Category Archives: News

With its full resistance resistance of 13.3K, 1/4″ Alnico 5 pole-pieces and an EQ curve of 5 (bass) – 4 (middle) – 6 (treble), the Quarter Pound a scorching hot single coil. The Quarter Pound is available with the option of an extra wire which allows you to tap the pickup to roughly half its output, making it sound a little more like a vintage single coil.

One thing 7-string players continually cite as an attraction to the extended range of the seven is that they can still play everything that they could play on a six-string guitar – as well as getting down into much lower musical territory. And that’s true of tone too: the sounds you get out of your six-string pickups are also available from 7-string versions. Many of our popular models are available in versions for 7-string players, and even if we don’t offer a production 7-string version of a six-string pickup you’ve just gotta have on your seven, the Custom Shop may be able to help!

As technology advances, it’s becoming easier and cheaper for the semi-pro and hobbyist guitarist to have his or her own high-quality recording rig in their own home. Long gone are the days of futzing about worrying about losing fidelity from too many bounced tracks on your 4-track (or if you were really a big-shot –…

After reading Adam Gotch’s excellent case for using 100 watt amps at gigs big and small, I am compelled to come up with a counter-argument. There is simply no sonic reason outside of tight, riff-based metal to use a stack these days. Even then, I’d argue that there are probably plenty of instances a well-defined…

David Graef is country at heart, but rock n’ roll in spirit. He was raised on a Texas farm thinking he’d end up a farmer. In the ’80s, he took a chance, moving to Nashville hoping to make a living with a guitar. Years later we can look back and say that chance definitely paid off….

Papa Roach is synonymous with Last Resort, their major hit off their debut album Infest. With their newest album, The Connection, they come out with the ferocity that this is their last resort. They push the envelope to new areas with electronic add-ins while revisiting the past they’ve long forgotten with raps & flows reminiscent of…

If there were one pickup out there that was misunderstood it would be the Screamin’ Demon. Developed for George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob, Souls of the We), many think that the Screamin’ Demon is going to be one hell of a high output humbucker. But as George explains in The Story of George Lynch’s Screamin’ Demon Humbucker, the opposite is the case. George discovered that a moderate output pickup was more suitable for sustain and playing dynamics.

In this article I want to talk about the physics behind pickups in order to explain why using the DC resistance as a measure of output is not the best way of viewing the output of a pickup. But first, what is DC in the first place? Why is it relevant at all when it comes to pickups? When those questions are answered we have to take a look at the origin of the signal itself: where does the signal come from? Why are magnets and coils so crucial?

I’m sure we’ve all glared at our keyboardist friends with envy at the sheer volume of sounds they’re able to call up at will while we’re happily stuck within the confines of what a guitar, effect and amp setup can naturally do. And not to get all ‘infomercial’ about it, but synth/MIDI guitar can be pretty expensive to implement. You need a guitar with a suitable pickup for capturing the basic information from each individual string, and this can take the form of a special hex pickup or piezo elements linked into an electronic brain. You need an interface to turn that information into MIDI data. And then you need a MIDI sound module to turn that data into music again.

Ever since musical instruments were crafted of wood they had to be protected. Whether it’s protection from the player (sweat can be quite aggressive; just take a look at the gold plating of your (friend’s) vintage Les Paul Custom) or from the elements, wood has to be safeguarded from hazardous,external influences. This is because the…