Seymour W. Duncan Clinics in Italy

In May 2010, I took part in the Ultimate World Guitar Exhibition in Bologna, Italy where I performed for 30,000 people along with Yngwie Malmsteen, George Lynch, Jennifer Batten, Glenn Hughes, Doug Aldrich, Ricky Portera, and Stef Burns; with Neil Murray on bass and Gregg Bissonette on drums. As long as I was in Italy, I figured I’d do one of my favorite things, which is to visit players and talk to them about guitars and tone.

In Rome, I put on a clinic at the Saint Louis College of Music. And in Bologna, I spoke at Music Academy 2000. At both clinics, I talked about my early musical influences like Duane Eddy, The Fendermen, Les Paul & Mary Ford; and later influences like Roy Buchanan, Jimi Hendrix, and Jeff Beck. To this day, I get comments from folks who come out to watch me play and tell me they hear my early influences in my playing. I consider that a great honor.

I talked about my early days working at the Fender Sound House in London where I had the pleasure of working with Jeff Beck, Free, Bad Company, Robert Palmer, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Golden Earring, Marc Bolan, Slade and Rory Gallagher. I also talked about some of the folks who were major influences on me as I decided to get into pickup building: folks like Les Paul, Leo Fender, George Fullerton and Seth Lover. Working with those artists and being able to interact with those musical instrument luminaries has always influenced how we conduct business to this day.

And finally, I got a chance to talk about my present career and how we build pickups and stompboxes for a variety of the best players in the world, as well as for the thousands of folks who simply want to sound better. In Italy, one of the highlights for me was meeting a local customer who had me re-wind his P-Bass pickup 25 years ago. I remembered him!

I want to send out big thanks to Casale Bauer, my distributor over in Italy. And to the fans who came out to catch my clinics and listen to me sit in with a bunch of world class guitars players. This is a trip I’ll remember for a long, long time.