If it takes 10,000 hours to master a certain skill, then guitarist Josh Smith could call himself a master before he even turned 20.

Stepping into the music scene as a pre-teen, Smith quickly became a regular performer at blues festivals, released three albums and toured the US with his first band Rhino Cats—all before most people move out of their parents’ house. Since then, he’s worked and performed with a wide array of artists including B.B. King, Joe Bonamassa, Mick Jagger and Raphael Saadiq.

This lengthy list of accomplishments is no surprise once you hear Josh Smith play.

Equal parts melodic, versatile and thrilling, Smith pulls from blues, rock, jazz and country to create a kaleidoscopic style that’s earned him much-deserved praise, including a spot on Guitar World’s The 30 Best Blues Guitarists in the World Today in 2021.

The Ibanez FLATV1

Throughout the many projects Smith has worked on over the years, from his early blues cuts to his recent big band-inspired album Bird of Passage, he’s almost always had a T-style guitar at the hip. “No guitar is as versatile as a Telecaster or T-style guitar while also being as simple, and I think that’s part of the magic about this style of guitar,” Smith said. “It’s by far the only guitar that I would take to a jazz gig, a rock gig, a country gig, a soul/R&B gig or a blues gig and feel comfortable.”

For about the past 20 years, Smith’s number-one guitar has been his custom black T-Bird, built by Bill Chapin. When Ibanez approached Smith about designing a signature guitar in 2019, it was a no-brainer for Smith to base the model off of his beloved T-Bird. “Bill’s a little one-man operation. He’s a genius builder, but I had people wanting guitars like mine and this was just such a win-win situation to work with such a great company like Ibanez,” Smith explained.

The result was the Ibanez FLATV1, a T-style guitar that’s unlike anything else in the company’s current lineup. Equipped with several firsts for Ibanez including a soft-V neck profile, vintage-style Gotoh tuners and a non-contoured slab body, the FLATV1 combines classic Tele specs with features from the Ibanez AZS Series, including a curved control plate and Gotoh/Ibanez In-Tune bridge saddles. This careful balance between vintage and contemporary design makes for a guitar that feels both familiar and excitingly new as soon as you pick it up.

The Josh Smith Flat V Signature Pickups

When it came to the FLATV1’s pickups, Smith aimed to emulate the set in his T-Bird as closely as possible. But these pickups weren’t any old vintage-inspired set—they were hand made specifically for Smith and his playing style by Chapin himself. That’s why Smith turned to the Seymour Duncan engineering team to uncover every detail behind the pickups to create a signature set that was faithful to the original.

And so the Seymour Duncan Josh Smith Flat V Signature Pickups were born: a T-style pickup pair that sits comfortably at the crossroads between vintage sounds and modern tonal flexibility. The neck and bridge pickups build off the famously flexible classic Telecaster design, but incorporate unique magnet combos and a slight bump in output to suit whatever a player needs from their instrument. Whether you’re comping jazz chords, laying down a funk groove or burning down the house with a rock solo, these pickups have the responsiveness and range to get the job done.

The Flat V Neck Pickup: Wide Open Tone

For Smith, a crucial factor behind achieving his expressive sound is the natural compression—or more specifically, a lack thereof—from his pickups.

“One thing you’ll hear me say a lot is that I’m trying to eliminate compression,” Smith explained. “I think of compression very much as an effect, so I don’t want it in my base tone. I want to bring it in when I need it and dial it up when I want more compression.”

That search for an open, unencumbered sound led Smith and the Seymour Duncan team to a neck pickup with Alnico 3 magnets, which create a high-headroom tone that’s also highly responsive to picking dynamics. With a tad more natural gain than a usual vintage Tele neck pickup, the Flat V neck gives plenty of warmth and low end with still enough presence and bite to nail classic T-style tones.

“Telecaster neck pickups are always a little weaker and a little bassier than a Strat. I wanted this pickup to still be a very traditional Telecaster neck pickup, because you need that to get the middle pickup sound, but I also just wanted slightly more oomph,” said Smith.

The Flat V Bridge Pickup: All Twang, Fat Gain, No Ice

The Flat V bridge pickup features a flat-pole design with a mix of Alnico 2 and 4 magnets for an ideal balance of warm low end, scooped mids and sparkling top end. It provides lots of Tele twang without verging into ice pick territory for both clean and crunch settings, as well as robust and smooth drive tones that cut through the mix but never get too muddy or shrill.

“The low strings are fat and the high strings are fat but still twangy, which I think is difficult to do,” Smith said. “This mixing of the magnets in the bridge gives you that extreme dynamic range, which again is what I’m looking for with every piece of gear.”

Plus, for those who always keep a pinky near the volume knob, the bridge pickup responds well to dynamic changes without sacrificing any tone or range. This versatility you get from just your hand and the volume knob will certainly make Esquire players or one-pickup-only converts feel right at home. “This is a bridge pickup that if you use your technique and the way you pick and change your volume, you can almost live on that bridge pickup exclusively. It’s so dynamic,” added Smith.

That isn’t to say that the bridge doesn’t play well with the neck, because the two pickups nail the distinctly unique middle tone tone you only get from a T-style guitar: not as quacky and bright as a Strat, but still has a strong attack and honk that’s perfect for rhythm or lead.

Play With Full Expression

Whether he’s backed by a full jazz band or backing some of music’s biggest names, Josh Smith knows that his FLATV1 guitar and Flat V pickups will always deliver. Now, he’s excited for other players to discover the same thing and find their creative voice through the Flat V pickups.

“I’ve worked really hard on these, as have everybody here at Seymour Duncan,” said Smith. “It’s great now that people will be able to get these pickups standalone and try them out, because I really think they’re just incredible T-style pickups.”

Eager to discover the magic of T-style pickups for yourself? Learn more about the Josh Smith Flat V Signature Pickups here, and check out our blog for more pickup tricks, tone breakdowns and more.