When you think of Seymour Duncan pickups, you often think of Mr. Seymour Duncan himself. Makes sense. His name is on the building, after all.

But did you know that there’s someone who’s been at Seymour’s right hand as long as the company has existed? Did you know that this man is directly related to nearly every pickup, pedal, and amplifier that the company has ever released?

That man is Seymour Duncan’s VP of Engineering and New Product Development Kevin Beller. From the history of Duncan’s most successful products to the nitty-gritty of the company’s production process, he knows it all.

And he was kind enough to sit down for a Q&A session to shed some light on his esteemed career, voicing pickups with the artists that built it, and what goes on behind the Seymour Duncan curtain.

How did you come to work for Seymour Duncan?

That was quite a long time ago, in 1979. I met Seymour when he was a repairman at a local music store. I was always taking my bass back there and struck up a friendship with him. Then at some point, he left and started his own business.

At the time, I had a job in the computer industry doing engineering work. But I had an opportunity to join an original band with a little bit of money behind it and some really excellent songwriting. So I decided to quit and become a rock star. But, of course, it took about three months before that totally unraveled. [Laughs]

I was there telling Seymour about all my woes, and Cathy asked, “Do you think you’d ever want to work for us?” I thought it over for a couple of weeks and was running out of money. So I said, “Sure, why not?” I was their first full-time guy.

I started right in doing the design work for the humbucker line, which was still in the concept stage then. They were only building single coils and doing everything by hand. I came in and made Engineering drawings for everything and set up a regular assembly line operation. It was a lot of reverse engineering of old PAFs and old Fender pickups. It’s all just grown from there.

What’s kept you at Seymour Duncan all these years?

I like the work that I’m doing. I like pickup design, amplifier design, electronics, tooling and automation; it’s all interesting to me. I’ve gotten to do a lot of different aspects of design. It’s that variety of design work that has kept me interested.

And it’s a challenge. If it weren’t a challenge, I probably would have quit a long time ago. [Laughs]

What makes Seymour Duncan different from other pickup manufacturers?

It really started back in the early days when we were first setting up the production line. We wanted to have consistently good quality. We never sent out anything that was bad. The product always worked, we use good quality materials, and we weren’t cheap about anything. It was all about using good materials and building it right, every time.

We are also able to deliver a consistently good product on time and at the quantity required. The number of people out there making pickups has really increased over the past 15 years. It’s tough for many of them to deliver on time and maintain consistently high quality.

But we’ve always held our production to a high standard. We deliver a quality product. We do it consistently and on time.

Describe a new product’s production cycle.

Every new design starts off with a concept. That includes knowing who the customer is and understanding the style of music they play. This is important. Otherwise, you can end up floundering around and hoping to get lucky. You need to know the framework that you’re going to be working in.

Then, suppose we’re designing something more innovative or going after a different pickup type. In those cases, we also have to design a complete suite of mechanical components that will be incorporated into that pickup. We’ve been doing this so long, we have quite an inventory of wire, magnets, bobbins, and such. We typically have what we need for most designs; still, we regularly add new components.

Once the basic mechanical design is complete, we build prototypes and do quite a bit of in-house listening. We’ve always had a lot of guitar players here at Seymour Duncan, so we call on our in-house players to help with auditioning our preliminary designs. Based on the feedback from the players, we’ll make adjustments and repeat the process as needed until we feel we have a solid design.

When we agree internally, we bring in what we call “Friends of the Family.” There are a number of pro-level musicians that we send the designs to and get feedback from. Then it becomes a process of refining the design based on their feedback.

In the next stages, a lot of coordination is required between the different departments internal to the organization., the individuals that are responsible for getting a product into production, and out the door to the customer. Engineering needs to be able to interface with the production group to make sure we have the tools, materials, and processes to produce the new design efficiently and to the level of quality we expect of ourselves.

Designing the product isn’t good enough. It has to be manufacturable; we have to be able to build to quantity, deliver it on time. The marketing department has to support it by reaching out to our customers and making them aware of the benefits the product brings. There is quite a bit of activity behind the scenes for any new product release.

That’s a massive process. Do products ever get close but not make it in the end?

That happens! One example, we had a great tremolo pedal that we were designing. As we were nearing the completion of the design, a competitor came out with one that was somewhat similar but had tap tempo. This was many years ago before everyone had tap tempo. It was like, “Well, that just put our product down in the has-been pile.” [Laughs] And we only had a month before we were planning to release it! We had already gone through nearly the entire process. Unfortunately, we had no choice but to go back and redesign it, incorporating tap tempo. That was a major upheaval.

What are some of your favorite projects you’ve worked on there?

Oh, man! There are so many. I’ve had my hands in nearly every pickup that we’ve ever made. The Stack Plus was a pretty challenging design. There was some innovative thinking there. We were able to get a patent on that design. And I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of the pedals we make. They’re a little more challenging in terms of design work.

Artist pickups can be fun. We worked with Mark Holcomb (Periphery), and he was just a great guy to work with. You know, sometimes you get to work with certain artists who really have great ears. Jerry Donahue was another guy who just has one of the best sets of ears. I mean, he could hear things that ordinary people couldn’t get even close to.

Guys like that can help elevate you to the next level. They can guide you on some of the finer points. Pickups aren’t really complicated from a technological standpoint. But there are a lot of subtleties to them. So, when you get to work with an artist with really good ears, it helps you develop those subtleties in your designs.

Working on artists’ projects have always been among my favorites. But it’s all fun. Each pickup is interesting in its own way.

What’s the future of electric guitar and bass pickup design?

I see both new technology and traditional designs. There will always be innovations and emerging technologies. The electronics industry is constantly advancing, and at a rapid rate. This creates many opportunities for innovation. There’s always going to be people, including us, trying new things. We’ve been discussing some new ideas and new technologies.

But we also find that players continue to love the traditional designs. There will always be people out there who want a traditional Strat pickup or a traditional PAF. And we’ve even found that players of all styles and genres tend to gravitate toward that passive pickup design. It gives them the kind of response, pick attack, and articulation that they want. They’re not really looking for something just because it’s new and different.

There will continue to be emerging technologies and advancements on the more familiar technologies. It is all fascinating and can stimulate new ideas. It can be challenging just to keep informed, but it is well worth the effort. I’m always looking for new ways to enrich the lives and creativity of musicians.

As a long-time bassist, what are your favorite Seymour Duncan products, and which ones do you use?

I’ve used a lot of Seymour Duncan pickups over the years, as you would expect. For the longest time, I gravitated toward active pickups. I had what we were calling Live Wires at the time. They sounded great. They had some of the character of traditional Jazz Bass pickups, which all bass players love. But they also had the advantages of active pickups. The output was a bit higher, they had a bit more extension in the frequency response. They had micro switches on the top of the pickup that allowed you to enhance the low frequencies, change the resonant frequency and alter the frequency response. Those were my favorite for years.

I’ve never been a fan of high-output bass pickups. But when I play P-Bass, I like a Quarter Pounder. They’re relatively high output. But they can transform the sound of a P Bass. For a single-pickup bass, they do a lot for it.

I also have a Fodera 5-string that has the single-coil pickups we make for Fodera. They’re custom 5-string Jazz Bass pickups. They’re oriented toward a vintage, ‘60s Jazz Bass sound. Right now, that’s my current favorite. I love the way they sound and feel.

How have you kept ahead of the changing musical styles, changes in the industry, and changing gear demands through the years?

It’s all artist-based. It’s seeing what’s being done artistically and what people are listening to and not locking yourself into one particular style of music. We have a lot of products geared toward the metal market. But we also serve the country market, R&B, and blues players, and of course rock ‘n’ roll. So being able to service many different musical markets and having relationships with many different musicians from different styles puts your thumb on the pulse of what’s going on out there.

You don’t want to get tunnel vision about any one style. A lot is going on in music these days with the way people are distributing their music. And the pandemic really changed a lot. So the industry is changing as a whole, from both the artist and the manufacturer’s standpoints.

We need to be looking beyond the easy pickings. We need to look a little further out to see what’s going on out there and what’s interesting. I mean, it’s not all Strats and Les Pauls out there anymore. There are a lot of new guitar designs, as well as pickups, effects and other electronics. To me, that’s pretty interesting.

Let’s Talk Tone

Still searching for your perfect tone? Check out our blog for tips and tricks to help you dial in the sound in your head.

Any other product questions, comments or feedback? Let us know!

Remember to sign up for Seymour Duncan’s free Pickup Installation 101 online course for more in-depth information, tips, and tricks.

SIGN ME UP!

Any other product questions, comments or feedback? Let us know!