Category Archives: News

If there is one effect out there than seems to cause guitarists the most confusion, it’s definitely the compressor. I read plenty of people on the Seymour Duncan Forums asking about them. What do they do? Do I need one? What do the controls do? Is it even working?

When you walk around in a nice guitar shop it’s hard to not drool over the lovely finishes some manufacturers seem to produce. Incredibly glossy with a flame or quilt top that almost looks 3D. The first time I stepped in a guitar shop that carried Paul Reed Smith guitars I could hardly believe that these figures were Mother Nature’s handywork!

I always wished to own a Telecaster, but after having tried over 20 guitars I still was without a Tele! So, I decided to build me one. I started out with Allparts parts though, since I don’t have the time (nor capabilities) to really build from scratch. I have the theory that you want a thick maple neck and medium heavy, medium dense ash for a body. The maple will give the bite, and the thickness will give you some lows.

Promising to be a definitive documentary about the history and the rise of the electric guitar, “Turn it Up!” gives guitar lovers and fans alike a reminder why guitar players love the instrument so much. Starting with the history of the instrument with Charlie Christian and the Rickenbacker Frying Pan, it then interweaves interviews with famous artists such as Slash, Jerry Cantrell, B.B. King, Robby Krieger, Steve Lukather and more, exploring why the electric guitar was invented but also why it grips guitar players and has defined multiple generations of musicians.

For over 40 years ZZ Top has been defining their version of Texas rock and have always done it in an unmistakable way, with a tone that is as signature as the long beards and sunglasses. Having produced 15 albums, tons of hits and circled the globe many times over rocking out concert halls, ZZ Top has earned their place in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Not only has ZZ Top managed to stay together while many rock bands from the era have broken apart, but Billy, Frank and Dusty continue to crank out great music and tour like a Texas tornado.

In Tinkering with Pickups 102 we looked at swapping magnets in humbuckers to change some of the tonal characteristics of a pickup. In this entry we are going to look at what I’ll call a “vintage” modification for humbucker pickups. As per the warning the previous entry, the following modification also carries some risk of damage to your pickup if you are not careful.

If you’ve read the other two articles in the series, hopefully by now you’ve got a good understanding of the different ways we can wire P-Rails pickups. Let’s take a look at some of the more common configurations.

Congratulations to Max Fricke of Germany who has won our scholarship to attend Musicians Institute to further his music education. Max wrote that “this is my passion, this is my life, this is what I wanna do, and this is what I’m gonna do! I’m a really open-minded person and I will appreciatively use any possibility…

The three most-used modes for the P-Rails pickup are series humbucker, P-90 mode and rail mode. If these are the only three modes we want to use, the wiring is quite simple.

The P-Rails is one of Seymour Duncan’s most versatile pickups. It’s a humbucker, a P-90 and a single-coil rail pickup in one. However, to access all these sounds it’s necessary to do some more complicated wiring then you might do if you’re just putting a normal humbucker in your guitar – even if you’ve already wired a coil split before. The fact that some players go for a fourth sound – both coils wired in parallel – only adds to the potential for wiring confusion.