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 much more than an aesthetic choice. The pickup’s magnetic field is made more consistent across all of the strings by utilizing this construction method. Rails also eliminate signal dropouts when bending strings and inconsistencies from string to string.

But most of our rail pickups also share one other very important trait: their sound. Though they’re all passive pickups, they are take-no-prisoners, high-output hard rock and metal machines. Their stock-in-trade is driving the front end of high-gain amps and your favorite dirt pedals. And, of course, they add that aggressive look that’s perfect for players with savage tones and pummeling riffs.

Here we’ll go over five different models of our favorite dual rail humbucking pickups. We voice each one for different styles of gain. And this article should give you a great view into some of the most powerful pickups in our stable.

Jupiter Rails

The Jupiter dual rail humbucker pickup is the brainchild of metal guitarist Wes Hauch. His work with bands like Alluvial, The Faceless, Devin Townsend, and Thy Art Is Murder makes him a heavy metal guitarist’s heavy metal guitarist. From pulverizing riffs and burning solos, Hauch’s precision and jackhammer tone define modern extreme metal guitar.

A long-time Seymour Duncan guy, Hauch has used many of our high-output pickups to achieve his sound. He’s even responsible for some of our most popular metal pickup demos on YouTube. So there’s no question that, when it comes to tone, Hauch knows what he wants and knows how to get it.

So we teamed up with Hauch over a two-year process to create his signature Jupiter Rails. The directives were to make them fast, aggressive, clear on extended chord voicings, and exceptionally precise in the low end. To achieve this, we went through many different configurations and rail sizes. Once we landed on the perfect recipe, we all knew it. The resulting Seymour Duncan Jupiter is the perfect rail pickup for players who push the edge of rock guitar.

El Diablo

When humbucker pickups have a name like the El Diablo, subtlety isn’t an option. Crafted in association with Anthrax’s Scott Ian, we set out to make one of the most powerful, hard-driving, and aggressive, passive humbucking pickups out there. To do that, we knew we needed to use rail magnets. And we were right. The Custom Shop El Diablo humbuckers became a mainstay in Ian’s signature guitars for decades.

Not only are El Diablo’s rail magnets insanely powerful, but their large size gives the pickup a look as wicked as its sound. That sound is fat, punchy, and perfect for the gut-punching rhythms Ian made famous. While some may ask about how the El Diablo sounds clean, we would ask, why you would play the El Diablo clean…?

No question, the Seymour Duncan El Diablo isn’t for everyone. But it continues to inspire legions of metal-minded followers. They clamor for its massive output and punch. That’s why it resides comfortably in the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop, waiting to add a new level of power to your electric guitar.

Dimebucker

What can be said about Dimebag Darrell’s guitar tone that hasn’t already been said? You can discuss its aggression, thick harmonics, tight low end, and how it wrote the book for heavy metal guitar tone ever since. But we think the most fascinating thing about Dime’s tone is how unique it is.

When Dimebag began hunting for a new pickup to get this sound, he came to Seymour Duncan. The pickup had to be perfect. It had to deliver an insane amount of low-end. The treble had to cut like a scalpel. And its metal-approved scoop still had to punch through a mix. And it was going to use the dual rail humbucker pickup design to do it.

The pickup became the popular Seymour Duncan Dimebucker. It gave nearly all of Dime’s future signature Dean and Washburn guitars their searing tone. Drop one in your guitar’s bridge position, and you get a metal tone as unique as the man who designed it. It’s loud, it’s massive, and it cuts like a razor.

Adding to Dime’s unique sound, he was famous for pairing the Dimebucker with one of our bridge-position ’59 humbuckers in the neck position. This is still an extremely popular pairing, and we offer it as a set. The Dimebucker also pairs well with many other humbuckers, depending on the tones you’re going for. They just have to be metal.

Slug

If the El Diablo is perfect for over-the-top ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s metal, the Slug is a close cousin aimed squarely at the doom and stoner scene. At first glance, it looks a lot like the El Diablo. You have two similar oversized ceramic magnet rails, overwound coils, and slightly larger housing. But the Slug is a very different animal.

At 48K DCR, Seymour Duncan Slug has to be one of the most powerful passive guitar pickups ever. Heck, it even gives active pickups a run for their money. Its one mission is to destroy whatever comes after it in the signal path. Whether you prefer gated fuzz pedals, vintage tube amps, or the precision of high-gain modeling devices, none of them stand a chance against the Slug. The rails themselves are as large as the ceramic magnets found in other humbuckers.

Classic rock tone junkies, Blues purists, and Nashville studio types need not apply.

Duncan Hot Rails

Our most famous rail pickup might come as a surprise. While many of the others on this list are oversized humbuckers, the Hot Rails come neatly outfitted in a compact, single-coil-sized housing. But don’t let their diminutive size fool you. Hot Rails are in every way a high output humbucker ready for hard rock and heavy metal guitar tones.

When the guitar modding craze kicked into full steam, many Strat-style players wanted to add a humbucker bridge pickup to their guitar. But a full size humbucker required routing out the body of the guitar and/or finding a replacement pickguard to house it. Not wanting to make permanent changes to their instruments, they needed a different way, and the Hot Rails answered the call.

Easily fitting into the standard Stratocaster single coil route, Hot Rails place cutting, high-output humbucker tones within easy reach of Strat devotees. Players like Iron Maiden’s Dave Murray continue to swear by them for live performance and recording. And the pickups even boast 4-conductor wiring. This lets you wire your Strat for both the bell-like tones of traditional single coil pickups and full-on humbucker tones by splitting the coils.

It’s like turning your Strat into two completely different instruments.

Let’s Talk Tone

Still searching for your perfect tone? Check out our blog for tips and tricks to help you dial in the sound in your head.

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