News

Museum of Making Music - Meet the Music Maker

April 8 was a very special day for Seymour and for the music community. The Museum of Making Music, which is housed in NAMM’s Carlsbad, California building, inaugurated a new exhibit series called “Meet the Music Maker.” The concept is to explore the innovators and designers of the tools musicians use to practice their art and craft.

The first "Music Maker" in the series was our own Seymour. The installation included a beautiful mural showing Seymour in three phases of his life. Also on display were historical pickups and winding machines, the world's largest pickup from the Discovery Channel's BIG!, a looping video of the pickup manufacturing process, pickup sound samples, and other artifacts and memorabilia from Seymour's career as the world's leading pickup guru.

The event featured a question-and-answer session with Seymour, a lecture on the functions of pickups, and a rocking blues jam, in which Seymour got to show off the blistering tone that made him famous. The exhibit will remain up throughout the summer. For details, call the museum at 760-438-5996.

For years, acoustic guitars have relied on pickups for amplification. One problem: using pickups, even the best acoustic guitars deliver an over-simplification of true acoustic tone complexity when amplified. D-TAR, our sister company, has just solved that with a revolutionary new product called Mama Bear. Using proprietary technology called Acoustic Guitar Emulation (AGE™), Mama Bear takes your guitar into the digital realm, neutralizes the pickup, and then restores the natural body resonance.

Using a very simple interface - no menus or scrolling - Mama Bear allows you to use two 16-position knobs to determine your Input Source and your Target Instrument. The Input Source is a "set and forget" digital filter selector that tells Mama Bear what kind of pickup you're using; for example, piezo film, piezo ceramic, magnetic, solid body electric with piezo bridge, etc. Mama Bear's AGE technology kicks in with the Target Instrument knob. Here, you tell Mama Bear what kind acoustic guitar you want to emulate. There are 16 emulations that range from a parlor to orchestra models to dreadnoughts to jumbos; with a jazz box, a gypsy jazz guitar, and couple of resonators thrown in for good measure. You can play around with the various emulations to get amazing versatility out of your pickup-equipped instrument. Or, you can choose the emulation that most closely matches your acoustic guitar. The result: now the finest acoustic guitars can sound like, well... themselves. Only louder.

Learn more about Mama Bear and download the manual, at www.dtar.com

Internet Forum - User Group Day

It all started with a secret plan to present a hand-built guitar to a pickup guru; and it ended in a day-and-a-half-long celebration of guitars, pickups, 30 years of tone, and the joy of making live music, as we held our first-ever User Group Day on April 22, 2005. According to all reports, it was a resounding success.

For the last 10 years, we've hosted a very popular Internet User Group Forum. A member in Portugal suggested that forum members pool their money and collaborate on an electric guitar built to Seymour's specs, which would be presented to him as a surprise gift in appreciation for hosting the forum. The idea mushroomed. One member set up a bank account and around 60 others sent financial contributions via Pay Pal and cash. Warmoth Guitar Products of Puyallup, Washington donated the body and neck. Naked Body Guitars of Long Island, NY performed the staining and nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Forum members designed the headstock decal and neck plate engraving. During the entire six months of production, confidentiality was maintained and Seymour had no idea what was going behind his back.

At the same time the guitar was being built, we were entering our 30th year of business. Killing two birds with one guitar, we opened our doors for User Group Day ("UGD") - the pretext of which was to celebrate 30 years of tone and let forum members check out the Santa Barbara pickup factory up close. Over 70 forum members showed up. During UGD, participants were treated to a detailed factory tour and were given the opportunity to wind their own pickup to their own custom specifications. A variety of artists joined in the celebration, including guitar icons George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob), Dave Mustaine (Megadeth), and Prince's guitarist, Kat Dyson. Also joining the celebration were Marko 72 and Tim Pagnotta from Santa Barbara's own Sugarcult, and Chris Aiken and Jake Kiley from the punk band Strung Out.

After the catered lunch and an address by Cathy Carter Duncan, Seymour was presented with the guitar. He was so surprised he was left speechless. The festivities continued into the evening with a dinner followed by a spirited blues and rock jam at a local hotel ballroom during which forum members were able to play with Seymour, as well as with Lynch and Dyson, who also performed. After the jam, the party spilled out to a Santa Barbara nightclub for a performance by Van Halen cover band, The Atomic Punks. As a surprise, Lynch sat in with the band, and performed Van Halen and Dokken tunes.

The following day, we hosted a brunch for the weary forum members. For photos of UGD, a cool video, and impressions written by the participants, see seymourduncan.com.