Category Archives: News

There’s no shortage of things to consider when shopping for pickups—active vs. passive, high-output vs. low-output, alnico vs. ceramic, and, as you might have gathered from the title of this post, staggered pole pieces vs. flat pole pieces. Pole pieces are the round bits of metal in a guitar pickup that align with the strings….

The P90 is not only a classic and well-loved pickup, it’s also a crucial piece of electric guitar history. This soapbar (and sometimes dog-eared) shaped pickup’s origins go back to some of the first pickups ever installed in a guitar. Many guitarists and pickup builders still consider the P90 to be one of the most…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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…