Category Archives: News

I put two Classic Stack Plus pickups in the neck and middle positions of my Strat, and a JB Model Trembucker in the bridge. I set up some fancy switching to split the pickups at appropriate times, and to change the volume pot from 250K to 500K when the humbucker was active.

In the first installment, we talked about using your volume knobs (or your blend) to create tonal variety in the event that you walk into a gig and are told that your amp (read: main source of tonal sound) will not be used and that a DI and set of headphones are now your best friend. But as we all know, it’s rare that a bass will have JUST a volume knob. Today we’re going to talk about the passive tone knob, or for you lucky guys with more, passive tone knobs.

At some point, a working musician will walk into a gig, amp in hand, and be stopped. They’ll be handed a DI and a set of iffy headphones, and be told that “this is your rig.” No questions, or arguments. Please take your amp back to your car. And believe it or not, this is starting to become a regular occurrence, to the point where I bring my own headphones and preamp/DI of choice. But enough about that.

Monte Pittman is one of those guitarists that you can rely on to cover any musical situation you throw at them. Just look at his resume: from Prong to Madonna and Adam Lambert, Pittman has the chops, tone and professionalism to slip into a song with the right balance of musical authenticity and individual personality. In November 2012 he released M.P.3: The Power Of Three, Part 1.

Anthrax have been going from strength to strength for the past few years. With the return of Joey Belladonna, the Big Four shows, and the 2011 release of Worship Music, Anthrax have been tearing it up all over the world.
Since Anthrax are returning to Australian shores as part of the Soundwave Festival I thought it would be good to ask Seymour Duncan artist, Anthrax guitarist and founding member Scott Ian a few questions.

The ’59 Model humbucker is a very versatile humbucker. By using the same materials and methods as the original PAF pickup, a vintage-correct sound is achieved. It has vintage-level output, which means plenty of sparkle, while still having the throatiness that humbuckers are known for.If, however, your guitar doesn’t have a space where you can…

We all know Gary Hoey can do pretty much anything on guitar. His cover of prototypical prog classic ‘Hocus Pocus’ was a Top 5 Billboard Mainstream Rock hit in 1993. In 1994 his soundtrack to Endless Summer II single-handedly made surf music cool again in the eyes of players raised on shred. His Ho Ho…

Les Pauls are famous for the tone the neck pickup produces. I feel that a Strat and Tele (in my opinion the two other ‘big ones’) also have an amazing neck pickup tone, but the Les Paul really shines and sings when you add some gain to it.

A pickup is nothing more but a large strand of copper wire, wrapped thousands of times around a holder (called the bobbin) forming a coil, and somewhere stuck to the coil you have a magnet. In some very simple designs the magnet itself can be the bobbin! The wires of a pickups are extremely thin – something like the thickness of hairs, maybe even thinner. But there is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all,’ standard wire.

I remember the day I got my first electric guitar – a cheap Status brand Stratocaster copy. It wasn’t exactly the greatest axe in the world, but I loved that damn thing. Put thousands of hours of fingergrease into it. And it only took a few weeks of being an electric guitarist to realise – the middle pickup was where a lot of my favourite sounds were.