagined he’d build himself such an already impressive career? As a guitarist of the Dutch progressive metal bands Delain, Tri-head and Vengeance, not including his many side projects, Timo is an extremely busy and productive player.

Frampton and The Phoenix Comes Alive

Even after 36 years Peter Frampton carries on with great energy, a love for live shows and an attitude that makes everyone enjoy talking and being around him. 36 years ago his passion for live recordings led to one of the most successful live albums of the time – Frampton Comes Alive. Featuring hits like…

The Stealth Brutality of the Custom Custom

Varying on an already proven theme (the venerable Seymour Duncan Custom), the Custom Custom features the familiar Duncan Custom coil-wind with an Alnico 2 magnet as opposed to the standard ceramic magnet for a sweeter, more subtle yet no-less deadly variant on the Custom tone.

Make Tracks: Recording Acoustic Guitar

Few things make me happier than a great song played on a fine acoustic guitar.  The shimmer of the strings and the resonance of the body fill the room and warm my heart.  I’m most definitely an electric player first and foremost, but there’s just something fundamentally satisfying about playing a well-built acoustic.  This is…

Rollin’ Fat And Heavy With The Quarter Pound Flat

With its full resistance resistance of 13.3K, 1/4″ Alnico 5 pole-pieces and an EQ curve of 5 (bass) – 4 (middle) – 6 (treble), the Quarter Pound a scorching hot single coil. The Quarter Pound is available with the option of an extra wire which allows you to tap the pickup to roughly half its output, making it sound a little more like a vintage single coil.

Making Sense of Seven-String Chords

The easiest thing in the world to do with a seven-string is to go straight for those lowest two strings and simply chug out. But there’s a lot more you can do with them, whether you’re into metal or not. So this month I’m gonna show you some of my favourite seven-string chords – chords which can be useful no matter what style you’re in. After all, doesn’t the extended low range of a seven-string make sense in a context like country, for instance?

Selling Your Music Online

Back in the old days, making a record could be an incredibly expensive process, with only a handful of record studios across the country and the only real distrubution of your music being radio (some of which required payola). These days, a 14 year old kid with Pro Tools, an audio interface, microphone and a…

In Search of the Secrets of Slash’s Sound

“A Les Paul into a Marshall”. It’s an accurate description of Slash’s signature sound, and it seems so simple. So why is it so hard to get that famous tone? In search of the answers to this and other questions about Slash’s rig, I interviewed Ace Bergman, Slash’s guitar tech on the Apocalyptic Love tour.

Seven-String Pickup Options

One thing 7-string players continually cite as an attraction to the extended range of the seven is that they can still play everything that they could play on a six-string guitar – as well as getting down into much lower musical territory. And that’s true of tone too: the sounds you get out of your six-string pickups are also available from 7-string versions. Many of our popular models are available in versions for 7-string players, and even if we don’t offer a production 7-string version of a six-string pickup you’ve just gotta have on your seven, the Custom Shop may be able to help!

The Recording Guitarist

As technology advances, it’s becoming easier and cheaper for the semi-pro and hobbyist guitarist to have his or her own high-quality recording rig in their own home. Long gone are the days of futzing about worrying about losing fidelity from too many bounced tracks on your 4-track (or if you were really a big-shot –…

Breaking Down the Barriers: The Ionian and Dorian Modes

In my last blog about modes, I explained their names and what they are. Now is where the fun begins. We will take a look at each mode in our C scale, and figure out why just playing the notes in a different order makes so much of a difference. Trust me, it does. We will start at the first mode of course. That is right, C major, or C Ionian.

In Defense of Small, Low-Wattage Amps

After reading Adam Gotch’s excellent case for using 100 watt amps at gigs big and small, I am compelled to come up with a counter-argument. There is simply no sonic reason outside of tight, riff-based metal to use a stack these days. Even then, I’d argue that there are probably plenty of instances a well-defined…

Shop Talk With Rascal Flatts Guitar Tech David Graef

David Graef is country at heart, but rock n’ roll in spirit. He was raised on a Texas farm thinking he’d end up a farmer. In the ’80s, he took a chance, moving to Nashville hoping to make a living with a guitar. Years later we can look back and say that chance definitely paid off….

Reconnecting with Papa Roach

Papa Roach is synonymous with Last Resort, their major hit off their debut album Infest. With their newest album, The Connection, they come out with the ferocity that this is their last resort. They push the envelope to new areas with electronic add-ins while revisiting the past they’ve long forgotten with raps & flows reminiscent of…

The Screamin’ Demon – One Misunderstood Pickup

If there were one pickup out there that was misunderstood it would be the Screamin’ Demon. Developed for George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob, Souls of the We), many think that the Screamin’ Demon is going to be one hell of a high output humbucker. But as George explains in The Story of George Lynch’s Screamin’ Demon Humbucker, the opposite is the case. George discovered that a moderate output pickup was more suitable for sustain and playing dynamics.

Impedance: How It Works In Your Pickup

In this article I want to talk about the physics behind pickups in order to explain why using the DC resistance as a measure of output is not the best way of viewing the output of a pickup. But first, what is DC in the first place? Why is it relevant at all when it comes to pickups? When those questions are answered we have to take a look at the origin of the signal itself: where does the signal come from? Why are magnets and coils so crucial?

How To Use Autotune For The Forces Of Good

I’m sure we’ve all glared at our keyboardist friends with envy at the sheer volume of sounds they’re able to call up at will while we’re happily stuck within the confines of what a guitar, effect and amp setup can naturally do. And not to get all ‘infomercial’ about it, but synth/MIDI guitar can be pretty expensive to implement. You need a guitar with a suitable pickup for capturing the basic information from each individual string, and this can take the form of a special hex pickup or piezo elements linked into an electronic brain. You need an interface to turn that information into MIDI data. And then you need a MIDI sound module to turn that data into music again.

Essential Items No Guitarist Should Leave Home Without

Ever been to a club with a live band, and halfway through the first set something breaks down on the guitarist or bass player’s rig – sometimes something as simple as a string breaking – sends the player into a tailspin?

Recording the Beast: Being Prepared for the Studio

Going into the studio can be a fun and amazing time for any band, but it is work. It isn’t like what we read about- an endless parade of press and groupies with everyone slowly nodding their head as they listen to your superhuman solo. I mean, that is what we might want it to be, but it pretty much never is.

Lacquer: The Barrier Between Your Guitar And Hazard!

Ever since musical instruments were crafted of wood they had to be protected. Whether it’s protection from the player (sweat can be quite aggressive; just take a look at the gold plating of your (friend’s) vintage Les Paul Custom) or from the elements, wood has to be safeguarded from hazardous,external influences. This is because the…

Tele Build Blog, Part 2: Prepping the Headstock for Tuners

Last time I installed the neck of my Telecaster project, but no single piece of hardware was attached. The time has come to take a crack at the tuners. It’s in my opinion that the best way to install the tuners as the first piece of hardware. That way you can loosely fix some (old) strings to the bridge and move it around to get the best spacing possible.

Hand Health: Coping with Carpal Tunnel and Arthritis While Playing Guitar

As a guitarist, your hands are your life. Any discomfort or injury can seriously hinder if not impede one’s ability to play to the best of your capabilities. It kind of goes without saying that punching things is generally a bad idea, try to avoid that if at all possible. But if you have any sort of pain or stiffness issue it’s not only a physical hindrance, it’s psychological too -you’re hesitant to play that expansive lick that even though it would be perfect, you know it’s going to hurt so bad you may not pull it off correctly.

Seymour Duncan SSL-1 California Set for Stratocaster

I’m a hardcore Les Paul lover. For years I refused to play anything else but Les Pauls. I tried to get all the tones I wanted from them, but three years ago that started to change. I got myself a hollowbody Les Paul and saw myself using that guitar for ‘hollowbody tones.’ With that guitar as a stepping stone, a small urge developed inside me to get a Strat and a Tele.

Review: Seymour Duncan Custom Shop RTM Humbucker

Let me first say this:
The Seymour Duncan Custom Shop RTM bridge humbucker is one of the coolest pickups you’ve probably never thought about trying.
When the good people at Seymour Duncan told me I could choose any Custom Shop model to review for this blog, I had no idea which one to pick. Generally, all of my guitars sound pretty good. There were no glaring weaknesses or trouble spots that really needed addressing, but I had my pick of some of the best custom-wound pickups in the business and I was absolutely not going to waste that opportunity.

Squeezing the Mystery out of Compressors

If there is one effect out there than seems to cause guitarists the most confusion, it’s definitely the compressor. I read plenty of people on the Seymour Duncan Forums asking about them. What do they do? Do I need one? What do the controls do? Is it even working?

Gigging at the Edge of Reason, Episode 1

Working musicians know that the key to a positive gig experience isn’t just in how prepared we are, but how well we are able to deal with and respond to the things we never thought to prepare for. We know not to flip out over a bad monitor mix or because the Jagermeister is the…

How Do They Make Those Quilt Tops So 3D-Looking?

When you walk around in a nice guitar shop it’s hard to not drool over the lovely finishes some manufacturers seem to produce. Incredibly glossy with a flame or quilt top that almost looks 3D. The first time I stepped in a guitar shop that carried Paul Reed Smith guitars I could hardly believe that these figures were Mother Nature’s handywork!

Review: Black Country Communion – Afterglow

The best secret weapon in Black Country Communion’s armoury is their ability to make music that sounds like it could just as easily have been made 35 years ago, in terms of musical directness and honesty. That was true of their first two albums and it’s true of Afterglow too.

Seymour Duncan SSL-5; hot, vintage, pure single coils

Before there were amplifiers with master volumes, dedicated gain selectors and almost complete armies of overdrive pedals and stomp boxes, guitar players relied on pickups with higher output to drive their amps into higher gain territory than previously possible. Many players would swap out a pickup for a hotter specimen. The Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB…

Telecaster Build Blog, Part 1: The Neck

I always wished to own a Telecaster, but after having tried over 20 guitars I still was without a Tele! So, I decided to build me one. I started out with Allparts parts though, since I don’t have the time (nor capabilities) to really build from scratch. I have the theory that you want a thick maple neck and medium heavy, medium dense ash for a body. The maple will give the bite, and the thickness will give you some lows.

Conventional Wisdom and the 100-Watt Amplifier

Sometimes you feel like the whole world has gone crazy. At least, that’s how I feel whenever I come across a person on an internet forum repeating the increasingly-prevalent diatribe about the supposed impracticality of the 100-watt tube amp.

Turn It Up! A Documentary All About The Electric Guitar

Promising to be a definitive documentary about the history and the rise of the electric guitar, “Turn it Up!” gives guitar lovers and fans alike a reminder why guitar players love the instrument so much. Starting with the history of the instrument with Charlie Christian and the Rickenbacker Frying Pan, it then interweaves interviews with famous artists such as Slash, Jerry Cantrell, B.B. King, Robby Krieger, Steve Lukather and more, exploring why the electric guitar was invented but also why it grips guitar players and has defined multiple generations of musicians.

Halloween Horror: The Most Evil Scale Ever

Zombies and Zombettes, gather ye round. It’s that ghoulish time of year when a guitarist’s thoughts turn to such devilish delights as the tritone, the minor third and – gasp! – even the dreaded flat second! The horror! These demonic musical intervals can create an unsettling feeling in the listener, scare off household pets, open a gate to the land of the undead, and maybe even make a few shirtless dudes crowdsurf.

Zen and the art of soloing

There are several schools of thought to approaching the guitar solo in rock music. Some eschew any display of technique, opting for “from the gut” or “seat of the pants” minimalist playing. Some go the opposite route and consider their solos mini-orchestral movements within the song, composing busy and gymnastic showpieces.

An Interview With ZZ Top’s Reverend Billy Gibbons

For over 40 years ZZ Top has been defining their version of Texas rock and have always done it in an unmistakable way, with a tone that is as signature as the long beards and sunglasses. Having produced 15 albums, tons of hits and circled the globe many times over rocking out concert halls, ZZ Top has earned their place in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Not only has ZZ Top managed to stay together while many rock bands from the era have broken apart, but Billy, Frank and Dusty continue to crank out great music and tour like a Texas tornado.

Unlocking The Secrets Of Bass Distortion

One of the trickiest things about bass tone is nailing a good distorted sound. Unfortunately it’s usually not just a matter of stomping on a distortion pedal and having a usable tone come out of the speaker. The low frequencies that a bass dwells in don’t tend to play very nicely with distortion. So let’s look at one way of getting some serious grindage along with your rumble.

Tinkering with Pickups 103 – The “Vintage” Modification

In Tinkering with Pickups 102 we looked at swapping magnets in humbuckers to change some of the tonal characteristics of a pickup. In this entry we are going to look at what I’ll call a “vintage” modification for humbucker pickups. As per the warning the previous entry, the following modification also carries some risk of damage to your pickup if you are not careful.

The P-Rails Wiring Bible, Part 3

If you’ve read the other two articles in the series, hopefully by now you’ve got a good understanding of the different ways we can wire P-Rails pickups. Let’s take a look at some of the more common configurations.

Seymour Duncan MI Guitar Scholarship Winner

Congratulations to Max Fricke of Germany who has won our scholarship to attend Musicians Institute to further his music education. Max wrote that “this is my passion, this is my life, this is what I wanna do, and this is what I’m gonna do! I’m a really open-minded person and I will appreciatively use any possibility…

The P-Rails Wiring Bible, Part 2

The three most-used modes for the P-Rails pickup are series humbucker, P-90 mode and rail mode. If these are the only three modes we want to use, the wiring is quite simple.

The P-Rails Wiring Bible, Part 1

The P-Rails is one of Seymour Duncan’s most versatile pickups. It’s a humbucker, a P-90 and a single-coil rail pickup in one. However, to access all these sounds it’s necessary to do some more complicated wiring then you might do if you’re just putting a normal humbucker in your guitar – even if you’ve already wired a coil split before. The fact that some players go for a fourth sound – both coils wired in parallel – only adds to the potential for wiring confusion.

Band Basics: Part 4 – The Branding

Now that we have the look, the sound, and the direction, what’s left to do? Probably one of the most overlooked pieces in regards to your band’s success, the Branding. We need to create something that is bigger than music, bigger than appearance; we need to create your band’s distinct brand. As a brand, we need to form an identity that people can relate to and want to be a part of. That identity helps create a loyal fanbase with an unbreakable bond.

Band Basics: Part 3 – The Image

We already built the game plan and forged a new sound, but now we need to make you look the part. Never underestimate the power of your Image. That’s why you need to carefully mold it into who you want to be seen as. You can give yourself a persona like Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance of Avenged Sevenfold or simply a heightened appearance of who you are like Mark Hoppus of Blink-182. Regardless, we need to convey confidence and self-expression. You need to look like a seasoned professional whether you are or are just in a garage band.

Band Basics: Part 2 – The Music

The most important aspect of any band is the music. It’s the reason people even care about the band in the first place. Rarely do you hear someone say, “Yea, I don’t like their music, but they look so cool that I have to be a fan.” That’d be ridiculous. Music creates a connection with people where they can relate to what the group is saying. Without that, it makes all else irrelevant.

Band Basics: Part 1 – The Mission

So you want to start taking your band more seriously? First we need to examine why you’re starting the band in the first place and what you’re hoping to get out of it. Money? Women? Fame? Hopefully you have a deeper reason than the superficial rockstar perception.

Truss Rod: My Best Friend In Action

Let’s explore the possibilities you have in setting up your guitar – with the trussrod as the centerpiece – so grabbing that key and turning the nut will be less daunting.

Seymour Duncan MI Guitar Craft Scholarship Winner

As a company, we have always believed in giving back to the community by supporting music education. In order to help those who desire to learn more about music and instruments we have offered a bass and guitar scholarship to Musicians Institute. Weeks ago we announced that the Seymour Duncan bass scholarship had been awarded…

So You Want to Get a Bit ‘More’ Out of Your Pickup…

So you’ve got a great bridge pickup that just really shoots flames when running through a hot guitar amp. It’s awesome, but you find yourself wanting just a little bit ‘more’. Not more in the sense of hitting the amp up with a boost or overdrive pedal, but ‘more’ from your pickup. There is a pretty easy way to achieve this with a DPDT on/on switch or push/pull (or push/push) potentiometer, some wire, and some simple soldering skills.

Humbucker History: The SH-55 Seth Lover Model

The humbucker as we know it traces its history back to a design by Seth Lover, who invented it while working for Gibson in 1955. His Patent Applied For (P.A.F.) design has served as the launching pad for innumerable pickups in the nearly six decades since, and these days original examples of those early humbuckers change hands for some pretty impressive figures. But there’s an easier way to tap into that historical tonal mojo, and it’s currently catching the light as I type this and drawing my eye to my Gibson Les Paul: the Seymour Duncan SH-55 Seth Lover humbucker.

The JB: The Sound of ROCK

Originally wound as part of a pair for Seymour’s own Tele-Gib (which was built for a certain legendary British guitarist in the 70s), the JB has gone on to become one of the most iconic bridge pickups in rock music. However, even though it’s the world’s most popular pickup, you might not know it immediately. It’s kind of an unsung hero of sorts. But even if you don’t know the name, chances are you know the SOUND.

Tales of Love and Loss and Gear

Once upon a time, there was this guy who bought a thing. He raved about this thing to anyone who would listen. It was the best thing ever. Superior in every measurable quality to everything else possessing qualities which could be measured. Of all things, this one thing reigned supreme; ultimate champion among the elite echelon of awesome things.

Installing P-Rails and Triple Shot Mounting Rings

A brief summary: P-Rails are a special pickup design that incorporates two different pickup types: a P-90 and a rail single coil. The Triple Shot Mounting Ring incorporates two 2-position switches per ring, that allows either the P-90 alone, the single coil alone, both coils in parallel and both pickups in series, like a traditional humbucker. Combined with a 3-way pickup switch, that is a lot of sounds!

Rockin’ Down Under With Airbourne’s Joel O’Keeffe

Born and raised in the rural Victorian town of Warrnambool, Airbourne vocalist Joel O’Keeffe first realized his love of rock ‘n’ roll at the tender age of nine. He devoured the Rose Tattoo, AC/DC, The Angels, Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs and Cold Chisel albums that he stole from his uncle, while others got drunk and played sport.

Floyd Rose Emergency Restringing

Breaking strings can be stressful at the best of times. But in the middle of a concert, in front of an audience of critical eyes? Forget it. It’s enough to reduce grown men to tears. What on earth do you do if you pop a string mid-gig without a backup? Call for a drum solo while you duck off to the side and change it? What if you don’t have a spare for some reason? What do you do?

Aaron Williams Wins MI Seymour Duncan Bass Scholarship

Congratulations to Aaron Williams winner of the fall 2012 Seymour Duncan Bass Scholarship at Musicians Institute!
Aaron, from Durango, Colorado, says: “Thank you very much for the opportunity and the reward. Bass playing is my passion, and I am very excited to see my dreams unfold right in front of my eyes.”

Hearing is Believing: Getting a Better Tone From Your Rig

We guitar players are strange creatures, aren’t we? We exhibit a lot of habits, behaviors, and superstitions that other people – even other musicians – find odd. We use weird descriptive terms like “woody,” “dry,” and “icepicky” to describe sounds. We say to each other “tone is in the hands” while spending fortunes on equipment. We believe in mojo.

Parallel Axis Trembucker: My Experiences

One of my Les Pauls was in need of new pickups, and I decided to step out of my comfort zone. I usually get PAF-style pickups and I occasionally go a bit hotter, but I decided to try the Seymour Duncan PATB-1 and PATB-2 pickups. I asked Seymour Duncan to change the magnets though. Instead of the Alnico 5 for the PATB-1 and the ceramic for the PATB-2, I chose Alnico 8 magnet bars for both.

That Kid Could Put Us All To Shame

Kids have an amazing ability to absorb and learn at a speed that’s nearly unheard of for adults. Some kids are just pure naturals at playing guitar and at a young age they can make seasoned guitarists’ jaws drop against the floor. In this article we look at some kids who had exceptional playing ability well beyond their years.

Guitar Wiring Explored – Introducing the Super Switch, Part 2

In the last article, we got our first look at a true five-throw switch, with two poles. This allowed us to create some different wiring schemes for a Stratocaster, rather than just the standard one. This week, we’re going to go a step further and look at a true “super switch.”

The Mighty Quarter Pound for Tele Lead

There are two types of Telecaster lover. The first insists on vintage twangy purity all the way, and won’t put anything in their Tele other than the pickups Leo intended. The second type demands more from their beloved Tele: more output, more harmonics, more mids and lows, and more of that raunchy attitude that only a hot-rodded Tele can deliver.

8-String Shred Alert: Sarah Longfield

Sarah Longfield can probably beat you up on guitar – and will use two more strings doing it. Since starting on the piano early and switching to guitar at the age of 12, Sarah’s interests have widened to include drums and keyboards. After learning the basics on 6-string guitars for a couple of years she transitioned to 7 and finally 8-string guitars as her musical interests turned toward heavy, down-tuned metal.

The Ultimate Prog Metal Rhythm Tuning

One of my favorite alternate tunings is Open C, or CGCGCE. As you can see, it’s mostly made up of a bunch of Cs and Gs in different octaves. What I really like about it is that it can be a brutal low tuning for aggressive chugging, but it also gives you a nice sense of atmosphere and additional harmonic complexity on the middle strings and it’s laid out on the fretboard in a way that invites some pretty interesting sweep picking patterns too.

Sizzling Hot Texas Tone With The Pearly Gates

When it comes to neck humbuckers I’m a fan of fairly bright, cutting tones with no mud. A neck pickup needs to have a fairly clean sound, even when under a lot of distortion. I like for it to have a bit of attitude too. I have no time for ‘friendly’ sounding pickups. But they do need to clean up nicely and split well too.

Guitar Wiring Explored – Introducing the 5 Way Super Switch, Part 1

In Guitar Wiring 104, we saw that the standard Stratocaster 5-way switch is an evolution of the 3-way switch. It doesn’t actually have five separate contacts for the five positions. Instead it has three switchable contacts, and in the “in between” positions on the switch connect two of these contacts at the same time.
This works fine if all you want to do is wire a Strat completely as standard. But as soon as you want to change something, the structure of the 5-way switch can become a problem. Wouldn’t it be nicer if we had a similar structure to the three-way switch – so that we had five switchable contacts, one for each position on the switch.

Recycling Your Used Pickup Boxes

Being a dude who’s changed a pickup or two, I’ve amassed a lot of pickup boxes over the years. Sometimes I use them to store spare pickups, but after I started storing spares in a little compartmentalised drawer (a sort of wunderkammer of tone) I realised I’d have a whole bunch of clear plastic pickup boxes sitting around. So now I use them to stash various pieces of guitar gear.

How Hum-Cancelling Works, Part 2

In the last part of this article, we tried flipping the direction of current and the magnetic polarity in pickups to see what effect it had on the signal and hum being picked up by the coil. We found that flipping the direction of current inverted both the hum and the string signal, but flipping…

Breaking Down the Barriers: Picking Chords to Solo Over

Chords can be a lifetime study, and a lifetime isn’t long enough to learn them all. To make matters worse, there are seemingly endless ways to play the exact same chords on your guitar. Most guitarists use about 3% of what is out there, but with some basic theory knowledge we can understand how to use them in our music.

Breaking Down the Barriers: The Relationship Between Keys, Chords, and Scales

What is a key? We have all heard that term before, as in ‘What key is this song in?’ When we first start out playing guitar this all seems so complicated, but in the end it isn’t. The last Breaking Down the Barriers blog focused on the musical alphabet, and how it relates to guitar playing. This article with actually focus on how to use this alphabet in a musical way.

Colt Ford’s Brad Henderson talks Frankenstrat

The guitar pictured is a collection of parts that Brad Henderson personally picked out. The main components and the key to its tone are the candy apple red strat body, Warmoth flame maple neck, and a Seymour Duncan JB SH-4 humbucker in the bridge position.

Charlie Christian: Guitar Hero and Pickup Name-Giver

The most unique pickup when it comes to name giving is perhaps, in my idea, the big single coil pickup that is now being linked to the unique and amazing Charlie Christian.

2nd Annual Seymour Duncan Benefit Concert

On August 30th, at 7pm, a large crowd gathered into the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara to enjoy good music & support music education for kids. Last year we decided to put on a benefit for Notes for Notes, a local group that empowers kids to explore making music to their hearts desire. They can…

Learn Metal with Marios Iliopoulos of Nightrage Pt. 4: Being Nothing

“Being Nothing” is one of the fastest right hand rhythm guitar songs that I have ever composed. It contains very fast down picking and also alternate picking as well. I have recorded 4 rhythm guitars as I usually do on the original recording, and also keep in mind that you need to warm up good…

How Hum-Cancelling Works, Part 1

When we’re designing wiring schemes for guitars, one thing we can take into account is whether certain configurations will be hum-cancelling. Of course, you know that when we select a humbucker on its own it will cancel its own hum. And you probably know that two single coils combined, where one is RWRP, will also form a hum-cancelling combination.

Breaking Down the Barriers: How the Alphabet Makes Us Better Players

Music theory always seems like this mystery handed down on scrolls, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Understanding the relationship between keys, chords, and scales is not difficult, but it does take some practice. Don’t worry, it is fun – it isn’t like algebra class.

An Interview with Mr. Controversy, Dave Mustaine

The man behind Megadeth is the one and only Dave Mustaine. After 30 years Dave is still able to rock and devote intense focus to putting on a memorable show for all of his fans. We figured it was time we had a chat with Dave about his tour, his guitars and his thoughts on the music industry.

Making Your Solos Stand Out – part 2

This is the second part of my two-part article about the options we soloists have for being heard above the din when it’s our time to shine. In the first part I covered some of the more tried-and-true methods for boosting a solo: the guitar volume, switching pickups, and using an overdrive, distortion, or compressor pedal. In this part, we will explore some of the more refined, “professional” options for making your solo stand out.

Viewing Your Band As A Business: Introduction

The music industry is a difficult industry to break into. For every successful band, there are thousands of failed ones. Many young musicians sit in their rooms dreaming of making it big, like the idols covering their walls. They see the money, the girls, and the larger than life lifestyle and want it all. The problem lies in that they have no clue how to obtain it or even where to start.

Easy, Breezy, Beautiful Covered Humbuckers

Picture, if you will, two terrifying scenarios. You find the humbucker of our dreams, but it doesn’t have a nice, shiny nickel-silver cover to complete the look of your guitar. Or you’re looking to class up your axe with some covered humbuckers, but you don’t want to go through the hassle or expense of replacing the pickups. What now? I’ll tell you what now: you go out there and you buy a cover for that ‘bucker!

The Story Of George Lynch’s Screamin’ Demon Humbucker

George Lynch’s Screamin’ Demon humbucker has been a mainstay of his sound for decades, across many different musical styles, amp rigs and guitar configurations. It’s a moderate output P.A.F. -style humbucker with extra growl. And surprisingly for a pickup that has been used to record some pretty scorching riffs, it’s actually not particularly high in output.

On On On Switch – Switches Part 3

In the previous article we looked at on-on switches, and on-off-on switches. There’s one more kind of toggle switch for us to look at. DDPDT On On On Switch Guitar Wiring The last type of DPDT switch we’re going to look at is the on-on-on switch. This is another three-position switch, and the connections it…

More S/H Superstrat Pickup Combo Adventures: The JB/STK-S6 Set

For those that read my last review of the 59/Custom Hybrid and the STK-S7 used as an S/H combo (or as a primer for anyone that didn’t), l love Strats with Floyds and S/H pickup combos. That’s probably my No.1 favorite pickup combo, followed by a S/S/S combo with a vintage Strat bridge, and then any LP-style two humbucker setup (Floyd optional!).

Choosing a Bass Pickup

At Seymour Duncan we’re committed to giving you the tools necessary to get the bass tone you have always dreamed of with our Basslines series of pickups. We’ve created a wide array of pickups for P-Bass, Jazz Bass, Rickenbaker, Music Man and Soapbars.

Perri Ink Guitars releases the Anthem

Seymour Duncan Artist Nick Perri (Shinedown, Perry Farrell, Silvertide, Matt Sorum, SINAI) has just released his latest line of guitars under the Perri Ink. Guitars brand. The Anthem is made distinctive by it’s hand-made Perri Ink. Cartel American Flag pickguard and its use of a Callaham bridge. This, combined with it’s eye catching natural wood…

The Acoustic Tube SA-1 Soundhole Pickup

We all know the story: you have a gorgeous-sounding acoustic guitar and you need to perform with it onstage, but you don’t want to deal with the ‘quack factor’ of under-saddle piezo pickups, nor do you wish to be anchored to a mic or two. And you don’t want to perform an irreversible or otherwise…

Sensual Sensual Singlecoils

In an effort to make his Telecaster more versatile Leo Fender designed the Stratocaster. A radical double-cut design with a truly unique vibrato bridge and three single coil pickups was what the major changes entailed. The guitar Leo designed is still one of the most popular guitars in the world. The tones are unmistakable ‘Stratocaster,’ and the clear yet warm tones have been embraced by, literally, generations of guitar players. But is that reputation really an earned one, or is the popularity of the Stratocaster nothing but a simple reaction to having nothing else available in the fifties and sixties, with as its penultimate result being embraced by millions of players?

The Alnico II Pro

The Alnico II Pro is currently my neck pickup of choice, because it does so many things so well. Probably the most famous with its association with Slash, it is the inspiration behind the APH-2 Slash pickup. Both are constructed with a weaker Alnico II bar pickup, which immediately softens the mids compared to Alnico V-based pickups. The APH-1 is a great choice for jazz, blues or classic rock or a few other things.

Choosing The Right Active Pickup

Seymour Duncan has a wide range of active pickups that were designed to give you a truly organic sound with a wide frequency range (more tone). Our standard AHB-1 Blackouts are available in both Phase I and Phase II sizes, which means that you can easily find the right replacement for your guitar that already…

It’s ALIVE: Building a Parts Strat

Building your own Strat-style guitar is one of the most fun and rewarding experiences I’ve discovered. I started as a teen, inspired by Eddie Van Halen, and never stopped. I was mesmerized by all the inner workings and details that came together to make a killer sounding, classy-looking guitar that played great too.

Guitar Wiring Explored – Switches Part 2

In the last two articles we looked at switches, and then four-conductor humbuckers. This time round, we’re going to look at some new types of switch, and see how we can use those to access some more tones from a humbucker.

Keith Merrow Strictly 7 Guitar Giveaway

Strictly 7 Guitars recently announced the addition of the Spectral Keith Merrow Signature Guitar to its growing line of 7 and 8 string guitars. This guitar features the Seymour Duncan SH-8 Invader –  a humbucker that has a well-earned reputation as one of the most aggressive passive pickups ever. To celebrate the launch of this…

The P-Rails: Three Times The Tone

Sometimes when you’re contemplating a pickup swap or putting together a custom guitar, the hardest choice to make is what kind of pickup to use. Humbucker? Single coil? P-90? Each have their charms, of course, and you can split a humbucker into a single coil to expand your tonal reach a little further. But we guitarists are well known for looking at our instruments and thinking “What if..?” And it was one of these ‘What If Moments’ which led to a pickup which could do all three: the P-Rails.

Building the perfect S/H beast: 59/Custom Hybrid & STK-S7 review

Choosing a set of pickups for a Super Strat with a single-volume, single coil/humbucker pickup configuration isn’t as easy a task as you’d think; especially if you’re looking for versatility. There are a few things to consider, particularly balancing the neck pickup with the bridge humbucker.

Chambering: Relief For Your Back or Something Really Different To Solid?

Previously, we’ve discussed the history and reason for chambering. The actual effect of the chambering has not been mentioned, though. So what do the tone chambers actually do for your tone? First let’s look at what tone actually is. The tone of a guitar can be the sound of the guitar when heard acoustically or…

The Pearly Gates: Pure Texan Tone

The Pearly Gates model is a recreation of a specific set of PAFs in a particular sunburst ’59 Les Paul Standard. Vintage PAFs generally spec out to be low-output by today’s standards, and the Pearly Gates is very slightly overwound compared to the typical PAF. The result is a humbucker that sounds slightly ruder than the average PAF, with strong sustain, noticeable warmth and a bright high end which really helps harmonics to sing.

Guitar Pickup Mods 102 – Swapping Humbucker Magnets

In Tinkering with pickups 101 we went through some fairly simple modifications that can alter the tone of humbucker pickups. These were fairly simple, and didn’t really risk damaging the pickup. The following modifications do carry some risk of damage, but only if you are not careful.
Please understand that performing the next modification is something that you are doing of your own risk. We cannot be held responsible for any damages caused as a result.

Making Your Solos Stand Out, part 1

The solo: for many of us, it’s one of the best things about playing guitar. For others, it’s a terrifying prospect. This article is for those of us brave enough to step up and take the lead for a while, and it deals with a problem as old as the guitar solo itself: how to stand out in the mix when it’s your turn for the spotlight.

Direct Mount Pickups: Why Direct Mount your Pickups?

Some players, myself included, have noticed a subtle but palpable difference between direct-mounted pickups and those mounted more traditionally in pickguards, or in the case of most Super-Strats, mounting rings.

The Secret To 80s-Style Delay

Want a classic 80s-style lead guitar tone but you’re not quite sure why nothing seems to work? The secret to those epic anthemic chest-pumping killer lead guitar sounds is deceptively simple, and it has very little to do with the right hairspray, leopard-print spandex or how florescent your pointy guitar is. And this little trick is so useful that it’s able to make even somewhat novice guitarists sound (relatively) good.

Emerging in Digital Tone

Since the humble beginnings of the electric guitar, there has been a steady increase in the technology that surronds the instrument. Whether it be amps that have exceedingly become more advanced or the birth of digital effets pedals. There is no doubt that during the last 15 years there has been an acceleration in the availability of…

Customizing your Bass with Seymour Duncan

In some cases, a bass that plays great, may not sound great. Customizing your bass with Seymour Duncan pickups, a new pickguard, knobs and a Hipshot D-tuner, are just a few ways you can turn that old bass into one of your main basses.

Testament’s View of Mankind: “Dark Roots of Earth”

Testament does it again! If their last album “The Formation of Damnation” was an exclamation they’ve returned to form, their latest release “Dark Roots of Earth” is their statement that they’ve broke the mold and are recasting the genre. This album proves they aren’t concerned with what others are doing but with who they are…

Interview with Nick Hipa of As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying isn’t your typical metal band, nor have they followed the regular path of being debuted with a strong album and attempting to get back to that point. From their first album their music and skills continued to evolve when in 2007 they released An Ocean Between Us, an album that had…

Hello Me… Meet the Real Me: Mustaine

Dave Mustaine is universally known as the founder of Megadeth and forefather of thrash metal. Dave made significant contributions to Metallica as a member from 1981-1983, and has writing credits on their first two albums. The Seymour Duncan User Group Forum held a Q&A with Mustaine in 2010, with fans pouring in to ask Dave any…

Tinkering with Pickups 101

Opening up and pulling apart magnets may seem a little daunting to some, so I thought I would talk about a few things you can do to adjust your pickups to achieve the sort of sound you are after without any extensive surgery. If you can use a screw driver or allen key, and have basic soldering skills you can achieve some pretty remarkable results.

7 Minutes of Terror

On August 5th, at 10:31 P.M. PT, the large nuclear powered rover named Curiosity will begin its treacherous descent down to the planet Mars. Over the course of seven minutes, a number of extremely advanced systems will kick in, in the hopes of slowing the rover down and gently depositing it into the surface of…

Who’s That Girl With the Seymour Duncans? It’s Sarah Michelle!

If you happened to be on the Duncan  site recently you may have seen the YouTube video of a young shredder peeling off Yngwie and GnR licks on an SRV – inspired Strat equipped with YJM Fury pickups. After you stopped smiling, you probably wondered “Who is this Sarah Michelle?” Wonder no more!

Tremolo Setups: The Care and Feeding of Your Floyd Rose

The Floyd Rose tremolo is one the most popular locking tremolo designs in history, spawning multiple imitations and licensed copy versions. And with good reason – under proper conditions, unless the guitar’s neck somehow shifts (say, by you jumping off your drummer’s riser) it will not go out of tune.

Tapping into Versatility With a Tapped Single Coil

If you’re like me, you love your Strat, but you’re not always in love with the traditional Strat bridge pickup. For many of us, the bridge pickup is the first one to get swapped out when it’s time for an upgrade. Alt rock, hard rock, punk, and metal tend to demand more power, midrange, and low end than a good ol’ vintage-style single coil can pump out.

Talking Shredders, Leppards And Slang With Vivian Campbell

We caught up with Def Leppard’s Vivian Campbell to see what’s up in his world, and to chat about his new Buddy Blaze 25h Anniversary VC Shredder guitar.

Guitar Wiring Explored – Switches Part 1

look at modifying our wiring schemes to achieve non-standard sounds. The first modification most people do is to replace one or more of the potentiometers with a push/pull pot. This is a pot that works in the same way as normal when you turn it, but also has a double-pole, double-throw (DPDT) switch attached. The switch is moved into one of its two possible positions by pulling the pot’s knob out and away from the guitar, or pushing it back in again.

Guitar Wiring 104

By the end of the last article on electric guitar wiring, we had wired a Tele-type guitar for three-way pickup switching using both the standard blade switch, and the Gibson-style toggle switch. We’re going to stick with that toggle switch now, and see how we can have separate volume and tone controls for each pickup….

The Twang Banger: Tele twang, Strat size.

So you say you love the sound of a Telecaster, but you’re a Strat guy? Ever wish you could have the tonal versatility of both <without having to schlep two guitars to the gig? Your wish has been granted!

Iron Maiden And Seymour

If you were to walk into Seymour’s home, one of the first things you’d see would be a platinum disc, proudly displayed on the wall in the foyer. It’s a disc that commemorates Somewhere In Time – Iron Maiden’s first platinum album–and it was given to Seymour as a gift by Michael Kenney, Maiden’s bass tech and live keyboardist.

Firewind Takes a Wall of Sound to Europe

Gus G. is a busy man these days, having just finished a tour with Ozzy Osbourne that paired him up with Zakk Wylde & Slash and then add to that his new album and world tour and you get a man that is determined to make his mark on the music scene. Plans have already been announced for a series of free clinics across the United States. Given all that has happenend, we figured it would be a good time to check up with Gus and see how things are going.

Sail the Seas with Metal’s Most Dangerous Pirates!

Summer is here! The weather is getting warmer, the women are getting hotter, and the music is getting louder. What better to do than plan your vacation… for winter? That might sound strange, but when the snow’s falling and everyone’s shut indoors, wouldn’t you rather be out cruising the Caribbean with some of metal’s biggest…

High Output Pickups vs Medium Output Pickups: Is More Better?

There are many decisions involved when choosing the right pickup. Vintage or Modern? Hum cancelling or not? What kind of EQ do I want? One of the most misunderstood choosing between a vintage output or high output pickup (or somewhere in between).Most people think that high output pickups are only for heavy music, and lower output pickups are for everything else. Once we understand what a higher output pickup does for the sound (and our playing), we might be better equipped to make a choice.

Guitar Wiring 103

So far we’ve had one pickup connected to the volume control and then the volume control sends output to the jack. We’ll continue with that setup, except that when we add additional pickups, we’ll control which ones are connected to the volume control.

Joe Bonamassa Drives Blues-Rock Forward

It’s been a big year for Joe Bonamassa so far. He released Driving Towards The Daylight in May; he’s been hard at work on the third Black Country Communion album with Glenn Hughes, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian; and in January he unveiled his set of signature Seymour Duncan humbucker pickups. It seems there’s always something to do when you’re one of the most popular blues rock guitarists in the world, huh?

Seymour Duncan Announces 2nd Annual Benefit Concert

We had such a great time last year hosting Steve Miller and raising over $50,000 for Notes for Notes that we have decided to do it again. This year, we will have the Grammy award winning rock band Los Lobos with special guest Joe Bonamassa. 100% of all the proceeds will go to Notes for Notes which is…

Nile’s Karl Sanders On Metal Tone, Technique And The Gate Of Sethu

Nile’s latest album is At The Gate of Sethu [Nuclear Blast], an impressive slab of technical death metal loaded with ultra-precise riffs, eerie atmospherics and plenty of the band’s trademark lyrical focus, which finds much of its base in Ancient Egyptology.

Mick Thomson EMTY Blackouts Now Available for 7-String

The pulverizing tone that defines Slipknot and Mick Thomson is now available in a 7-string pickup, just like our regular Blackouts. Mick was already a Blackouts fan before we collaborated on his signature pickup. “Blackouts have a lot more tone than your typical active pickup,” he says. “They sound more real. It’s a bigger sound,…

Neck Vs Bridge Pickups

Pickups come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and with so much tonal variety that it can be a daunting task for a novice to find out what pickup would suit their needs. It is imaginable that a player who plays predominantly jazz would rather have a pickup with a very clear and articulated…

Parchment Colored Bobbins Now Available!

Many popular guitars contain pickguards that use parchment, a color that is an off-white with a tan. We have been getting many requests for this color so people could match their pickups with their pickguard. We are happy to announce that this color is now available for all regular spaced humbuckers.        …

Utilizing the 6 String Bass Part 2

I’d like to discuss utilizing the 6 string bass as a soloist. The great thing about working as a solo bassist, is that no one can tell you that your playing too many notes. As I mentioned in the “Art of Bass Looping” articles, performing a solo bass gig can be a killer experience or…

Utilizing the 6 String Bass Part 1

I’d like to discuss utilizing 6 string bass techniques as a solo bassist as well as in a band situation. First, I’d like to thank Steve Bernstein of Redding Ca. for loaning me his custom built 6 string bass. Constructed with Mahogany, Purpleheart, Birdseye Maple, Moses graphite neck and Hipshot tuners, Steve loaded this beauty…

Help! I Have A Microphone In My Guitar!

You inherit a rather old guitar, made by a known guitar manufacturer in Kalamazoo, somewhere in the seventies. You play the guitar on every occasion you get: at home, in band practice and on stage. Your band gains some momentum and the venues get bigger and bigger and suddenly you are being struck with a high-pitched, shrieky noise coming from your amp.

Guitar Metal Techniques by Marios Iliopoulos

Warming up Exercises Start at 120 BPM and increase the tempos as you feel better each time. 1) Chromatic exercise from E 6th bass string. (DOWN- UP PICKING) With bar from fifth fret. Move the bar at fourth, third, second and first fret as you feel better at each time. (DOWN- UP PICKING) From 1st E…

The Art of Bass Looping Pt. 2

Now that you’ve spent some time using various pickups to achieve an even sound while looping your bass, lets focus on timing and techniques.

To Scallop Or Not To Scallop?

There are plenty of myths out there about scalloped fretboards. They help you play fast. They can make you play out of tune. They weaken the neck. What’s the truth? And what on earth are they for?

Tone-tweaking your guitar with a screwdriver?

For many people adjusting the height of the pickup or the polepiece is an unknown procedure and some players are even scared to adjust the height of their pickup or polepiece!

The Art of Bass Looping Part 1

Bass looping can be used in many styles of music. Funk, fusion, jazz, metal, reggae, you name it. How well an audience receives your looping depends on several things.

So you want to experiment with pickups, but are afraid of soldering…

What if you could pay a tech a one-time fee to install a device that would mean you could swap out pickups to your heart’s content, at home without a soldering iron? Well, Seymour Duncan has you covered with the Liberator.

Learn Metal with Marios Iliopoulos of Nightrage Pt. 3

On the song “Surge Of Pity” I wanted to make a song that combines the ethereal chords of a ballad mixed with melodic lines and some cool riffs with major minor, 7, sus 2 approach to them so they fit the overall vibe of that particular song. It’s one of my favorite Nightrage songs and…

Greatest Album Covers of All Time

Recently, we asked our Facebook fans what they thought the greatest album cover of all time was. We decided to take a look at ten of the most popular album covers that were brought up. 1. Dark Side Of The Moon Pink Floyd Easily the most popular was Dark Side of The Moon by Pink…

Motörhead – Seymour Duncan, Cider and Rock n´ Roll

When it comes to Rock n´ Roll, Motörhead are gods. No question about it. Don´t even try to argue with me about it. Having worked for a lot of years in the music industry, I am lucky that I can call guitarist Phil Campbell a friend of mine. Phil joined Motörhead in 1984, which means…

Mickeydemus, guitarist with Skindred creates a stew filled with Metal, Reggae, and Punk

Almost a decade into his career, having travelled to countless countries and entertained hundreds of thousands of fans, Mikeydemus finds himself four studio albums deep and surrounded by guitar gear. Skindred are a multi award-winning British band who recently completed several legs of a tour (including the UK, Europe, and Australia) supporting their newest offering,…

Learn Metal with Marios Iliopoulos of Nightrage Pt. 2

This song incorporates clean type appreciated chords played with distortion, and I can tell you that I was very inspired from acoustic guitar when I was composing the song. The verse is very in your face and they sound even cooler with the addition of some melodic lines behind it. The clean acoustic break in the…

Monte Pittman on World Tour with Madonna

When people hear about Monte Pittman the first thing they usually think is Madonna AND Prong? Monte has established himself as an incredibly versatile artist and his primary secret weapon is the guitar he designed with Jarrel Guitars called the MPS.

The Story of the Tele-Gib

Back in 1974 I was working in London at the Fender Soundhouse where I was doing guitar repair and modifications. One of the benefits of working at Fender was that I had a chance to meet so many great guitarists that rehearsed on the third floor sound studio.

Conducting From the Grave’s Jeff Morgan Talks Tone

Jeff Morgan has been ripping it up on guitar since he was 14. As the blistering guitarist for for the progressive metal band Conducting From the Grave, Jeff is known as a guitarist that will rattle you to your bones with his barrage of frenetic riffs that also features stirring melodic harmonic content. With an…

Ultimate High-Output Pickup Comparsion

If you are looking for a high-output pickup for rock or metal, check out this comparsion demo where you can see 12 of our most popular models compared in side by side demos. Distortion 0:06 – 1:02 Full Shred 1:03 – 1:59 Invader 1:59 – 2:55 JB 2:56 – 3:53 Alternative 8 3:54 – 4:49…

Voices of Metal – Joe Nurre of Shaded Enmity & The Jeff Loomis Band

In this week’s edition of Voices of Metal we turn to a guitarist who has spent years making brutal music with Shaded Enmity. We recently heard that Joe Nurre had joined up with Jeff Loomis to go on tour, we caught up with him to talk about his tone, the Seattle metal scene and his…

Learn Metal with Marios Iliopoulos of Nightrage Pt. 1

This is the song Insidious which is straight forward thrash death metal kind of song with a lot of frenetic rhythm guitar playing, the Nightrage way. I use a lot of triplets on the rhythms and the overall arrangement its simple and to the point. A nice thing is the change from 4/4 to 3/4 on the…

Going Back 30 Years to our Interview with Carlos Santana

It’s O.K. to make a mistake, but if the tone’s not there, then everyone goes home with a headache and nothing more.

An Interview with Vasely Sapunov of Christian Heavy Metal band Saving Grace

Although musically, the majority of our influences are from secular hardcore and metal bands that we grew up listening to, we are stoked to break barriers and stereotypes and to be able to play bone-crushingly heavy music, that people would not normally associate with a Christian band.

Clinic and master guitarist makes Noise on his new CD

“Knowing what to say and what to play is the easy part; the part you have to work on is your people skills. You’re going to be dealing with lots of different personalities in many different parts of the world so knowing how to get along with the rep you’re traveling with, the dealer you’re doing the clinic for (along with their employees) is sometimes the most challenging part of the clinic.”

Musicians Institute Launches Seymour Duncan Scholarships

As you may have seen on our forums recently, Musicians Institute and Seymour Duncan Pickups and Pedals are offering three innovative scholarships to support bass players, guitarists and luthiers at the legendary music school. Each $2,000 scholarship (tuition credit) will be awarded in Fall 2012 to a newly enrolling intermediate or advanced student (US or non-US…

Joel Hoekstra – The Busiest Guitarist You’ve Never Heard Of

Joel Hoekstra is quite possibly the busiest guitar player you’ve never heard of….yet. Joel has been touring the world alongside Brad Gillis, Jack Blades and Kelly Keagy in Night Ranger for the last 4 years. When at home, he is in the hit Broadway show Rock of Ages 8 shows a week and as if…

Worth The Treble: A Simple Mod To Give You Some Zing

This is a very simple trick which maintains the high end when you roll back the volume control, and it’s especially noticeable if you play a guitar with a H-S-H layout with coil splitting in the 2 and 4 positions.

Wall of Sound – Gus G Gears Up For Ozzy & Firewind Tours

When Black Sabbath announced plans for a reunion album and tour last year, the metal world went into a frenzy. The legends were back! But then Tony Iommi announced his diagnosis with cancer, and the band scaled back its planned appearances to small number of dates. To fill the void left in the wake of…

Maná Breaks Staples Center Record

On April 25th, Seymour Duncan Custom Shop manager Maricela Juarez (MJ) and art director Andreina Diaz attended a historical concert by the legendary Maná at Los Angeles’ Staples Center.   Maná is the most influential band out Latin America since the late 80s  – the equivalent of U2 or The Stones for Spanish speaking countries. They set…

Gus G Checks In From Ozzy & Friends Rehearsals

Firewind and Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Gus G has checked in with us from preparations for the Ozzy & Friends Summer European tour, where he’ll be performing as the main axeman in Ozzy’s band, with special guest appearances by Zakk Wylde, Slash and Geezer Butler. Here’s his message to fans of Ozzy, Gus and Seymour Duncan:…

Synyster Gates Invader

The Seymour Duncan Invader has a well-earned reputation as the most aggressive passive pickup ever. It’s the weapon of choice for metal, punk and rock players who seek maximum power and sustain without switching over to a battery-powered active system. Now this high-gain classic gets a visual makeover inspired by longtime Invader user Synyster Gates…

The Son of a Luthier

For thousands of years luthiers have repaired and created instruments to support musicians in doing what they do. With each generation the skill and art is passed down from one to another. Getting more kids interested in building, repairing and modding their guitars is fundamental to keeping the guitar vibrant and full of unique tone….

The Making of a Custom Shop Pickup

This video shows the process of making a pickup in the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop. Whatever tone you are dreaming of, we can help you get it. Shown in the video is the Phat Staple which gives a nice jazz tone in the neck and a nice lead tone in the bridge. If you have…

Voices of Metal – Esa Holopainen of Amorphis

Amorphis has a long history of intense music that draws inspiration from Finnish folklore. In the season finale of Voices of Metal we talk with the guitarist, songwriter and founding member of Amorphis, Esa Holopainen. Tell us about The Beginning of Times and the inspiration behind this album. “The writing process for TBOT started already…

Neil “Spyder” Giraldo Talks Tone With Seymour Duncan

Neil “Spyder” Giraldo has a reputation as a great guitar player for Pat Benatar, coming up with riffs and solos for “Love Is a Battlefield”, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”, and “We Belong” among many others. In this interview Seymour gets down to Neil’s gear, string gauge, amps and his wild on-stage antics (including biting his guitars).

From The Custom Shop EP 4: Bonanza

In a special episode, Seymour jams with his record producer and Scott Marceau gives an update on what is happening in the world of Duncan. Seymour then joins Bob Bain for a talk on his long and accomplished career.

Voices of Metal – Keith Merrow

When you type in ‘badass metal player’ on Google, Keith Merrow doesn’t show up – but he should. For years Keith has served as a studio musician and a brutal player who has recorded several albums and whose videos have been seen by over 1,700,000 people on YouTube. In this installment of Voices of Metal,…

The Guitar Wizzard That is Oz Noy

Oz Noy begin his proffesional career at the age of 13 and within years was playing with some of the top acts in Israel. By the age of 24 he had become a highly sought after studio musician. In 1996 he set westward to New York City and has since released five studio albums and…

Victor & Penny Put the Pop Back Into Antique Music

Victor & Penny hail from Kansas City and have combined the tone of the 1920’s with their own modern take to form what they call “Antique Pop”. Featuring the musically trained Jeff Freling playing an old Kay Archtop and Erin McGrane, the talented singer and Ukulele player who also stars on the silver screen. The two combine their talents…

Voices of Metal – Ryan Knight of The Black Dahlia Murder

In this weeks edition of Voices of Metal we turn to Ryan Knight, lead guitarist for the metal band The Black Dahlia Murder. Ryan talks with us about his history with Arsis, joining The Black Dahlia Murder, his thoughts on touring, gear and advice for guitarists. Click here to hear our interview with Ryan Knight…

From The Custom Shop EP 3: The Artists We’ve Worked With

In episode 3 Seymour Duncan and Maricela Juarez talk about all the artists we have worked with over the years. We also show the Ken Meyers 911 guitar, talk Dynasonic, Seth Lover, and have a special interview with Jimmy Vivino of Conan.

From The Custom Shop EP 2: Find Your Tone

In this episode of From The Custom Shop, we talk Charlie Christian pickups, The BIG Pickup, take questions about splicing wires, the uniqueness of P.A.F’s and several questions on good recommendations for Telecaster tone.

Live From the Custom Shop EP 1: If You Dream It…

In our first episode, Seymour Duncan and Maricela Juarez take you into the Custom Shop and talk tone, history, and answer your questions.

Voices of Metal – Simon Johansson of BibleBlack

In this week’s edition of Voices of Metal we turn to Simon Johannson who plays alongside Mike Wead in the Swedish band BibleBlack. You have a pretty long history in the Swedish death metal scene, including playing in Abstrakt Algebra and Memory Garden, how do you believe the metal scene has changed in the last several…

Voices of Metal – Alex Skolnick

Several weeks ago we asked you who you wanted to see on Vocies of Metal and we got several responses asking for us to talk with Alex Skolnick. We tracked him down among his busy schedule of touring, recording and writing to talk metal, tone, jazz and Testament. You can listen to the full interview below.

Voices of Metal – Dave Reffett

During NAMM, we had another oppurtunity to meet an incredible musician named Dave Reffett. Dave recently produced, was the lead guitarist and singer on the album The Call of the Flames which featured performances by George Lynch, Michael Angelo Batio, Chris Poland, Glen Drover, Joe Stump and Mike Mangini. This album was widely praised among metal critics and his skills were…

Seymour Duncan Underground – Mike Baker

About 2 months ago, we came upon a very talented musician who was uploading videos to YouTube with some real soulful playing. Having made 74 videos, we tracked down this mysterious player (whose videos usually are shot below the neck) and had a chat with him about his life as a guitar player.

Slipknot Soundwave Festival Contest

In celebration of the huge festival that Slipknot is playing in Australia that is going on today, tomorrow and Monday – we are having a special contest to win a set of Mick Thomson EMTY Blackouts.
All you have to do is post a short slogan that describes the EMTY Blackouts in the comments below. On Tuesday, we will take a look at the entries and select a winner who will receive a set of Mick Thomson’s EMTY Blackouts. The winning slogan will appear on the ad seen below and ran for three months on the Decibel Magazines website.

Voices of Metal – Joe Gettler

During NAMM, we had the oppurtunity to meet some great metal players. One guitarist who stopped by to shred was Joe Gettler. Check out the video below to see our interview with him and hear his skills in action. Click here to learn more about the Load Bros Guitar and the ToneZilla pickups.

From Belgrade to Montreal Borislav Mitic Rocks

Borislav Mitic is a Canadian based virtuoso rock guitarist and a recording solo artist. A shredding guitar player with three solo albums and a fourth one on the way. He has been published on Lion Music and US label Shrapnel Records that discovered virtuosos like Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, and Marty Friedman. Borislav’s new album…

Voices of Metal – Lord Ahriman

In our continuing series to release the Kraken of brutal tone, we turn to Dark Funeral and one of the brutalest guitar players around, Lord Ahriman. How did you get started playing metal? I’ve been into metal since my early childhood, played various instrument when growing up, but I didn’t start playing guitar or write…

Live from the Custom Shop, Episode 1

Begins at 11am PST. Tune in and learn about tone from Seymour Duncan and Maricela Juarez.

Live from the Custom Shop

Join us tomorrow (2/22/12) at 11am PST for a live feed with Seymour Duncan and Maricela Juarez in the Custom Shop. Tweet us your questions and get the answers live on the air. Watch here

Voices of Metal – Brandon Ellis

In our continuing search for brutal heavy tone and the tools used to create it, we came upon Brandon Ellis, who has toured with Arsis and Sylosis and has the unique ability to learn songs incredibly fast. We took one look at this video and said “yes, we need this guy.” Check it out! You…

New Guitars with Seymour Duncan Pickups

Here is a sampling of some of the new guitars announced at NAMM that feature Seymour Duncan pickups. From Schecter, the Blackjack SLS series: From Godin Guitars, the CORE featuring a model with Seymour Duncan P90’s. From Jarrell Guitars, the Monte Pittman Signature line. CJ Pierce of Drowning Pool shows us his new Eagle Gold…

Voices of Metal Returns

Voices of Metal will return for a new installment this Wednesday with a whole new slate of brutal axe grinders. Check out the video below for more information. Know a guitarist you think should be on Voices of Metal? Let us know in the comments below.

Preston Reed Turns The Acoustic Guitar into a Journey

Preston Reed has long been recgnoized as a pioneering acoustic guitar player, with his two handed integrated percussive approach turning a guitar into a symphony and amazing people who are surprised that so many sounds could be created at once, by one man. As with many things, seeing and hearing is believing. At a young age,…

The Seymour Duncan NAMM Experience

We had a great time at NAMM this year being able to meet so many people, having some great jams and showing off some of our new products! Here was our booth: Over to the left of this picture is the tone bar, which can be seen in more detail below. It was stocked and…

Bruce Kulick packing huge crowds for his Australian Guitar Clinics

Bruce Kulick, who was the lead guitarist for KISS spanning 12 years, has returned to Australia for a series of clinics celebrating the music of KISS and bringing some great songs from Revenge and other albums that were never played live in Australia. Bruce is seen here signing autographs for fans. Jamming out a KISS…

Tone Fiend Introduces ‘The Secret Room’

Tone Fiend has just announced a new website designed to be a place where you can share and learn closely guarded tone secrets. In preperation of its launch, Joe Gore went out to many well known artists and asked them to share some of their closely held tone secrets. Once players submit a secret, they…

Johnny Winter and Paul Nelson rock The Late Show with David Letterman

After nearly 30 years since his last national TV appearance, blues legend Johnny Winter has returned to television with his guitarist Paul Nelson for a performance on the Late Show with David Letterman. Check out the video below to watch the performance. Johnny Winter uses SM-1n and SM-1b Vintage Mini Humbuckers in the Firebird®, SSL-1 Vintage Staggered…

Introducing New Pickguards from Seymour Duncan

Introducing the Custom Shop Joe Bonamassa Signature Pickup Set

The Seymour Duncan Custom Shop has teamed up with blues-rock virtuoso Joe Bonamassa to produce the Joe Bonamassa Signature Pickup Set. This immaculately crafted and calibrated dual-humbucker set accurately replicates the P.A.F. pickups in Joe’s beloved 1959 sunburst Les Paul®. Their rich, dynamic, and nuanced voice will appeal to all tone connoisseurs who cherish the…

Introducing the ’59/Custom Hybrid

A special thanks to the members of the Seymour Duncan User Group Forum, especially ‘BachtoRock’ whose experimentation, testing and our forum members intense interest, has helped to make this possible.

Seymour Duncan Restores John Oates Original Fender Stratocaster

Seymour Duncan recently took on a project to restore John Oates (Hall & Oates) original Fender Stratocaster to all its ’80s glory. After taking detailed measurements, pictures, and studying old photos of the guitar, Seymour took to bringing the tone, look and feel back to where it was when John Oates was jamming out “Maneater”,…

Seymour Duncan Inducted into Vintage Guitar Hall of Fame

Prestigious music publication Vintage Guitar has announced that our co-founder, Seymour W. Duncan, will be the 2011 Hall of Fame inductee in the “Innovator” category. The results will be announced in the magazine’s March, 2012 issue. Seymour is joining the ranks of such industry pioneers as Leo Fender of Fender Musical Instruments, Orville Gibson of…

Voices of Metal Guy Marchais of Suffocation

Last week in our continuing search for brutal tone, we talked with Suffocation’s bass player Derek Boyer. In this weeks edition, we turn to Guy Marchais, the brutally fast guitarist for Suffocation. How did you get started playing guitar? “I started playing guitar when I was 16, so about 27 years ago. I was always…

Seymour Duncan welcomes new artists for November

We would like to welcome our new artists for November who have joined the quest for perfect tone. Brandon Ellis (guitar): Arsis Eddie Heedles (guitar), Eric Morgan (bass): A Pale Horse Named Death Rob Espinosa (guitar): It’s a Beautiful Day

Slash's Appetite for Destruction guitar visits Seymour Duncan

Recently the legendary Appetite for Destruction guitar visited Seymour Duncan as Slash was experiencing increasing problems with microphonic feedback. The video below chronicles the process of Seymour personally examining Slash’s guitar and working his magic on the pickups. This guitar was the Les Paul clone used to record Appetite for Destruction. After receiving the guitar back, Slash…

Voices of Metal – Emil Alstermark of October Tide

On our continuing search for brutal and heavy tone we turn to Emil Alstermark of October Tide to find out how he achieves his expansively dark tone. Tell us about your band October Tide. “Well, the band history is a story to be told by Fred since he’s the only original member of October Tide,…

Jarrell Guitars launches MPS with Seymour Duncan Pickups

Jarrell Guitars has just announced a line of Monte Pittman Signature guitars that are designed for maximum versatility. Monte Pittman is the guitarist for both Madonna and Prong – which speaks volumes to Monte’s need to have a guitar that allows him to go quickly from one style to another. Through his colloboration with Phillip…

Blues rocking guitarist Alastair Greene has the right tone for the Alan Parsons Live Project

Guitarist, singer, and songwriter Alastair Greene has been a mainstay of the Southern California music scene for over 2 decades. Alastair was born April 18th, 1971 in Santa Barbara, CA. Best known for his blues-based, soulful, and melodic guitar playing (as well as one of a rare-breed to play slide guitar), Alastair can be heard…

Seymour Duncan Amplitube StealthPlug Giveaway

We are currently hosting a contest on our Facebook page to win an Amplitube StealthPlug and a 3 pack of Dunlop medium gauge strings. Click here to enter. You can download the Amplitube Custom Shop for free by clicking here. You can also purchase the digital models of the Shape Shifter & Power Grid at…

Voices of Metal – Derek Boyer of Suffocation

Each week, we go on a search for some of the hardest hitting and brutalest heavy metal we can find. In this weeks edition of Voices of Metal, we turn away from the guitar and turn towards the brutal stylings of Suffocation’s bass player Derek Boyer. From Long Island, New York – Suffocation has defined…

French Guitarist and Chart Topping Soul-Jazz Artist U-Nam Records the First Ever George Benson Tribute Album with Seymour Duncan

I love music from the 80’s (which is why one of my albums is titled ‘Back From the 80s’), heavy metal, electro-dance, neo-soul, jazz and everything in between – even mainstream pop. My music is really a reflection of all these different tastes – a little bit funk, soul, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, pop, gospel, and electro.

Seymour Duncan Employee participates with Mars Science Laboratory

On November 26th, the next stage of interplanetary exploration is set to take place with the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory. Following the successful rover steps of Spirit & Opportunity, the Mars Science Laboratory is a vastly upgraded and larger rover that is designed to peer deeper into the mysteries of the red planet. While Spirit & Opportunity descended using parachutes and…

Seymour Duncan Welcomes New Artists for October

We would like to welcome all the new artists who have joined us and the search for the perfect tone for the month of October. Clive Gregson: 3Boxes Witt McKay & Grant Vogel: Memphis High Marcos Gonzalez: Made In March Pete Larios: Pitbull Toddler

Voices of Metal – Dmitry Sukhinin of Defect Designer

Siberia is known as a large remote expanse of the earth that is unforgivingly cold. Even among this cold landscape, there can be hard metal with a brutal tone. This week we discover dedication, drive and death metal in Siberia with Dmitry Sukhinin of Defect Designer. In 2007 Defect Designer started with their 4-track promo…

Voices of Metal – Ola Englund

Ola Englund is no stranger to the brutal sounds of high output metal and has become a well known shredder from his powerful YouTube videos, large online following and his band Feared who have just released a new album. This week, we talk with Ola about his music and what inspires him to write. How…

Introducing the Gus G. FIRE Blackouts System

Hard rock and metal guitarists no longer need to choose between the power of active pickups and the response of passive pickups. The Gus G. FIRE Blackouts System blends the best aspects of both. “This system combines the massive tone, kick, and distortion of Blackouts with the rich tone and expressive feel of my favorite…

Seymour Duncan Underground – Blake Havard

At Seymour Duncan, we are all about the players and their quest for the right sound. For every band that has achieved critical mass, there are thousands more who are putting in their dues at local bars and coffee shops. Seymour Duncan Underground is a new continuing series to showcase unique musicians and bands that…

Johnny Winter Blues/Rock Icon goes back to his “Roots” with Seymour Duncan

The Texas guitar tradition runs deep. It’s a gutsy school of blues playing, marked by thick tones, aggressive attack and tons of technique, all delivered in a flamboyant, swaggering style that is endemic to the Lone Star State. From T-Bone Walker and Clarence Gatemouth Brown on through Albert Collins and Freddie King, Billy Gibbons and…

The Ready Set Guitarist Deryck Stanek Brings A Whole Lotta Rock to Pop With Seymour Duncan

Beckoning guitarist, producer and all-around musical hybrid Deryck Stanek was born in Omaha, Nebraska. From his parent’s basement, he launched the band Go Crash Audio whom, within six years, would go from clueless musicians to performing alongside artists like Kevin Rudolf, Fall Out Boy & LFO. Deryck soon went on to pursue many other projects,…

Voices of Metal – Katatonia

The year was 1991, when two teenagers named Anders Nyström and Jonas Renkse decided to have a go at the extreme metal scene. Death metal was at its peak and although they were comfortable with that style they felt an urge to incorporate something more beyond just the brutal aspect. They searched for the elements…

P-90 Inside A Humbucker: The Phat Cat

The Phat Cat is a real P-90 inside a humbucker and lives up to its name with a fat P-90 tone with lots of sustain and a great mix of brightness, smoothness and the spank of a single-coil. The Phat Cat is available in gold or nickel and in bridge and neck versions and you…

As the Guitarist for Racer X to ASIA – Bruce Bouillet turns to Seymour Duncan for smooth and even tone

Bruce Bouillet, guitarist from the underground shred metal band Racer X, has played with Paul Gilbert on record and on stage, scored his own record deals with The Scream, and Epidemic. He has performed around the world, including a US and Canadian run on the infamous G3 tour with Joe Satriani. Aside from performing live, he…

Seymour Duncan Welcomes new artists for September!

We would like to welcome the following artists to the Seymour Duncan family of players seeking perfect tone. Andy Roberts (guitar) for 3Boxes   Conducting From the Grave: John Abernathy (guitar), Jeff Morgan (guitar), & Jackson Jordan (bass) New album “Revenants” out now https://www.facebook.com/conductingfromthegrave Johnny Hawthorn (guitar): Toad the Wet Sproket, Everclear, Johnny Hawthorn Band…

Voices of Metal – Candlemass

Voices of Metal is a new series dedicated to finding the best of Metal. We scour the earth looking for the most intense bands and then we get to the bottom of their story, how they get their sound and what inspires their playing styles. If you’re looking to discover how some of the worlds…

Whether writing for a music magazine, lecturing, or performing live, Ravi’s strive for perfection leads him to Seymour Duncan for his guitars.

Ravi is a singer/songwriter who shot to worldwide fame at a young age as the guitarist for the ’90’s band Hanson, playing guitar in front of millions of screaming teenage fans in scenes reminiscent of “Beatlemania.” Hanson’s triple Grammy nominated chart-topping songs catapulted the band into the music stratosphere, taking Ravi to stages at the…

Tenacious D's electric guitarist John Konesky has found the Pickups of Destiny

The legend of Tenacious D is a long story dating back to early times. John Konesky has played electric guitar for the D, and Kyle Gass’ band Trainwreck. When not shredding out the devils guitar solo in Beelzeboss, John can be seen with Kyle Gass in the YouTube show Guitarings.

Voices of Metal – Vomitory

Vomitory was formed in 1989 by guitarist Urban Gustafsson during the birth of the brutal Swedish Death Metal scene. Ever since, they have constantly and brutally delivered straightforward grinding Death Metal. While being a part of the phenomenon that was the Swedish Death Metal scene, the early and most important influences were spelled Sodom, Slayer,…

Frets of Fury Tour – Firewind, Arsis, Nightrage & White Wizzard

Today, we are announcing our sponsorship of the Frets of Fury tour. Greek metal band Firewind is going on tour on October 9th with Arsis, Nightrage & White Wizzard. Firewind features Gus G. fresh off his tour with Ozzy Osbourne and ready to provide a show to remember for his fans. Gus G. states: “We couldn’t…

Seymour Duncan Underground – Testpilot

At Seymour Duncan, we are all about the players and their quest for the right sound. For every band that has achieved critical mass, there are thousands more who are putting in their dues at local bars and coffee shops. Seymour Duncan Underground is a new continuing series to showcase unique musicians and bands that…

Whether for television, film, or his albums – Anthony Terrezza chooses Seymour Duncan for Perfection

I was in search of tone/feel for playing in studio sessions and for concert/live environments. My first guitar pickup was changed around 1985/86. I installed a JB Humbucker!

From his early days in the Miami club scene to Carlos Santana, Tommy Anthony has had a great ride and he "gets it right the first time" with Seymour Duncan

  Tommy Anthony has been a fixture of the Miami music scene for over 25 years, starting in the early eighties playing all the bars before breaking into studio work, predominantly with producer Emilio Estefan. From 1993 to just a few years ago, Emilio had Tommy and a few other guys do all the guitars…

Jimmy Crespo chooses Seymour Duncan for Versatility

Originally from the east coast, Jimmy has recorded and/or performed with Rod Stewart, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Stevie Nicks, Bon Jovi, Clarence Clemons, Little Steven, Billy Squire, Julian Lennon, Bernie Taupin and more. Jimmy is most recognized as a member and co-writer of Aerosmith from 1979 – 1984. His work with Aerosmith appeared on…

Seymour Duncan Underground – Immune

At Seymour Duncan, we are all about the players and their quest for the right sound. For every band that has achieved critical mass, there are thousands more who are putting in their dues at local bars and coffee shops. Seymour Duncan Underground is a new continuing series to showcase unique musicians and bands that…

John Butler Live at Red Rocks Features the Seymour Duncan Mag-Mic

The John Butler Trio (“JBT”) are one of the most respected and successful bands on the world music scene. Over the years, JBT have been fortunate enough to open shows for several international artists at the incredible Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado. In June, 2010, John and his band mates Nicky Bomba and Byron…

Hanging out with Brent Mason

On September 21st, I took a trip to Los Angeles to meet up with Brent Mason, who is an incredible guitar player. Brent has recorded with many of the big names in country music; George Strait, Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley and Shania Twain, just to name a few. I drove down with Doug Scott my…

Lukas Previn

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Lukas Previn – Thursday Lukas Previn is one hard working musician. As the touring bassist for Thursday to touring and recording with The United Nations and Acid Tiger, and soon embarking on La Dispute’s October/November tour, Lukas needs versatility in his tone and chooses the Seymour Duncan SH-4 in…

Scott Mellinger with Zao – Huge, Dark, Dynamic and Melodic Riffs

Zao’s hometown of Greensburg, Pennsylvania isn’t known for many things besides being in close proximity to the mall where George A. Romero filmed Dawn Of The Dead. That isolation has allowed the band to steer clear of popular trends. Zao’s original incarnation formed in the mid-90s with evangelical zeal. When that version of the band…

My Visit to the Grand Opening of the Fender Visitor Center

On Thursday, September 15th, we took a four hour drive to visit the new Fender Visitor Center in Corona, California. When we arrived Larry Thomas spoke and then we got to hear from Phyllis Fender. Also had a chance to talk with John Cruz, Chip Ellis, Jim Thomas, Mike Lewis, Dan Smith, Steven Stern, Mike…

Trevor Bolder, Legendary bassist from Bowie to Mick Ronson and Uriah Heep shares his thoughts on Musicianship and Seymour Duncan

Trevor Bolder is a bassist, producer, composer, and singer known for making music combining hard rock with lots of melody and harmonies. He’s a heavy rock bass player who plays fast, hard, and with a lot of melodic bass runs. In 1971 Trevor Bolder played bass on David Bowie’s album, Hunky Dory with Mick Ronson (guitar) and…

Seymour Duncan Underground – Tommy Mills & The Jade Amenity

At Seymour Duncan, we are all about the players and their quest for the right sound. For every band that has achieved critical mass, there are thousands more who are putting in their dues at local bars and coffee shops across the world. Seymour Duncan Underground is a new continuing series to showcase unique musicians…

Seymour Duncan Live – “How to Change a Pickup”

Livestream begins at 2pm PT. Ask your questions in the chat box below.

Primus Launches New Album and Tour

After a long hiatus, the unique stylings of Primus has returned with the release of “Green Naugahyde”. In support of the album, Primus will go back on tour starting September 23rd, in Boston, Massachusetts. The band has announced that they will be playing two sets during their tour and the US portion will conclude with an all…

Seymour Duncan nominated for Vintage Guitar Magazine Hall of Fame

Contributors and visitors of Vintage Guitar magazine have nominated Seymour Duncan as a candidate for the Vintage Guitar Hall of Fame Innovator. Previous winners include Leo Fender, Les Paul, Orville Gibson, Seth Lover and others. Registration is required in order to vote and those who vote get a chance to win an Egnater head and…

Straddling Two Musical Worlds, Alex Skolnick’s Tone Remains Seymourized

Face it: at the outer edges of high performance, we’ve come to expect specialists. We don’t expect the hoops star who can slam dunk from the free-throw line to be able to return a 120 mile per hour tennis serve. We don’t expect the racecar that does zero-to-sixty under four seconds to get 40 miles…

From Tokyo to London, Taka uses Seymour Duncan for his Funky Bottom

Taka Hirose began playing bass at the age of 14 and played in several jazz and metal bands during his school years. Taka moved to Tokyo and worked for guitar manufacturing specialists ESP and played music at night. After performing for Tokyo Yakuza bosses, Taka moved to London where he joined a new band, which…

Seymour Duncan Welcomes Joe Gore of Tone Fiend

When we made the decision to create a new blog that would cover a host of tone oriented topics, we knew that it would all come down to finding the right individual to take on the task. We found that in Joe Gore, an individual who has played for Tracy Chapman, Tom Waits, Les Claypool,…

Glen Drover formerly of Megadeth describes pedals, pickups, and his upcoming live performance

Embracing a lot of the players that he has listened to such as Al DiMeola and Vinnie Moore, Glen Drover worked hard to hone his guitar playing and his craft. Glen Drover began playing guitar as a child, and was joined at age 10 by his brother Shawn on drums. Influenced by Tony MacAlpine, Al…

Classically Trained Country Guitarist Dan Weller Knows how to Tailor his Tone!

Dan Weller is a multi-faceted guitarist-vocalist based in Nashville.  Over the years, he’s toured with several independent and major label artists in front of audiences as large as 500,000. Dan Weller began playing guitar at age 8. He kept disappearing with his dad’s classical trying to figure out how to play, so his folks decided…

State Line Empire's Cat: He Never Looked Back After Going With Seymour Duncan

Hailing from Dallas Texas, Cat comes from a family strongly rooted in the arts. His mother, a singer, was a huge influence on his development as a guitarist-singer-songwriter. Following in her footsteps, Cat soon took up singing and playing guitar in many bands throughout California. In 2009, Cat joined Drist, the SF-based band that was…

He’s Made Of Metal – The Dedicated World of Metal Mike

Metal Mike Chlasciak is the guitarist who helped Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford reclaim his status as the true Metal God. With over one million units sold, Mike appears on all now-classic Halford albums, videosand DVDs. Mike has also spend time playing guitar with Bay Area Thrash masters Testament, his own band PainmuseuM and Sebastian…

Steve Hunter Rocks with Custom Shop Seymour Duncans in his Custom Shop Gretsch

Legendary rock guitarist, Steve Hunter is currently ripping-it-up around the globe with Hall of Fame inductee, Alice Cooper. Hunter is shown here playing a Gretsch Custom Shop CVT model guitar made for him by Master Builder, Stephen Stern. The guitar features Seymour Duncan Custom Shop pickups, 22 jumbo frets (that completely clear the body), and…

User Group Day Live

Opening announcements will begin shortly. Official event begins at 10 a.m. (PT). Ask your questions to us on Twitter @SeymourDuncan. Update 4:29 PM: The event is now over. Thanks to everyone who joined us for this fun event! We will work on putting together a video of highlights. In the meantime, we are getting ready…

Guitarist/Radio Host, Jason Saulnier on YJM Fury pickups

Jason Saulnier is a Canadian-based contributor to Music Legends interview magazine and Guitar International magazine. About the new Yngwie Malmsteen signature pickups he says, “Seymour Duncan YJM Fury STK-S10 pickups give me all the sustain and power needed to play at fast speeds and still be able to identify the notes being played.“ Jason’s radio show…

War's Stuart Ziff Chooses Seymour Duncan to Cut Through

Since 2002, blues-based guitarist Stuart Ziff has been with the band War. Stuart was living in Nashville in the ’90s when Joe Glazer did all the repairs and installations on his guitars. Not satisfied with the bridge pickup on his Fender Telecaster, Joe suggested the Seymour Duncan STK-T3b Vintage Stack. That started a Seymour Duncan…

Nathan Cochran of MercyMe and Diving Blind Gets Fully Seymourized

Growing up in the green hills of Columbia, Missouri, music has always been around Nathan Cochran’s family. His father played guitar and sang–and still does–and was a huge influence on him musically. He usually played a Beatles tune, or perhaps a little Jimmy Page solo. Nathan first learned from his dad and then on his…

Quiet Riot Guitarist Alex Grossi Relies on Seymour Duncan Pickups and Pedals

In only a few short years Alex Grossi has become one of the hardest working and sought after rock guitarists in the country. He inked his first recording deal with Atlantic Record with the Boston-based pop rock band Angry Salad in 1999. In support of the record Alex and Angry Salad did over 1000 shows…

Jason Hale, founding member of Chiodos

  Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Jason Hale – Chiodos Why did you choose Seymour Duncan  pickups, and how did you decide what to choose? I chose Seymour  Duncan pickups because I used to read a lot of guitar forums. Everyone  talked about how good they were and what their experiences were with different models….

Lance Harvill from Arms Of The Sun gets his crunch from Seymour Duncan

Lance Harvill is a singer/songwriter/guitarist from Dallas, Texas. Aside from fronting vocals and guitar for the rock band, Arms Of The Sun. Lance writes music for television and film and his music can be heard on such shows as Pawn Stars, American Restoration, Celebrity Rehab With Dr Drew, MTV’s True Life, and many more. Arms…

Circa Guitarist Johnny Bruhns Chooses Seymour Duncan to Expand his Tonal Palette

Virtuoso guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, Johnny Bruhns began his musical education growing up in his native Philadelphia. His mother Catherine, a director of choirs and musicals, imparted her knowledge of vocal technique and music theory to him. Johnny also gains his instrumental prowess from his father’s side of the family as a descendant of classical composer,…

Seymour Duncan Pickup Artists at Vans Warped Tour

Complimenting the blistering Orlando heat were the sets by the Seymour Duncan Warped tour artists. With sweat dripping down the bodies of the crowd in this 106 degree heat as well as the bands on stage, Seymour Duncan pickup artists, set the place on fire! Scorching performances and blazing tone filled the air by such…

Get Ready for Yngwie's Relentless Tour

You don’t need to see the last name. Just the mere mention of “Yngwie” brings immediate thoughts of high-octane shred to the minds of guitarists around the world. Working directly with Seymour Duncan and our team of custom pickup designers, Yngwie meticulously refined prototype after prototype of pickups before arriving at the perfect setup for…

Seymour Jams!

Check out Seymour and friends playing “McGriff” for Cox 8’s BackBeat show produced in Santa Barbara, CA. Accompanying Seymour is Evan Skopp on rhythm guitar, Paul Davis on bass guitar, Doug Scott on keyboards and Tom Rice on drums. BackBeat is produced exclusively by Cox 8. Creator/Director/Writer, Michael Johansen, Producer/DP/Editor, Lou Fontana, Executive Producer, Brock…

First Annual Seymour Duncan Benefit Concert

On July 19, 2011 the legendary Steve Miller Band is coming to Santa Barbara and playing a very special show in the intimate (650 seat) and historic Lobero Theater. Why? For two reasons. First, it’s the Seymour Duncan company’s 35th Anniversary and we wanted to give back to the community with a party that commemorates…

311 Releases 10th Studio Album

Long time Seymour Duncan artists 311 will be releasing their 10th studio album with an amphitheater tour to follow.  Guitarists Nick Hexum and Tim Mahoney, and bassist P-Nut have used a variety of Seymour Duncan pickups in their instruments over the years. Says Tim, “For the last 15 years, there’s always been some sort of Seymour Duncan pickup in my guitar.” For the new…

The Dropkick Murphy’s Duncanize

Photo above: Guitarist Tim Brennan The Dropkick Murphy’s dropkick Duncan’s into their guitars with help from tech extraordinaire …..drum roll please….. Grizz Middleton! It’s Saint Patrick day every day when you’re with the Dropkick Murphy’s. A rare blend of Irish-American Celtic Punk, these guys keep the heavy guitar tones, accordions, and banjos true to their…

Spin Includes Yngwie in 30 Greatest Instrumentals

Congratulations to Yngwie Malmsteen for being included in Spin magazine’s list of the 30 Greatest Instrumental Songs Ever. It was Malmsteen’s “Icarus Dream Suite Opus 4” from 1984 that made the list, alongside works from Eddie Van Halen, Frank Zappa and Miles Davis. About “Icarus Dream Suite,” Spin wrote, “On this majestic track from his…

P-Rails and P-Funk Join Forces

The P in P-rails stands for Phunk! When the guitar player from the Parliament Funkadelic called and said she wasn’t happy with the tone from her stock pickups, Seymour Duncan didn’t hesitate. A tech from the Duncan factory met Shaunna Hall at the Gibson Amphitheater a few hours before the show to bring her guitar…

Mick Box & His Lava Box!

Mick Box, the guitarist for Uriah Heep, shares his set up which includes a SFX-05 Lava Box. Here’s what Mick has to say, “The Lava Box gives me the grunt I need, Night after night….What more do you need? ‘Appy days.” To find more about Mick Box you can go to his website mick-box.net, or…

Clayton Bellamy’s Quest for Tone

Clayton Bellamy is currently recording a solo record with four time Grammy award winning producer Ray Kennedy as well as touring with his Juno award winning band the Road Hammers. Below is a blurb of what he has to say about his Seymour Duncan Pickups. “The Seymour Duncan 59 humbuckers in my Les Paul complete…

Dustin & Teppei From Thrice Show Off Their Gear

Thrice is back in the studio to record their new release which is due out late summer/early fall of 2011. Below are videos of Dustin and Teppei showing off what they are using for this coming album as well as on the road. For more info check out Thrice’s website here. Want to know how…

The SD35 Guitar Winner Announced!

The time has finally come! The winner for the SD35 guitar is…[drum roll, please] Bear Erickson from Buellton, California. Bear stopped by the Seymour Duncan factory in Santa Barbara to pick up his prize. There he met Seymour talked about the history of the guitar. Recently, Bear invited us to go to his show at…

Santa Barbara Kids Go Nuts for P-Nut

Notes for Notes is Seymour Duncan’s favorite local non-profit. Founded here in Santa Barbara, it provides kids with a real working music studio to hang out in after school. There, the kids not only learn how to play instruments, but they learn the fundamentals of making records including using recording software, mixing, mastering, duplicating and…

Pushing that low end with Silverstein

Blending disparate hardcore and metal, Billy Hamilton, bassist and backing vocalist for Silverstein works hard laying a hard pounding yet melodic groove that helped propel Silverstein into one of the top bands in its genre. Billy uses Seymour Duncan Basslines in all is basses, Billy says, “I run the Duncan SPB-2 Hot for P-Bass pickups…

Dantzig Guitar Design Chooses Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Pickups

Since setting up Dantzig Guitar Design, Jol Dantzig relies on Seymour Duncan Custom Shop pickups for his no-compromise guitar masterpieces.

Blame Sally “Blames” Their Awesome Sound on Seymour Duncan Stompboxes

When Blame Sally took the stage at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall on April 29 and 30, the quartet showcased tunes from Speeding Ticket and a Valentine, the Bay Area band’s fifth album. As has often been noted about Blame Sally, this all-female outfit boasts not only strong compositional and vocal skills, but serious…

A&T Trade Convention in Budapest

Building on the success of the recent Winter NAMM show and Frankfurt Musikmesse, A&T Trade, Seymour Duncan’s Russian distributor, put on a trade convention in Budapest, Hungary in April. More than 120 music professional met for over five days during which the attendees discussed sales and marketing strategies. Seymour Duncan was a main topic of…

P-Rails for Paris

Jon Paris, an active Seymour Duncan user, has toured with many artists including Robert Gordon and Link Wray, Bo Diddley, Johnny Winter, Chris Spedding, Johnnie Johnson, and former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor, just to name a few. Here is a few words he would like to say about his Seymour Duncan Pickups: “It’s always been…

Paul Rose: The Best Guitarist You’ve Never Heard Of

Not every great guitarist has the name recognition of Slash or Yngwie. All around the world, there are undiscovered or soon-to-be discovered guitarists blowing away audiences nightly on small, smoky stages in clubs and roadhouses. This is the story of one such international player who came to our attention at the recent Frankfurt Musikmesse. Paul…

Seymour W. Duncan will be featured on Cox 8 Santa Barbara BackBeat show in May

Our very own Seymour Duncan is keeping busy! Seymour and other members of the team will be featured in a segment incorporated in the Cox 8 Santa Barbara BackBeat show. It will be a 10 minute segment describing the process of making pickups  and the unique working atmosphere at Seymour Duncan. The show will be…

Shred King Yngwie Malmsteen on VH1 Classic

The undisputed king of shred, Yngwie Malmsteen will be appearing on VH1 Classic’s That Metal Show, Saturday April 9th at 11pm/10 C.

New Jackson Signature Soloist Model for Anthrax’s Ian

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (March 29, 2011) – Jackson is proud to honor a longtime friend and one of the most dexterous shredders in metal with a new signature Soloist guitar model. Debuting in spring 2011 is the Scott Ian T-1000 Soloist.

'Blunt Force Trauma' from Cavalera Conspiracy

On March 29, Cavalera Conspiracy is set to release Blunt Force Trauma, the follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut, Inflikted, one of the most spun platters on Sirus’ Liquid Metal/Hard Attack channel of 2008. The debut album was a momentous occasion in the heavy metal universe, as it reunited brothers Max and Iggor Cavalera, co-founders of defining Brazilian metal…

Bobby Schneck & His Arsenal of Seymour Duncans

Upon moving to LA in the late 80’s Bobby Schneck found himself in The Buddaheads, a full bore blues-rock band that released one album in the US on RCA and five records in Japan. A sold out Roxy show in 1992 is where he met Slash for the first time which led to an ongoing…

Ed Skero: More Moore

When most guitar players are asked to describe their sound, it can be a terrifying question. Not for veteran guitarist Ed Skero. His Seymour Duncan pickup selection has made him more sure of himself than ever. “I have Seymour Duncan Antiquity pickups in my main Gibson Les Paul. When I bought a second Les Paul, I…

A Trip To Daniel Lanois’ House

Not even doctors make house calls anymore. Fortunately for producer legend Daniel Lanois, Seymour, custom shop manager Maricela “MJ” Juarez and tech guru Scott Miller paid a visit to the guitar guru’s Silverlake, CA home to deliver a set of Stereo Gretsch Filtertron pickups that MJ specifically re-created for him. Lanois has produced albums by…

Seymour Duncan in Germany for Musik Messe 2011

Seymour Duncan will be at Europe’s largest musical instrument trade show, Musik Messe.  Similar to the winter NAMM show in Anaheim, CA, Musik Messe in Frankfurt Germany is where the world’s manufacturers announce and show their new products. Cavalera Conspiracy bassist Johny Chow will be on hand all day, helping out with product demonstrations.

Warbringer’s John Laux On Getting Huge Distortion—with Passive Pickups.

“I experimented with a lot of pickups before I settled on the Seymour Duncan JB SH-4,” says thrash-metal guitarist John Laux of Warbringer, which is working on a new album and is preparing for late spring tour dates. “Distortion can be tricky when you need plenty of gain and still want a super warm colorful…

State Line Empire: The Next Hard Rock Sensation?

San Mateo, California, rock group State Line Empire have just released “Drive Me,” the anticipated single featuring legendary guitarist Slash. As the winners of Guitar Center’s groundbreaking unsigned artist discovery program, “Your Next Record with Slash,” State Line Empire recorded a 4-song EP with iconic producer Mike Clink (Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, Megadeth) at…

New Products Galore! More Seymour Duncan Video Goodness From Premier Guitar

Considering the colossal coolness of the last video we mentioned, in which Premier Guitar’s Jason Shadrick got the inside scoop on the original “Telegib” guitar and the history of its famous pickups straight from Seymour himself, you’d think that would have been about all the PG gang managed to wrangle from us at NAMM. But…

Premier Guitar Video Interview With Seymour W. Duncan: The Real Story Of The “TeleGib”

With the introduction of the Seymour Duncan 35 Limited Edition Guitar, Seymour W. Duncan is retiring his “baby,” the guitar affectionately known as the “TeleGib,” which has been his main instrument for nearly 40 years. While the Seymour Duncan 35 is based on Seymour’s faithful friend—with a number of improvements from Seymour Duncan resident luthier…

The Damned Things: Anthrax Guitarist Scott Ian’s Newest Project

Scott Ian from Anthrax is back in action with a new band and a new album, and he’s taking it on the road. The Damned Things (www.thedamnedthings.com) is a supergroup consisting of Scott Ian and Rob Caggiano from Anthrax, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley of Fall Out Boy, and Keith Buckley and Josh Newton of…

Katatonia Gets Seymourized

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups KATATONIA Katatonia (http://www.myspace.com/katatonia) is a band that defines the new wave of Swedish metal.  Their heavy overtones combined with haunting melodic waves of sound are a perfect mix of doom metal and modern rock. Their earlier albums Dance of December Souls and Brave Murder Day have more of a…

The Sound Guitar Magazine Features Seymour

Who’s that gorgeous cover model? Why it’s Seymour W. Duncan himself on the cover of Volume 4 of online guitar journal The Sound Guitar Magazine. “I was proud to be on the cover along with Johnny Hiland, Phil Collen, and Rusty Burns,” says Seymour, who’s as much player as pickup genius. During the NAMM Show,…

Seymour, Sarah, and Stroud: Backstage with Sarah McLachlan

Seymour and friends met “Sarah And Friends” backstage in nearby Santa Ynez, California, during Sarah McLachlan’s “Sarah And Friends” tour with Butterfly Boucher and Melissa McClelland. Here’s Seymour with Sarah and long-time Seymour Duncan user Peter Stroud, known for his exceptionally tasty tone not only with Sarah but with Sheryl Crow. Stroud played a Telecaster…

Katatonia Gets Seymourized: Seymour Duncan Welcomes Anders Nystrom of Katatonia to the Family

“I have finally found the perfect configuration for my guitars to go from a loud, fierce bite to a mellow, warm sparkle in the blink of an eye.”—Katantonia’s Anders Nystrom

All About the Seymour Duncan 35 Limited Edition Guitar

What would be better: winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory or winning a builder’s proof of the Seymour Duncan 35 Limited Edition Guitar?   To help you answer this question, Seymour Duncan’s Frank Falbo offers a grand tour of the masterfully crafted Seymour Duncan 35, from the Zehpyr Silver pickups to the…

John McLaughlin Tells Premier Guitar: “I Really Like” the Twin Tube Classic

Always in pursuit of the pursuers of tone, Premier Guitar dispatched Jason Shadrick to do a Rig Rundown video with fusion great John McLaughlin. Roughly four minutes into the video, McLaughlin tells Shadrick about why he uses the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic—instead of an amp. “We want to give the audience the best sound…

NAMM Day 3: Artists Galore!

It was another exciting day here at the Seymour Duncan NAMM booth. We had a terrific turnout today with lots of musicians stopping by to hobnob with fans and get a close look at the Seymour Duncan 35 guitar. Guitar god Yngwie Malmsteen signing at the Seymour Duncan. George Lynch of Lynch Mob and Alex…

Seymour Duncan Stories 1: Brandino, ESP’s Mr. Shibuya, Lonestar, and more…

People often come up and tell us about how much Seymour Duncan means to them or  talk about their first significant pickup revelation. We often wish we had a camera rolling. So, to help kick off our 35th Anniversary year, we’re capturing videos of Seymour Duncan Stories, beginning at NAMM 2011. Here’s bassist Kevin “Brandino”…

NAMM DAY 2 – Slipknot’s Mick Thomson, Bootsy Collins, Seymour W. Duncan, Bachman & Turner’s Randy Bachman, El Tri’s Alex Lora, and more!

NAMM DAY 2 – We had an exciting day of appearances, autographs, jam sessions, product demos, and more!  Check out our photos with appearances from: Seymour W. Duncan, Mick Thomson, Tim Mahoney, Bootsy Collins, Randy Buchman, Steve Bailey, Alex Lora, Cesar Lopez, and Luis Miguel. Slipknot’s Mick Thomson with Seymour: Two monstrous giants of tone!…

The Story Behind the JB & Jazz Concept + Zephyr Silver Pickups in the Seymour Duncan 35

The Seymour Duncan 35–the limited edition guitar inspired by Seymour’s “TeleGib” and the company’s 35th Anniversary–comes with two sets of very special pickups: The recreation of the original “TeleGib” pickups, known as the Custom Shop JB/Jazz Concept Set, and a modern exotic set of Seymour Duncan Zephyr™ Silver premium pickups. Seymour Duncan’s new Custom Shop…

WIN THE SEYMOUR DUNCAN 35 LIMITED EDITION GUITAR!

WIN! THE SEYMOUR DUNCAN 35 LIMITED EDITION GUITAR The Seymour Duncan 35 is a precision-crafted instrument inspired by Seymour’s personal guitar, a refinement of the celebrated instrument, affectionately known as the “TeleGib,” which he built for Jeff Beck while living in London in the early 1970s. Production of the Seymour Duncan 35 is strictly limited…

Nighthawk Pickup: Seymour Duncan Launches Slant Replacement Pickup

At Seymour Duncan, our motto is “Own Your Tone.” That’s the reason we have such a vast range of pickup models that directly retrofit an incredibly wide variety of guitars. And that’s why we addressed a need amongst guitarists by offering a brand new pickup for 2011. The Gibson® Nighthawk™ was first introduced in 1993….

NAMM Artist Signings Kick Off Seymour Duncan 35th Anniversary

It’s been more than 40 years since Seymour W. Duncan began crafting extraordinary sounds for many of the world’s top players—but this year marks the 35th anniversary of Seymour Duncan, the company he and Cathy Carter Duncan founded in 1976. That’s when Seymour began offering guitar products and custom pickup services to the larger world…

AGAINST ME! Announce U.S. Tour Dates

Florida punks Against Me! announced a slew of headlining U.S. dates this January and February, (see tour dates below) with Cheap Girls and Fences supporting. The band will be touring in support of their fifth studio album, White Crosses, released by Sire/Warner on June 8th, 2010. White Crosses was produced by veteran producer Butch Vig…

The “Joe Wilson” Wiring for Telecaster

This wiring was designed for one of our sales reps in the Southeast, Joe Wilson, who wanted to add some extra versatility to his Tele®, while retaining the stock look. For this scheme, we use our “tapped” Hot Lead (STL-2T) and a Vintage Rhythm (STR-1) pickups.

Splitting Three Pickups For Strat

For those of you who are going with a full set of stacks or Lil’ sized humbuckers and would like to still be able to get single-coil sounds – or at least keep that classic Strat ‘quack’ in positions 2 and 4 on your switch – this is an easy way to split all three pickups with only one standard dpdt push/pull pot.

Adding A Bridge Pickup Switch To A Strat

Strats are versatile guitars. We can get a ton of different sounds from them, and that’s why we play them. The one thing you can’t do, however, is get your neck and bridge pickups selected at the same time for that Tele middle-position kind of sound). Well, with this diagram, you are one push/pull away…

What Can I Do About Scratchy Pots?

Here’s a quick test to determine if your potentiometers need to be replaced or just cleaned.

Guitarist Magazine Names Pickup Booster and Deja Vu Tap Delay Among the 101 Best Stomp Boxes Of All Time Ever

Our friends across the pond found out in late November, but we were busy worrying about  the naughty-or-nice list when we found out about a different list entirely. Guitarist, the UK’s top guitar magazine, featured a December cover story on The 101 Best Stomp Boxes of All Time Ever. The Seymour Duncan Deja Vu Tap…

Happy Holidays from Seymour Duncan!

It was the night before Xmas, two days from the gig. My new band had told me “Your tone we don’t dig!” My old Strat hummed like a tree full of bees. My once sparkling Tele now sounded like cheese! The gutted Les Paul was borderline junk. My SG wasn’t worthy, even for punk… “Maybe…

Dustin from Thrice Finds a Unique Way to use P-Rails

Since the release of the P-Rails back in 2008, people have found many different ways to change a guitar into a multi tone machine. If you are not familiar with the P-Rails, it’s time for an introduction. The P-Rail is a pickup that has the ability to sound like a P-90, a Strat, and a…

Seymour Duncan receives two nominations for the prestigious Music & Sound Awards

We were thrilled to hear the news that Seymour Duncan received two nominations for the prestigious  Music & Sound Awards, presented each year at  NAMM by Music & Sound Retailer magazine. The company was singled out in the Accessories category for the APH-2 Alnico II Slash pickup, but Seymour  W. Duncan himself was nominated for…

Seymour Duncan Liberator Solderless System, Part 1: The Two-Minute Pickup Change VIDEO

Have you seen the new Seymour Duncan Liberator Solderless System? Watch Frank install a pickup in just under two minutes using the Liberator Solderless System. And you can’t miss, even if you try, his yellow guitar. Tell us what you think. Follow us on our Facebook page for more updates!

Introducing Liberator—the Solderless Pickup Change System from Seymour Duncan

Bye, bye, soldering iron. Today, Seymour Duncan announces Liberator, a new Solderless Pickup Change System.  With Liberator installed, anyone who can use a screwdriver can change pickups! Liberator is a bare-wire Lockdown system integrated with a volume pot. In other words, it’s like a patch-bay for your pickups. Like a studio patch bay or telephone…

39 Stripes new album Beyond Broken

Tampa, Florida-based Christian rockers 39 Stripes announced the release of their first full-length project, Beyond Broken, October 26, 2010. The album’s debut singles “My Desire” and “Mustard Seed” are currently vying for adds at Christian AC and Rock radio. Produced by 39 Stripes lead guitarist Steve Henderlong, Beyond Broken has been two years in the…

Thanksgiving Giveaway Winners!

Thank you to all who participated in the Seymour Duncan Thanksgiving Giveaway.  We have randomly selected our winners.  Congratulations! Grand Prize Winner: David Scadin Trick your sound with Seymour Duncan pickups and a delay pedal! The grand prize is 2 humbuckers or 3 single coil Seymour Duncan pickups of your choice* plus a Deja Vu…

Anberlin – Fully loaded with Duncan Pickups

Florida rockers Anberlin, known for songs like “Feel Good Drag” and “Impossible”are up to it again with the release of their fifth studio album entitled Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place.  And, they are hitting the road fully loaded with Duncan pickups.  All three guitar players of Anberlin rely on Seymour Duncan for…

After The Burial

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups After The Burial – In Dreams After the Burial, the band known for their technical eight string guitar proficiency, is releasing a new album. This much anticipated work of brutal art entitled In Dreams will be available on Nov. 23. Guitar masters Justin and Trent some how managed to out do them selves…

John Butler

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups John Butler   Photo: Paul Smith American-born and Aussie-raised John Butler has become a fixture on the alternative-jam-roots scene. The multi-instrumentalist front man of the John Butler Trio is adept at banjo, didgeridoo, drums and harmonica. But it’s his unique fingerstyle work with an amplifed acoustic guitar that draws…

Seymour Duncan is co-sponsoring a Prestige guitar giveaway!

Prestige Guitars is giving away a gorgeous semi-hollow Musician PRO, with a carved top and back, Bigsby vibrato, and a pair of gold-covered Seymour Duncan humbuckers—a ‘59 in the neck and a JB Model in the bridge. Enter at www.prestigeguitars.com/contest.html or click here for a chance to win! Good luck and Happy Holidays!

Seymour Duncan Artist: After the Burial Album Release

After the Burial, the band known for their technical eight string guitar proficiency, is releasing a new album. This much anticipated work of brutal art entitled In Dreams will be available on Nov. 23. Guitar masters Justin and Trent some how managed to out do themselves again in creating a masterpiece that will wake the…

Giveaway: Thanksgiving Seymour Duncan Sweepstakes

With the holidays quickly approaching, we at Seymour Duncan are very grateful for all of you.  Because of this, we are running a Thanksgiving Seymour Duncan Giveaway!  To enter this contest, click the orange “WIN” button to the left OR go to our Facebook page and click on the sweepstakes tab.  Here are the prizes:…

Freebie Friday JB Pickup Winner

Congratulations to our randomly selected winner, Stephen Koehler, for winning the JB pickup from our Freebie Friday Contest! His first song played was: The basic rhythm to “In My Darkest Hour” by Megadeth.  The JB will give you the same heavy crunch heard in the rhythm. Thank you to all who entered.  We really enjoyed…

Freebie Friday: The JB Humbucker

If you want “Sweet, warm tones to raw rock ’n’ roll” and “great harmonics”, enter to win our Freebie Friday Contest on our Facebook page! This Freebie Friday, we are giving away the JB, the world’s most popular humbucker.  We were so thrilled with all of the great feedback from Frank’s post on his first…

Thievery Corporation visits Seymour Duncan

Last Friday, Thievery Corporation’s bassist Ashish “Hash” Vyas and guitarist Rob Myers stopped by Seymour Duncan for a tour of the factory.  Here at Seymour Duncan, they learned the finer points of winding pickups by the legendary Maricela “MJ” Juarez.  With her help, they were each able to wind a Seymour Duncan pickup and learn…

Why do we use nickel silver baseplates?

Have you noticed that the baseplates on all of our passive humbuckers are silver in color? They’re made of nickel silver—and there’s a reason. Seth Lover used nickel-silver baseplates when he invented the humbucker in 1955. We think he did a pretty good job, and we like to respect the way he did things. We…

My First Pickups, Part 1: The JB

By Frank Falbo, Seymour Duncan VP of Product My very first experience with Seymour Duncan was my first time hunting for a replacement pickup—when I was 12. I remember endlessly poring through the Seymour Duncan catalog, (what homework?) and the JB was my ultimate choice. No one told me how popular it was, or what…

Hedras Ramos Jr., super shredder and Seymour Duncan artist competes in the Ziua Chitarelor 3 guitar competition

Check out Hedras Ramos Jr. who took second place in the Ziua Chitarelor 3 guitar competition. For those of you who don’t know, the Ziua Chitarelor competition in Romania is one of the greatest guitar competitions in Europe. This 18 year old guitar prodigy hails from Guatemala and has caught the attention of guitar greats…

Hedras Ramos Jr.

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups   Hedras Ramos Jr. Hedras Ramos Jr. is an 18 year old guitar prodigy from Guatemala. His playing style and technique has caught the attention of many great players including Michael Lee Firkins and Jennifer Batten. Recently Hedras took second place in the guitar competition Ziua Chitarelor 3 held Bucharest.  He plays 7 string Halo guitars out…

Breast Cancer Awareness Month – Pinkbucker Winner

October was breast cancer awareness month and Seymour Duncan stepped up by giving away a Custom Shop ’78 Trembecker in pink to a randomly drawn forum member.  Christopher “supazar” Canavan of Coram, New York won the drawing and was very appreciative and said, “Thanks again Evan.  Thank you Seymour, Cathy and MJ.  This is a…

And the winner of the Custom Shop ’78 Boo Buckers are…

Thank you to everyone who submitted photos on Facebook and tweeted us on Twitter to win our Halloween Boo Buckers!  We had a great time looking through your costumes and enjoyed all of your submissions.  It was very difficult to pick just 5 costume winners, but it had to be done. Without further ado, here…

Twitter Giveaway: Win Halloween Boo-Buckers

Happy Halloween! If you haven’t seen our Seymour Duncan Halloween Boo-Buckers yet, check them out in the post below.  We are giving away ten sets through Facebook and Twitter (check out the Facebook competition below).  You can enter both competitions to double your chances of winning.  Here is how to enter the Twitter contest that…

Giveaway: Win a set of Halloween “Boo-Buckers”

Just in time for Halloween, the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop has created ten sets of “Boo-Bucker” pickups. Throughout the weekend, ten lucky winners will receive a set of these brilliant humbuckers—a Custom Shop ’78 humbucker for the bridge and a Pearly Gates humbucker for the neck—wound by the legendary Maricela “MJ” Juarez of Seymour Duncan…

Kenny Lewis

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Kenny Lewis Superstar Brad Paisley has delivered one of the year’s hottest country events with his H2O World Tour. Now Paisley’s live chops are on display as performances from the tour are featured on the new double-disc Hits Alive which hits the streets November 2, 2010. The album includes…

Vernon Neilly

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Vernon Neilly Multi award winning guitarist/producer/actor and long time Seymour Duncan endorser Vernon Neilly recently returned from a successful South America tour where he performed concerts, did TV performances, and taught master classes. He is pictured above performing and giving a master class on recording and production techniques to…

Breast Cancer Awareness Giveaway: Custom Shop "Pinkbucker"

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month when we are reminded of the devastating impact of this disease. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women with one-in-eight developing the disease in their lifetime. According to the Centers for Disease Control breast cancer is second leading cause of death in women (40,000 deaths…

Tips & Tricks – Adjusting Your Pickups: Fine-Tune Your Sound

Adjusting Your Pickups: Fine-Tune Your Sound Most guitars have screws around the pickups for adjusting pickup height. Most guitar factories adjust the pickups to a median height, but why not find the best height for your tone? While you can’t change the character of a pickup, you can make small adjustments that will fine-tune your…

Congrats to our Bass Player Live! Online Giveaway Winners

Thank you to all of you who participated in our Bass Player Live! online giveaway.  And big congrats to our two winners who will receive their choice of Seymour Duncan bass pickups: Lloyd Plum Timothy Brisson Stay tuned for our Halloween Seymour Duncan giveaway this week!

Steve Harris Pickups Giveaway at Bass Player Live!

Bass Player Live! 2010 starts today!  In addition to giving away Jaco Pastorius pickups, we are giving away Steve Harris pickups!  Just like the Jaco pickups, these Steve Harris pickups were wound by Seymour W. Duncan himself.  Read Seymour’s story about working with Steve Harris below. These pickups are one of a kind collectibles and…

Online Giveaway: Bass Player Live 2010 – Seymour Duncan Pickups!

Weekend Giveaway: Seymour Duncan Bass Pickup of YOUR choice! This weekend, Seymour Duncan will be at Bass Player Live! For those of you who can’t attend the event, we wanted you to be able to participate in the action! So, we are giving away a set of Seymour Duncan Bass pickups of YOUR choice. All…

Patrick Wilson from Weezer

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Patrick – Weezer From the seminal hits “Buddy Holly” and “Beverly Hills” to their latest album Hurley, Weezer has been been making great music to rock out for more than 15 years. With a worldwide following of dedicated fans, their sound has, to many, become the definition of what…

It's a blog! Seymour Duncan is bringing you artists, tips & tricks, and freebies!

Welcome to our brand spanking new Seymour Duncan blog!  Please come back often as we will be updating loads of guitar tips and tricks, interviewing Seymourized artists and giving away free stuff! Tell us what you think!

Paul Popov, lead guitarist for Defect Designer

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Paul Popov – Defect Designer   A conversation with Paul Popov from across the globe. Do you prefer passive or active pickups? PP: “Actually I am rather a fan of active pickups. My playing style and style of music I play is prioritized using active pickups… but this time…

Lukas Previn

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Lukas Previn – Thursday   Lukas Previn is one hard working musician. As the touring bassist for Thursday to touring and recording with The United Nations and Acid Tiger, and soon embarking on La Dispute’s October/November tour, Lukas needs versatility in his tone and chooses the Seymour Duncan SH-4…

Silverstein

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Silverstein   Neil Boshart of Silverstein knows that great electric guitar tone starts with the pickups. Of course he went straight to Seymour Duncan for his pickups. “My guitars would never sound as good without my Duncans,” exclaims Neil. “If my guitars were living beings, my Duncans would be…

Slash Returns to America

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Slash Returns to America   After months of playing nightly sold out gigs all over Asia and Australia, on a cool night in late-August 2010, Slash & Company brought their hard hitting guitar show back to American terra firma and the historic Warfield Theater. Evan Skopp, our Head of…

Gus G. Checks In from Ozzfest

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Gus G. Checks In from Ozzfest Our Head of Artist Relations, Evan Skopp, caught up with Gus backstage at Ozzfest recently. While playing with Ozzy, Gus is rocking with Blackouts pickups in all of his guitars including the new Gus G Signature Model. About these amazing pickups Gus says,…

C.J. Pierce

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups C.J. Pierce Drowning Pool has been an Ozzfest mainstay over the last decade. And Seymour Duncan pickups have been a mainstay in guitarist and backing vocalist C.J. Pierce’s B.C. Rich guitars for years. C.J. rocks with a Custom Custom in the bridge position and a ’59 Model in the…

Metal Mike Chlasciak of HALFORD

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Metal Mike Chlasciak of HALFORD   Head of Artist Relations, Evan Skopp, spends some time with Metal Mike backstage at Ozzfest 2010. How’s Ozzfest been going so far? Any stories? MM: Ozzfest is incredible! I mean there is so much talent all in one day. You get Zakk’s BLS,…

Ryan Wombacher, bassist for Bleeding Through, on Basslines

  Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Ryan Wombacher, bassist for Bleeding Through, on Basslines Ryan Wombacher, bassist for Bleeding Through, talks about using the Basslines SJB-5s in all of his custom basses. “I am using the SJB-5 passive single coil pickups for a 5 string jazz bass,” says Ryan. “They are a great thick…

Big Head Todd and the Monsters

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Big Head Todd and the Monsters This Colorado-based band has been around for over 24 years playing their blues-based rock to legions of loyal audiences. According to singer-songwriter-guitarist Todd Park Mohr, “I still use the Twin Tube Blue as the only overdrive in my very simple board: Twin Tube…

The Seymour Duncan Band Gets Around

The Seymour Duncan Band Gets Around The Seymour Duncan Band gets around. We’ve played all over USA, North America, Europe, Japan and Australia. But some of our most enjoyable shows are right here in our own backyard of Santa Barbara, California. Every year Santa Barbara hosts Old Spanish Days  (aka "Fiesta"), which is the biggest…

Clif Norrell

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Clif Norrell – Producer, Engineer & Mixer (Sting, Weezer, Rush, Miley Cyrus) “I mix a lot of live recordings where the only acoustic guitar track provided to me is a horrible sounding DI, and the Mama Bear is the only way I can get a result I am happy…

Polar Bear Club

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Nate Morris – (Guitarist for Polar Bear Club) Nate, guitarist for Polar Bear Club knows what it takes to get good tone…Seymour Duncan pickups. “All I need to get the tone I love is a JB Model in the bridge and a Jazz Model in the neck. It’s a…

Filter

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Filter Platinum rockers, Filter will drop their fifth studio album, The Trouble With Angels, in August, 2010. Filter founder Richard Patrick has taken Angels to the next level both lyrically and musically, employing some of the best in the business for the upcoming tour. The live band features Patrick…

Jeri Jones / Blame Sally

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Jeri Jones / Blame Sally Blame Sally is the mostly all-female San Francisco-based collection of singer-songwriter-musicians. According to Dirty Linen magazine, they combine, “…lush electric and acoustic instrumental textures with sensuous harmonies and intriguing original compositions.” According to Evan Skopp, who caught their recent concert in the park show…

Steve Miller and Los Lobos in Santa Barbara

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Steve Miller and Los Lobos in Santa Barbara Steve Miller at the Santa Barbara Bowl Both David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, as well as the legendary Steve Miller, have been long time customers of the Seymour Duncan company and the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop in particular….

Rock In Rio Festival

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Rock In Rio Festival In May 2010, Rock in Rio, one of the world’s largest Brazilian outdoor music festivals, made Lisbon Portugal its home for a week of some of the best concerts from the world’s biggest acts. Over five nights, the festival featured names as varied as Shakira,…

Gus G

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups GUS G. One player  who’s been getting tons of attention lately is Gus G. The mastermind of Euro-rockers, Firewind, Gus checks in with a recap of the band’s recent activities. Says Gus, “I must say that we had some really great shows this summer. Looking back now most of…

Randy Bachman

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Randy Bachman– Bachman & Turner “I recently added some Seymour Duncan pedals to my stage and studio arsenal and I have to say that SD has done it again. The Twin-Tube Overdrive, the Lava Box and the Power Grid really rock. They are made like tanks and make rock…

Andrew Seward / Against Me!

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Andrew Seward / Against Me! Andrew Seward, bassist  for Against Me! is no stranger  to good tone. Loaded in his bass is the Quarter-Pound for P-Bass®. Andrew says, “The Quarter-Pounders make my ’78 P-Bass growl! Beefy tone that  is loud as all hell. Can’t ask for more.” Be sure…

Joseph Trohman

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Joseph Trohman Joe, from Fall Out Boy, is using Duncan Distortions

After The Burial

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups AFTER THE BURIAL Minnesota a hub for hardcore heavy metal? That in fact is where the insanely aggressive hardcore group After The Burial hails from. The band mixes melodic guitar riffs with all out thrash vocals. Guitarists Trent Hafdahl and Justin Lowe (AHB-1s) continue to pioneer new sounds as…

Bobby Schneck

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Bobby Schneck This shout out comes to us from Bobby Schneck, who is currently on tour with Slash. When it comes to his Duncan Distortion bridge and Jazz Model neck pickups, Bobby says, “Seymour Duncan pickups give me what I want to hear and feel every show. Powerful and…

Onslaught

Seymour Duncan Artists and Their Pickups Nige Rockett (Onslaught founding member) “I’ve recently been looking for a little more anger in my sound, the pickups i have been using were compressing my sound way too much and not delivering the dynamic violent tone that I really wanted. After a long search and trying countless different…

Rod Castro

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Rod Castro – (Musical Director for Candyman 187 & The Havenotz as well as Skip Saylors main session guitarist) “The shape shifter is by far the most easy to use and most versatile tremolo pedal I’ve ever come across. So much control at your fingertips and absolutely no tone…

Steve Trovato

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Steve Trovato This shout-out comes from multi-stylist guitar wizard Steve Trovato. Not only is Steve a world class chickin’ pickin’ Country guitarist tearing it up in clubs all over Southern California, he has authored dozens of instructional books and DVDs and he’s a faculty member of USC’s Thornton School…

Seymour W. Duncan Jams With Yngwie

Ultimate World Guitar Exhibition, Bologna, Italy The free concert featured a bevy of world class guitarists, including our own Seymour W. Duncan along with Yngwie Malmsteen, George Lynch, Jennifer Batten, Glenn Hughes, Doug Aldrich, Ricky Portera, and Stef Burns; along with Neil Murray on bass and Gregg Bissonette on drums. Over 30,000 rabid guitar fans…

Ultimate World Guitar Exhibition

Seymour W. Duncan Clinics in Italy In May 2010, I took part in the Ultimate World Guitar Exhibition in Bologna, Italy where I performed for 30,000 people along with Yngwie Malmsteen, George Lynch, Jennifer Batten, Glenn Hughes, Doug Aldrich, Ricky Portera, and Stef Burns; with Neil Murray on bass and Gregg Bissonette on drums. As…

Eric Mendelsohn

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Eric Mendelsohn “Every time I mod a guitar or put some thing together, there is never any question what brand pickups I choose. Seymour Duncan provides pickups that fulfill every tone I could ever need. From the Antiquities in my tele to the JB in my SG, Duncan is…

Dan Sindel

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Dan Sindel Dan’s “symphonic guitars” sound has made him unique in his approach to recording classical music and has earned features in recent issues of Guitar Player and Electronic Musician magazines. Dan’s online EZGTR video instructional series is all over the Internet. In it, he walks student’s note-for-note through…

David Wallace

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups David Wallace – Jake Owen Band “If you want that great Tele® sound, you must use Seymour Duncan pickups! I found the best of both worlds with the Jerry Donahue Bridge pickup and the Antiquity Strat neck pickup. Now I can get both tele and strat tones in one….

Steve Page & Kevin Kerr

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Steve Page & Kevin Kerr– guitarists of Rivethead “Everyone asks us about our tone when we plug in at shows – from the sound men to our fans and fellow bands. Everyone knows we are tone freaks and we get that from our Seymour Duncan pickups!!!” http://www.myspace.com/rivethead http://www.RIVETHEADonline.com/

Christian Monroy

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Christian Monroy– guitarist of Fueled By Fire “Well, to start off I would like to say thanks for giving me the opportunity to work and represent Seymour Duncan. As for the pickups, I have tried out other pickups but never really found the right sound I was looking for…

Vic Karrera

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Vic Karrera – Charm City Devils “The Slash Alnico II Pro`s Rock. They are full of  tone & sweet sustain. Very versatile with many voices from clean to crunch, and everything in between.” “Seymour Duncan pickups are loaded with tone & attitude. Seymour’s pickups shine above the rest. I`m…

Nikhil Yerawadekar

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Nikhil Yerawadekar – bassist for Antibalas, King Expressers “”The Antiquity Series has transformed my Jazz Bass from an unresponsive one-trick pony to a real instrument. Now I can produce that Jamerson thump out of even the lamest amp, and these pickups are sensitive enough to respond to any subtle…

The Traveling Guitar Foundation

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups THE TRAVELING GUITAR FOUNDATION Check it out! One of our long time users and new Seymour Duncan endorser, Damon Marks, is a guitarist as well as co-founder of The Traveling Guitar Foundation. The Foundation has a custom guitar named “The Traveler” that is sent from state to state to…

Bakithi Kumalo

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups BAKITHI KUMALO The word prodigy comes to mind when talking about bass player Bakithi Kumalo. A native of Soweto Township outside Johannesburg, South Africa, his professional musical career began at age seven playing in his uncle’s band. Since then, he’s recorded and/or toured with the likes of Gloria Estefan,…

Luke O'Malley

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Luke O’Malley – guitarist in Phenomenal Hand Clap Band “The Déjà Vu lets our live show sound like our album.  I can tap tempo a digital slapback for one song and on the next tune with the turn of a knob I am 100% analog with beautiful trailing repeats….

Pete Wentz

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Pete Wentz Pete, from Fall Out Boy, is using Quarter for Pound P-Bass®.

Jeff Pevar

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Jeff Pevar “I have been a Seymour Duncan pickup endorsee for decades. These pickups are the best pickups on the market. I replaced all the pickups in this 64 Strat with Seymour Duncan pickups, and never looked back! Thanks to all at Seymour Duncan for providing such amazing pickups…

Mike Keenan

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Mike Keenan “I’ve always built guitars out of parts that I like in order to craft interesting sounds and find the resulting “Frankensteins” to have a lot more personality than the stuff that comes mass-produced or designed to sound like the guitar hero of the day, or yesterday for…

Vernon Neilly

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Vernon Neilly When I first saw this picture of Vernon relishing his signature model Tagima Guitar from Brazil, I asked him, “Are those Blackouts?” He explained, “No actually the pickups are the pickups I wound with MJ [Custom Shop Manager Maricela Juarez] at the factory. They are an SSL-2…

Dallon Weekes – Panic at the Disco & The Brobecks

Seymour Duncan Artists and Their Pickups Dallon Weekes “Even though the Power Grid (SFX-08) was designed for guitar, its three band EQ is perfect for building an excellent bass distortion.” ~Dallon Weekes, bassist for Panic at the Disco & The Brobecks” www.myspace.com/panicatthedisco www.myspace.com/Brobecks

Carl Verheyen, Master of Many Styles

Seymour Duncan Artists and Their Pickups Carl Verheyen In his 40-plus years of playing guitar, Carl has created a wildly successful, multi-faceted career. He is a critically-acclaimed musician with 10 solo CDs released worldwide; and he is commonly regarded as a guitar virtuoso capable of playing any style of music with remarkable mastery and conviction….

Notes for Notes Recognizes Seymour Duncan

Cathy Carter Duncan, Seymour Duncan and Philip Gilley Philip Gilley, Executive Director of Notes for Notes, presents Seymour W. Duncan and Cathy Carter Duncan with a "Gold Record" in recognition of the Seymour Duncan company’s work with this worthy local charity. Notes for Notes operates inside the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Barbara and…

Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups MAYLENE & THE SONS OF DISASTER Seymour Duncan recently caught up with Maylene and The Sons of Disaster backstage while on tour. The band has been tearing up the stages across the country showcasing songs from their third album entitled III released on Ferret Records. Soon they will be…

Rashon Alexander

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Rashon Alexander – Kevin Jarido and the Nu Virtu “I love the full and and fat sound that I get from my MM Basslines pickups on my MBass MJ-5 string. From the lowmids, the crisp highs and the beefy bottom I can get any tone imagined. In the gospel…

Ryan Patterson

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Ryan Patterson– guitarist in Coliseum “Seymour Duncan pickups are essential to the Coliseum tone, providing the clarity, punch and versatility I demand from my custom built guitars and amps.” www.coliseumsoundsystem.com

Jason Ciolli

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Jason Ciolli– guitarist of Secret & Whisper “After having some time off, I picked up some of my gear this afternoon and plugged in the Déjà Vu pedal to give it a shot and I LOVE it! It’s my new favorite effects pedal! I can get all my desired…

Drew Taubenfeld

Seymour Duncan Artist and Their Pickups Drew Taubenfeld “I put Seymour Duncan pickups in my Les Paul. Simply put, I couldn’t be happier with them. Sounds Great!” Drew Taubenfeld, guitarist for Demi Lovato www.myspace.com/drewtaubenfeld

Mike Aiken

Seymour Duncan Artists and Their Pickups Mike Aiken “These P-Rails really sing- For my Country/ Roots style of playing I’ve needed the ability to switch from a Tele/Strat like twang with plenty of clean punch to driving Humbuckers for gritty slide and to be able to do it in the same tune. The P-Rails and…

Ted Bowne

  Seymour Duncan Artists and Their Pickups Ted Bowne “All I’ve really played for the last five years of my career is Seymour Duncan pickups. It’s all I know.  I can’t stray from what I know is a good and true sound every time.” Ted Bowne, guitarist from Passafire, plays P-90 Stack (both neck and…

Seymour W. Duncan Working At The Custom Shop

Seymour W. Duncan Working At The Custom Shop .   Seymour W. Duncan repairs the pickups for Mexican artist Cesar Vampiro Lopez from Jaguares. Click here to watch the video.

Seymour Experiencing Hendrix

Experience Hendrix is a biennial concert tour featuring an all-star line up of music greats paying homage to the music and legacy of Jimi Hendrix. This very special concert launched on March 4, 2010, in Santa Barbara, in our own backyard. Some of the artists who performed music written and inspired by Jimi Hendrix included…

User Group Forum Guest Q&A

I think we have the best forum on the Internet with the best members. It’s been going strong since 1996, and the guys keep it real and keep it respectful. Lately, we’ve had guest luthiers and artists make appearances and do live question and answers with the forum members. Here’s what’s upcoming: Blues Saraceno July…

Seymour W. Duncan at Winter NAMM 2010

Seymour W. Duncan & Friends at NAMM 2010 .

Seymour Visits G&L Guitars

Seymour Visits G&L Guitars in Fullerton, California .   On February 4, 2010, I had a chance to visit my friends at G&L Guitars in Fullerton, California. As most of you probably know, “G&L” stands for “George and Leo”: George is George Fullerton and Leo is the legendary Leo Fender. After Leo sold Fender to…

Seymour W. Duncan works on a 1954 Strat Pickguard

Seymour W. Duncan works on a 1954 Stratocaster© Pickguard.

Les Paul

Les Paul More Than A Music Icon 2008 Les Paul at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Seymour W. Duncan. Les Paul is more than a legendary music icon; he is music. Filling the world with beautiful instruments, inventions, and melodies, he has left a legacy behind him. We will all miss you…

Seymour Duncan helps Angus Young with his tone

Seymour Duncan helps Angus Young with his tone We’ve been working behind-the-scenes with Angus Young for the past year. His tech, Takumi Suetsugu, contacted Seymour Duncan about dialing in the sound of Angus’ road guitars. Takumi had already been to a few pickup builders before he came to us. He worked with Seymour, Evan and…

Peter Frampton an old time friend of Seymour Duncan Family

Peter Frampton an old time friend of Seymour Duncan Family In the intimate setting of the Chumash Casino’s Samala showroom, Peter Frampton brought his legendary songs and instantly recognizable sound to a capacity crowd of 1300 excited fans. It’s clear to see that Peter still loves every moment he has a guitar strapped on, and…

Seymour Duncan & Abigail Ybarra

Abigail Ybarra visits the Seymour Duncan Factory Hired as a pickup winder by Leo Fender in 1956, for the last 50 years, Abigail Ybarra has been creating some of the most recognizable guitar tones in history. When you think about the sounds of Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, James Burton, and Erics Clapton…

A Very Special Guitar Sent by Seymour W. Duncan

A Very Special Guitar Sent by Seymour W. Duncan Erich Lover (Seth Lover’s Grandson) holds his new guitar. "I can’t possibly thank you enough for this awesome guitar…I was absolutely speechless when I opened the case and we saw my grandpa’s name on the pickups" These were Erich Lover’s words (Seth Lover’s Grandson) when he…

Mick Thomson of Slipknot

Featured Artist: Mick Thomson of Slipknot by Lisa Sharken In the late ’90s, Slipknot emerged from Des Moines, Iowa and literally changed the face of metal with its masked nine-man lineup and extreme style. Comprised of some of the best musicians around, the group can also put on a theatrical show that few can rival….

Dino Cazares of Divine Heresy

Featured Artist: Dino Cazares of Divine Heresy by Lisa Sharken Dino Cazares is certainly no stranger to the metal scene. Over the years, he’s been featured in nearly every major guitar magazine and is one of the best-known 7-string players. Now a new Duncan endorser, Cazares became the first guitarist to score a set of…

Ray Toro of My Chemical Romance

Groundwire January 2007 Featured Artist: Ray Toro of My Chemical Romance by Lisa Sharken Meet Ray Toro, guitarist with New Jersey’s red-hot alternative punk-pop rocker group, My Chemical Romance. We had the chance for a long distance chat before MCR hit the stage in Germany to support its highly acclaimed new disc, The Black Parade….

Chuck Garvey and Al Schnier

Artist Spotlight – moe. Interview with Chuck Garvey and Al Schnier of moe by Lisa Sharken Many of the most creative musicians are also the biggest gearheads around. Perhaps because of their experimental nature, more of these types are turning up in jam bands. Today, jam bands fuse a broad variety of styles and provide…

Troy Van Leeuwen

Troy Van Leeuwen by Lisa Sharken Guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen is roused and ready to go. “Coffee is my life blood!” he exclaims as he savors the last few sips of a Starbucks while en route to rehearsal. Van Leeuwen and Queens Of The Stone Age had recently completed Lullabies To Paralyze, and were readying…

Neil Zaza

Neil Zaza by Lisa Sharken A consummate musician, Neil Zaza possesses both impeccable technique and a prodigious sense of melody, drawing frequent comparisons to legendary players such as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. Though Zaza may be best known by other musicians — and perhaps a well-kept secret to some, his…

Jeremy Popoff of Lit

Groundwire: Jeremy Popoff of Lit by Lisa Sharken Lit emerged in Orange County, California back in 1990, building up a strong local following after years on the club scene. With its 1997 debut album, Tripping The Light Fantastic, Lit scored big at college radio and then landed a deal with RCA Records. The group’s subsequent…

Frank Cavanaugh of Filter

Artist Spotlight: Frank Cavanaugh of Filter Meet Filter’s bassist, Frank Cavanugh. Cavanaugh recently spoke to me about his basses, gear and advice to players. Kellie Stoelting: Tell us about the basses you play and how they’re set up. Frank Cavanaugh: I play the Washburn M-13 bass. I met David Karon at Washburn and he convinced…

Filter's Geno Lenardo

Artist Spotlight: Geno Lenardo of Filter Meet Filter guitarist and co-songwriter Geno Lenardo. Lenardo’s interest in music and playing guitar began in high school, when he was introduced to groups like U2, the Police, the Smiths, the Cure and Joy Division. He took guitar lessons, but had also studied piano in school and then went…

Dimebag Darrell of Pantera

Dimebag Darrell: Reinventing the Steel with the SH-13 Dimebucker by Lisa Sharken Dimebag Darrell is a player who needs little introduction. Bred on classic rock and heavy metal, Dime analyzed the styles and tones of his favorite players, then forged his own signature style and sound with Pantera. Rather than to follow the trends set…

Please check your items carefully and confirm they are correct for color, position, etc. We are not able to accommodate order changes or cancellations once you have completed the check out process.

My cart
Your cart is empty.

Looks like you haven't made a choice yet.