At our annual December Holiday Party, we honor employees with service awards. At this year’s party, after we went through the five, 10 and 15-year awards, we were pleased to give our longest-serving employee a 30-year award! His name is Kevin Beller and he’s our Vice President of Engineering. He’s seen here during a “roast” sporting prison garb: more about that later.
When Kevin started with Seymour Duncan in ’79, we were a much smaller company. But the commitment of Kevin, and those working around him, is what made us the industry leader we are today. Kevin started in pickup production and eventually worked his way up to Chief Engineer. Over the years, he’s been the driving force behind our designs for pickups, particularly active pickups and bass pickups, stompboxes, D-TAR pre-amps, and amplifiers. Remember the Convertible? A lifelong bass player, Kevin runs the Basslines custom shop that provides proprietary designs to bass builders like Fodera, Sadowsky, Lakland, Zon, ESP, Modulus and many others. The common thread with Kevin during the last 30 years and the various product lines has been a meticulous approach to product design and an unrelenting pursuit of the best possible amplified guitar tone.
During his roast, co-founders Seymour W. Duncan and Cathy Carter Duncan provided Kevin with prison stripes and gave a humorous speech complete with references to his “30-year incarceration” at Seymour Duncan. Then they let the “parole board” (the Seymour Duncan employees) vote on Kevin’s “appeal.” No surprise, but Kevin’s appeal was rejected and his “sentence” at Seymour Duncan continues!
So, what do you think? “Free Kevin Beller?” Or keep him “behind bars” where he’ll continue to design innovative tone amplification gear?
We think we know where you’re going on that…
