- Soldering is a relatively easy technique, but like anything else, a little instruction goes a long way. There are many excellent videos on the Internet that show proper soldering technique. Two are here Basic Soldering - Part 1 and...
- Yes they can be but Seymour Duncan and Fender pickups are magnetically opposite. Many players find that after installing a Seymour Duncan bridge single coil into a Strat they must switch the Fender mid and neck position pick ups...
- Sorry, we don't sell directly to the public, but there are many Seymour Duncan/Basslines dealers, so you should be able to find one in the USA. For the quickest information on Seymour Duncan dealers in your area, check out...
- Yes, you can purchase humbucker covers from any Seymour Duncan dealer. Nickel Humbucker cover part #'s: 11800-20-NC for standard pole spacing 11800-21-NC for Trembucker or 'F' spacing Gold Humbucker Covers Part #'s: 11800-20-GC for standard pole spacing 11800-21-GC for...
- The STC Tone Circuits require about 3mA of operating current. Nearly all phantom power circuits feed the voltage through 6.8K resistors. 3mA flowing through a 6.8K resistor will produce a 20.4-volt drop across the resistor. If you are working...
- Yes, Seymour Duncan pickups are compatible with other manufacturers' pickups. With Gibson and some other brands Seymour Duncan pickups are a direct replacement. With Fender and some other brands the polarity of one of the pickups needs to be...
- Sometimes if the break is at the end of the coil winding, the wire can be unwound a couple of turns and a new lead wire attached. If the break is anywhere else, the pickup would need to be...
- This is not something that we recommend. They can be mixed but most often they are not. This is because the component values needed for active and passive pickups are different and it makes the wiring difficult and often...
- At Fender's® request, the JD Tele® schematic is not available for publication. In the meantime, for your reference, here are the selector switch specifications: Position ONE: The neck (Strat®) pickup with the tone circuit OUT, affording a clearer, brighter...
- Yes Seymour Duncan humbuckers are compatible with the PRS-type 5 way switching. If you are replacing the bridge pickup, the magnet will first need to be flipped to correct phase issues related to the parallel wiring and series coils...
- We can build vintage-correct reproductions of the Burns Tri-Sonic pickups, as well as the pickups we made for Guild which were used on their Brian May Signature Model. The pickups are built, by hand, in the Custom Shop and...
- Yes. Nearly all our humbuckers and Trembuckers come with optional gold or nickel plated covers. The only exceptions are the pickups that don't have standard pole pieces, like the Invader, Dimebucker, Stag Mag and Parallel Axis Trembuckers....
- Jazz players were the first to add a seventh string to their guitars for increased range. Lately, however, the 7-string torch has been taken up by rockers. We've responded by releasing our most popular humbuckers in a 7-string format....
- Sorry, we don't make direct replacements for Rickenbacker guitars. We do offer rewinding service, which generally costs $65 for a single coil, $85 for a humbucker. If you're interested, please contact our Custom Shop at 805-964-9610 between 8 am...
- Lefty pickups only apply in staggered pole piece pickup models. All of our Staggered single coil pickups are available in Left Hand Stagger at no extra charge. Other than that, there is nothing about a lefty pickup that is...
- We do offer rewinding service. Rewind single coil starts at $65.00 and it will depend on type of pickup. Rewinding Humbucker will start at $85.00. If you're interested, please contact our Custom Shop at 805-964-9610 between 8 am -...
- Yes, we do but on a custom order basis now. The Holdsworth Model or SH-AH1 was developed to produce the subtleties of Allan's fluid style of playing. Built with mirror-image coils and adjustable screws for extra midrange strength and...
- Seymour Duncan offers several active pickups for bass and guitar. They are listed in the products pages along with the passive pickups as BLACKOUTS and Live Wires....
- Seymour Duncan offers many different types of noise-canceling pickups for a variety of different types of instruments. These come in the form of stacks, side-by-side humbuckers, and active pickups---and in a variety of shapes and sizes. Check our product...
- With humbuckers it can be as simple as changing the hot and ground connections or flipping the magnet. To correct phase problems with single coils is harder because the pick ups must be both magnetically and electrically out of...
- Seymour Duncan has released ?The Journey is the Destination,? a three-volume audio CD set of all Seymour Duncan electric guitar pickups recorded and indexed for "A/B-ing." The three CDs are: (1) humbuckers, mini-humbuckers and P-90s; (2) Tele, Jaguar, &...
- The easiest way to diagnose bad components and pick ups is to measure their DC resistance with an ohmmeter. Seymour Duncan has a list of DC resistances in their Tone Chart for all of their pickups. Potentiometers should range...
- With two humbuckers connected by a switch in phase pick ups will sound normal, while out of phase humbuckers will sound weak and nasal. This is because out of phase humbuckers result in a lot of low and mid...
- All our pickups have some identifying characteristics, usually including a label on the underside. If your pickup was built before 2002, click here. If it was built in 2002 or after, click here....
- It's not necessary with our system. Most bass players want to be able to switch to passive because they're afraid that their battery might die in the middle of their solo. This is a valid concern with a lot...
- If the humbucker pickup has a cover it must first be removed. Then you must remove the tape that is wrapped around both bobbins. If there is tape around the individual bobbins, it should be left intact. Loosen but...
- To make your Strat® sound more like a Les Paul®, you probably want to install one of our single-coil sized humbuckers like the Little '59, JB Jr., Hot Rails or L'il Screamin' Demon, depending on what type of tone...
- Our Little '59 and Hot Rails for Tele® would give you the most Les Paul®-like sound from your Tele®. Both of these are humbucking pickups. The Little '59 is made to give you '59 Les Paul "Patent Applied For"...
- In order for an H/S/H guitar to be noise canceling it is necessary to split the humbuckers in the #2 and #4 positions. Then you must make sure that the single coil in the center is both magnetically and...
- Put the Duncan GREEN wire to the 5-way switch where the original PU's red wire went. Put the Duncan RED & WHITE together (solder them together and tape them off). Put the Duncan BLACK wire to the S-1 switch...
- We measure it directly by sweeping the pickup from 20 Hz to 20 KHz, driving it from a constant current source. We then measure the voltage magnitude across the coil and graph the change in voltage versus frequency. The...
- Amp noise can be caused by a number of things including a poorly grounded source of electricity, poorly shielded guitar cables and fluorescent lighting. Try changing these things one thing at a time to isolate the problem. Also modern...
- Functions of switches on old-style "Active EQ" bass pickups We stopped making the switch pickups ("Active EQ") in the mid-'90s. We replaced them with the Pro-Active? series. The little rocker switches on the Active EQ pickups change the sound....
- The most common problems relating to noisy guitars are improperly wired pickups and poor grounding. With Seymour Duncan humbucker pickups it is important to not only connect the red and white wires but also to insulate them with electrical...
- There are several ways to troubleshoot electric guitar wiring. If the guitar exhibits no output from any of its pickups the first thing to check is the wiring at the jack and the switch. One bad solder joint at...
- As a rule pickup installation is fairly simple but some guitars and switching layouts are more difficult than others. If you have basic soldering skills, a little mechanical aptitude and the ability to follow very simple color-coded diagrams you...
- We are supplying pickups on an OEM basis to Ed Roman Guitars located in Las Vegas, NV, along with a limited number of brands that are either built for Ed Roman Guitars or are distributed by Ed Roman Guitars....
- There are commercially available electronics parts cleaning solutions that sometimes work. It's generally better to just replace worn components though. There is a list of parts suppliers on this FAQs page that carry everything necessary to breathe new life...
- The 84-50 was American made and of much better quality. Circuit wise, the two amps are nearly identical, but there were some differences in the voicing. Even the various versions of the 84-40 were voiced differently. None of the...
- We stopped manufacturing amps many years ago, and consequently we have various documents and few parts relating the amps. Unfortunately, we do not have every owner's manual, schematic or amp part anymore. We have pdfs of some manuals here....
- Sorry, we no longer manufacture amps. There are a lot of used amps out there (and even a few new ones). We see used ones advertised all the time....
- One type of Trembucker that we made famous is our patented Parallel Axis design [see]. Here, four pole pieces per string insure that all the vibrations are captured for greater tonal range and dynamics. Because they're Trembuckers, they're designed...
- Pot is a shortened version of the word potentiometer. A potentiometer is a variable resistor and they are most often used in guitars to control volume and tone levels. The quarter sized (sometimes as small as a dime) round...
- Push pull pots are potentiometers with switches installed on the bottom to the pot chassis. The stem of the pot can be pulled to activate the switch. The most common varieties are SPST on/off and DPDT on/on. Push pull...
- Series and parallel wiring usually refers to two separated but related issues. The most common usage refers to how two coils in a humbucking pick up are connected to each other. With series wiring the individual coils are connected...
- While coil splitting and parallel wiring sound very similar to most players, there are some differences. One difference is output. Splitting a 16k ohm DC resistance humbucker results in an 8k ohm single coil and that translates into a...
- Magnet Type Alnico II Alnico V Ceramic Good for Warming up a bright-sounding guitar Adding punch to a warm guitar Adding punch and output to a warm guitar General Tone Warm, smooth, round, enhanced mids, soft and spongy...
- We do not list the specifications of the Pearly Gates Plus in our Tone Chart because this pickup is not sold retail and can only be found in the Lone Star Strat®. For comparison purposes, here are the specs:...
- We're making both guitar and bass pickups for Ibanez. We arrived at these designs after working closely with their guitar and bass R&D departments. Some of the pickups are made in USA and some are made offshore. The specifications...
- All Seymour Duncan humbuckers with four-conductor hookup wires incorporate a standard wire color code. GREEN = start of adjustable/south coil RED = finish of adjustable/south coil BLACK = start of stud/north coil WHITE = finish of stud/north coil For...
- Dime was on a tone quest for a long time before he and Washburn Guitars came to us. He had tried numerous custom wound pickups, but none were giving him the tone he was looking for. At the time...
- Duncan Performer pickups are a mid-level brand of pickups exclusive to Guitar Center stores. These pickups were designed in our Santa Barbara factory and are built by hand to our spec in Korea's finest pickup workshop. Because they use...
- We can't reveal many details or give away any secrets or whatnot. There were signed agreements between us and Fender's legal team. So we have to be very careful. Suffice to say, the pickup is not available from our...
- When the Discovery Channel needed someone to build the world's biggest pickup for their series BIG!, who did they call? Seymour Duncan! Here's some exclusive pictures from inside the Seymour Duncan factory where Seymour and his crew hand made...
- A basic 30 watt or 40 watt soldering kit usually contains all the tools needed to install a pickup, including the iron and solder, a small standard and Phillips (crosshead) screw driver, and a small pair or wire snips....
- SPST stands for single pole single throw and DPDT stands for double pole double throw. A SPST switch is a simple on/off type switch and can be used for coil splitting and as a kill switch for the guitar....
- Phase refers to the relationship of two sine waves (signals) to each other. If both signals are at their highest peak (+) at the same time they are in phase. If one signal is at its highest peak (+)...
- The two most misunderstood specs on the Tone Chart are the DC resistance and resonant peak numbers. The DC resistance refers to the resistance of the coil windings. For humbuckers the DC resistance is the sum of both coils....
- P.A.F. is an acronym for Patent Applied For and is a nickname given to the original Gibson humbuckers designed in 1955. These pickups had a sticker on the bottom that had "Patent Applied For" on them and years later...
- Humbuckers and Trembuckers are very similar to each other, and most humbucker models also come in Trembucker versions. The Trembucker-spaced JB, for example, is a TB-4 and the humbucker-spaced version in an SH-4. The only difference is the wider...
- Occasionally we'll get a request for a reverse zebra humbucker. It's a zebra humbucker with the cream and black bobbins switched. We call this "reverse zebra". Which coil will be which gets kind of confusing, so we've made a...
- We have a small brochure that lists just our 28 most popular pickup models. These pickups account for more than 80% of all our sales and generally meet the needs of most everyday players. However, we make another 80...
- The NOS premium, mil-spec, subminiature, USA-made Phillips-Sylvania 6021 dual triodes are really great tubes. They have extremely long life and work well in extreme conditions. Most SFX-03 owners will never have to change their tubes. But in the unlikely...
- First, let's define some terms. "Machine Winding" - a machine spins the bobbin and moves back and forth at a regular pace, distributing the wire evenly across the bobbin. "Hand Winding" - a machine spins the bobbin, but the...
- A coil tap refers to a lead connected to an individual coil's winding and is used to raise and lower a pickup's output and change its tone. This is most often utilized on single coil pickups where the player...
- Coil splitting refers to the ability to disable one coil in a humbucker-type pickup. This offers the player option of getting a single coil-type tone from a humbucker-loaded guitar. Many pickups have three- or four-conductor wiring that allows for...
- There is no "EVH" pickup. There is, however, a custom shop pickup called the 78 Model, which some people abbreviate as "E.V.H.," because it offers evenly-voiced harmonics. The 78 Model pickup is a faithful recreation of the legendary low-output,...
- The Jimmy Page wiring is a fairly complicated switching system made famous by Jimmy Page and was later used in Gibson's line of Jimmy Page Les Pauls. It uses four DPDT switches and incorporates coil taps for both pick...
- Passive pickups use a magnetic source of energy and relatively large coils of wire to generate their signal. Active pickups use smaller coils of wire and have a preamp built into the pickup to boost the signal. The upside...
- There are a couple of differences. Low output pickups drive the front end of your amp less and tend to produce a more bluesy or more vintage distortion. They have a very open feel to their tone. High output...
- A good starting point for the distance from the bridge pickup to the strings is 3/32 of an inch. The neck pickup can be set to provide a good output balance when compared to the bridge or to produce...
- Seymour Duncan / Basslines offers our 21 Day Real World Exchange Policy on all new pickups purchased in the U.S. and some other participating countries, which states the following: If for any reason you're not satisfied with the pickup's...
- Brent Mason talks about a pickup with two types of magnets in a HotLicks video. This pickup is our "Five-Two" pickup (formerly the "Nashville Studio). It uses Alnico-V rods for the bottom three strings and Alnico-II rods for the...
- Seymour is a long-time friend of Eric's and has wound many custom pickups for him over the years. It's tough to say what pickup he may be using on any particular recording, your best bet is to look for...
- George Lynch uses our "George Lynch Screamin' Demon" Model. In addition, George plays an ESP Ultra Tone that has 3 of our mini-humbuckers installed: The Seymourized mini-humbuckers in the bridge & neck, with a Custom mini-humbucker in the middle....
- Slash uses our Alnico II Pro Humbuckers in his Les Pauls®....
- There are three options: 1. Use a Twin Sound Spot XL and mount them on the inside of the instrument on either side of the bridge. This works well and sounds natural, but can not be played at high...
- Eighteen volts doesn't mean twice the gain of a 9-volt pickup. What it means is that the pickup will swing twice as much output voltage before its internal preamp starts to clip. That means less distortion in the pickup's...
- The difference between the two preamps is the value of some of the components. If you use the wrong one, you may experience limited range in the treble control. Also, when you blend two pickups to together, you might...
- The difference in bridge vs. neck/middle pickups is their output. There is naturally less volume generated from the bridge pickup due to less string movement the closer the pickup is to the bridge. Bridge pickups are usually wound hotter...
- The Pearly Gates is rather different than the "Pearly Gates Plus" that is on various Fender instruments including the Lone Star StratT®, Fat Strat, Big Apple Strat and some Showmaster® guitars. The Pearly Gates Plus is only available on...
- The following are DPDT on/on/on switches that our schematic was designed to work with. Allparts: 713-391-0637 (Texas store) www.allparts.com - EP-080 - DPDT on/on/on chrome - EP-079 - DPDP on/on/on black - EP-129 - DPDT on/on/on gold Newark Electronics:...
- Actually, we don't manufacture the guitars. There's a guitar company in Japan called ESP and they license the Seymour Duncan name for a line of guitars they produce for the Japanese domestic market. Because the guitars use a trademarked...
- AllParts: 281-391-0637 www.allparts.com (guitar parts) Stewart Macdonald: 1-800-848-2273 www.stewmac.com (guitar parts) Warmoth: 1-253-845-0403 www.warmoth.com (guitar parts) Guitar Jones www.guitarjonesusa.com (guitar parts) Parts is Parts: 1-802-464-0014 www.guitar-parts.com (guitar/amplifier parts) Smart Parts: 1-847-342-8266 www.partssmart.com (guitar parts/amplifier parts) Guitarbase-Guitarmall www.gbase.com (huge dealer/parts/database)...
- If you want to learn more about guitar electronics, take a look at the book, "Guitar Electronics for Musicians" by Donald Brosnac. It's a great guide to guitar electronics, including pickups, components, and circuits, plus there are schematics for...
- At the end of the production process, all STK-S4 pickups are fine tuned for hum-canceling. Each pickup is essentially 'injected' with hum, and measured for the amount hum it cancels. To achieve the maximum amount of hum-canceling, a small...
- Actually, the Pickup Booster is a very quiet device. However, like any other front end device, it requires a quiet power supply in order to have good noise performance. When using the Booster with a wall mount power supply,...
- The advantage of the Metal LiveWires is that it has been voiced for heavy tones in a way that other active pickups have not. The distortion channel of your amp or a distortion box should not cause the actual...
- No. It's correct that some of our single-coil-sized humbuckers (JB Jr., Little '59, Li'l Screamin' Demon, Duckbuckers, Hot Rails, Cool Rails, Vintage Rails and the new Classic Stack Plus) have circuit boards on the undersides of the pickup. However,...
- The Tweak Fuzz is a tone shaper, not a tone booster. The Tweak Fuzz design is based on a truly vintage circuit like the old Fuzz Face pedal. Depending on your set-up, you may find that to achieve a...
- We don't put prices on our web site, because listing U.S. retail prices would be very confusing to the numerous Seymour Duncan and Basslines customers in other countries that visit our site. A U.S. retail price list will be...
- The Invader (SH-8) is not available as a trembucker because it really doesn't need to be. It has very large hex screw pole pieces which surround the strings adequately with their magnetic fields....
- That's not a mistake. It's intentional. We mask the paint on the chassis in order make a ground connection between the two halves of the case. We do this to prevent ground hum and noise from getting into the...
- First and foremost is tone. Seymour Duncan and his staff have spent years researching and developing guitar pickups that sound great. At Seymour Duncan the goal has never been about how to make pickups faster or cheaper, but how...
- The two most common reasons are to make different manufacturers' pickups phase compatible and also it is necessary in order to get PRS 5 way switching to work properly....
