Category Archives: News

If you were to take a close look at the lineup of pickups from Seymour Duncan, you might notice a numbering system for the humbuckers: SH-1 (’59), SH-2 (Jazz), SH-3 (Stag Mag), all the way up to SH-18. This nice line of sequential pickups gives you an indication how old a specific design is. For example, it’s pretty commonly known that the SH-2 Jazz and SH-4 JB were developed simultaneously. It doesn’t take much imagination to think that those first few pickups were designed and released in the same era, the late 1970s. But look again and you might notice two gaping holes in the lineup. The SH-7 and SH-9 are missing!

When noiseless single-coil pickups are discussed, it won’t be long before someone says that they can never sound exactly like a real single coil. The fact that they’re humbuckers at the core means that some of that high-end sparkle disappears. There are some things to remember at this point.

It’s not just a pickup, it’s a weapon of  tonal Armageddon. The Nazgûl was designed with a single purpose; for intense high-output-chug heavy punch-you-in-the-chest ruthless distortion. The tone is heavy and aggressive but it also retains articulation and provides the precise pick attack that is necessary for high-output metal. The Nazgûl gives chords heavy saturation…

A couple of years ago I was looking for a replacement tremolo system to fit a Floyd Rose route. I stumbled on the tremolo system designed and build by Ola Strandberg. Even though my guitar and the tremolo system weren’t compatible after all (at least, I wasn’t willing to do the necessary, though minor, modifications),…

Ever since active pickups came out and many guitar manufacturers starting building with them in mind, there’s been one problem – the standard size of active pickups (Phase II) is different than the size of regular passive humbuckers. Changing out your active pickups for regular passive pickups just isn’t possible if your guitar was designed…

Delay, or echo (as it should be called) is the repeating of sound. It is the sound when you yell into a canyon and you hear your voice back at you because it reflects off of the rocks. No canyons around? Well, you can simulate this sound with a delay pedal. But it is usually…

In this ongoing saga of testing out Duncan humbuckers in my trusty rebuilt vintage Kramer Voyager, I’ve been through quite a few bridge pickups all paired with the ’59N, which is a great neck pickup. Not just great but super versatile, and able to blend with every single bridge pickup I tried. Great cleans, killer…

If you’ve got a Telecaster that you love the feel of but you’re not totally happy with the lead pickup sound, there are lots of options. In this article I’ll take you through some of them, and let you hear what a few of them would sound like too. I’m going to assume that your Tele is a “normal” one – as in, it has the big metal bridge plate with a single coil pickup in it. Where can we go from there?

Following on from my demonstration of the Little ’59 pickups, I wanted to continue with a few words about the Li’l Screamin’ Demon. Most discussions of single-coil-sized humbuckers tend to drift towards the pickups that make up the Everything Axe set – the Little 59, the Duckbuckers and the JB Jr. It’s a great set…

Yngwie J Malmsteen never slows down – certainly not on guitar, and definitely not in his work ethic. Yngwie is on the road right now promoting his new album Spellbound (which features some of the most extreme neoclassical guitar magic of his career), and he’s also just released his autobiography, Relentless – A Memoir.