There’s no shortage of things to consider when shopping for pickups—active vs. passive, high-output vs. low-output, alnico vs. ceramic, and, as you might have gathered from the title of this post, staggered pole pieces vs. flat pole pieces.

Pole pieces are the round bits of metal in a guitar pickup that align with the strings. Some single coil pickups have pole pieces that are flush with each other (flat pole pieces) white others have pole pieces that vary in height (staggered pole pieces).

If you’re the curious type—and you’re here, so you must be—you may have even wondered if choosing between flat and staggered pole pieces is more like choosing magnets and wind—which highly affect your tone—or choosing a cover color.

The truth is somewhat in the middle, and we’re here to help you uncover it. Keep reading to learn about the importance of pole pieces in single coil pickups (with a focus on Stratocasters), why pole piece height matters, the evolution of flat and staggered pole pieces, and more.

What are Pole Pieces for in Pickups?

Before we explain staggered pole pieces vs. flat pole pieces, we need to explain what pole pieces are for in a pickup. Thankfully, our own Seymour W. Duncan answered this question a while ago in our “Ask the Master” series.

“[Pole pieces] are used to direct the magnetic field from its magnetic path within the pickup towards the strings.”

In single coil pickups, like those for a Stratocaster, the pole pieces themselves are rod magnets (most often alnico, but sometimes ceramic). Humbuckers, generally speaking, use steel pole pieces (adjustable screws and unadjustable slugs) to conduct the magnetic field from a bar magnet inside the pickup.

Staggered Pole Pieces

In 1951, Fender released the Telecaster. The original Telecaster, though it was undeniably innovative, borrowed some form and function from lap steel guitars. Among those elements was the pickup, and lap steel pickups used flat pole pieces.

When the Stratocaster was first released in 1954, it departed from the tradition established by the Telecaster, featuring new staggered pole pieces instead. In the 1960s, the Telecaster would follow suit and move to staggered pole pieces for its bridge pickup.

Why Are Some Pickup Pole Pieces Staggered?

Why change from flat pole pieces to staggered pole pieces? While we’ve never heard a complaint about the tone of these early Telecasters stemming from the pickups, staggered pole pieces were created to solve an issue with string balance.

Fretboard Radius

All guitars—and all fretted instruments, for that matter—have what’s called a fretboard radius, which is the curvature of the fretboard.

Vintage Telecasters and Stratocasters had fretboard radiuses that were quite round, even compared to modern guitar standards.While most modern Fenders ship with a 9.5” fretboard radius, the first Stratocasters had a much rounder 7.25” radius. As a result, the strings in vintage guitars had more variance in their distance from the pickups.

If you look at a vintage staggered pickup, you’ll see that the pole pieces loosely follow an arch—the two lowest strings and two highest strings sit lower in the bobbin, while the two middle strings are raised. By following the shape of the fretboard, the strings are closer to equidistant from each respective pole piece.

The Wound G String

But wait a minute — if you take a look at a Stratocaster pickup with a vintage stagger, you’ll see that the pole piece under the G string is significantly higher than the D, despite those strings being in a similar spot on the fretboard curve. Shouldn’t they be the same height?

Not quite. That’s because, as some of you may know, vintage guitar string sets were an overall heavier gauge that included a wound G string.

This matters because the magnetic pole pieces interact with the core of a wound guitar string—not the winding. Wound guitar strings have a solid magnetic core and are wrapped in nickel, which is not magnetic. So, even though the core for the lower strings is generally thicker, the core of the wound G string is thin—depending on the set, it could be thinner than the B string.

So while the G string is nearly the same distance from the pickups as the D string, the part of it that interacts with the pole piece is farther away. To compensate, the pole piece under the G string was raised to be even higher than the D.

Vintage vs. Modern Stagger

Over time, what’s considered “standard” for guitar has evolved. The Fender Stratocaster now ships with a 9.5” radius and nearly every popular electric guitar string set features an unwound G string. As a result, the dramatic stagger of vintage pickups has been mellowed considerably.

You can still easily find pickups with staggered pole pieces, especially for Stratocasters — they’re just less staggered than vintage ones. Of course, there are also plenty of builders winding vintage-correct pickups with the vintage stagger, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find those pickups in new production line instruments.

Potential Drawbacks of Staggered Pole Pieces

Staggered pole pieces exist to solve specific problems for specific kinds of guitars, strings, and playing styles. Under the right conditions, they provide a well-balanced sound and feel.

However, not every guitar benefits from staggered pole pieces. Though 9.5” is the Fender standard, many guitars have even flatter radiuses—12”, 16”, and up. A flatter radius negates the need for staggered pole pieces. Having a vintage stagger in a guitar with a flat fretboard radius can throw the sound off balance, where the G and D are louder than the other strings.

Modern Guitars Using Staggered Pole Pieces

Guitar purists like to keep vintage instruments “stock,” and they want “vintage inspired” guitars to keep as many of the original specifications as possible. That’s completely understandable! To meet that demand, there is no shortage of vintage or vintage-inspired Telecasters, Stratocasters, and other single-coil guitars that boast pickups with a vintage stagger—we can’t say the same for wound G strings, leading to the aforementioned issue with unbalanced strings.

To address this issue, it’s even more common to see modern Stratocasters equipped with pickups that meet in the middle with a reduced modern stagger. Though Fender Stratocaster pickups were nearly exclusively loaded with flat pole pieces from 1974 through the early 1980s, these days you’ll find brand new Stratocasters with either flat or staggered pole pieces depending on the model.

Flat Pole Pieces

With the rise of flatter fretboards, it’s easy to assume that flat pole pieces are a more modern invention. But, as we mentioned before, flat pole pieces predate staggered pole pieces in single coil pickups.

Why Flat Pole Pieces Were Developed

As mentioned earlier, the first Telecasters borrowed their pickups from lap steel guitars. Lap steel guitars have flat pole pieces, which is in line with the fact that lap steel guitars don’t have a fretboard radius—their necks are flat as a pancake, so flat pole pieces provide perfectly balanced string output. So, if flat pole pieces are older, why have they become so much more popular over time? As guitar specs began to modernize, the need for staggered pole pieces diminished.

Modernization of Guitar Specs and Style

Guitarists started ditching the wound G string as early as the 1950s. Rock’n’Roll players like James Burton made their own guitar string sets by throwing out the low E string, shifting all the other strings down a tuning peg, and replacing the original high E with a banjo string.

Part of the reason for this change was string bending. When the Stratocaster was released in 1954, string bending hadn’t reached mainstream popularity. Starting with B.B. King, electric blues guitarists became known for the technique. However, rock musicians didn’t fully adopt it until the 1960s. Then, throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the trend of using an unwound G string became even more commonplace as rock took hold of the airwaves and guitarists looked for easier strings to bend. We can’t imagine it’s a coincidence that string bending became more prevalent as moving to an unwound G string grew in popularity!

Our own Seymour W. Duncan brought up a great point in one of his Ask the Master Q&A responses. “I like using flat poles when bending strings into another string’s magnetic field,” he wrote when discussing staggered and flat pole pieces. “I can hear volume changes between strings when using pickups with staggered poles.”

We already discussed that the B string’s core is closer to the pickups than the core of a wound G string, leading to a higher G pole piece to compensate for the distance. So when you bend the B into the magnetic pull of the raised G pole piece, you get an unwanted increase in volume. Flat pole pieces solve this problem by normalizing the relative magnetic pull from each pole piece.

Ease of Manufacturing

By the time Fender moved to a 9.5” radius in the 1980s, flat pole pieces were already the default for Stratocaster pickups. That makes it difficult to credit the flattening of the Fender radius with the flattening of the pole pieces—Fender switched to flat pole pieces around 1974 and started reincorporating a modern stagger in the 1980s.

One thing to consider is that flat pole pieces streamline the pickup production process. Cutting pole piece magnets to different lengths is more arduous than cutting flat pole pieces. And, according to our own Seymour W. Duncan, “it’s easier to manufacture and takes less time to assemble a bobbin when using [flat pole pieces].”

Advantages of Using Flat Pole Pieces

Changes to the guitar strings and fretboards turned the advantages of staggered pole pieces into disadvantages. What once improved string-to-string balance could now cause a slight overpowering of the mids, volume changes during string bends, and a general feel that some players don’t favor.

Flat pole pieces offer better sound balance for modern guitars. As you may have heard from our customer support team, most players today will experience better string-to-string balance by using pickups with flat pole stagger.

Choosing Between Staggered and Flat Pole Pieces

When choosing between staggered and flat pole pieces, there are three questions you should ask yourself:

1. Is my fretboard rounder, or flatter?
   If you’re rocking a 7.25” radius, you might want to consider staggered pole pieces.
2. Do I use a wound G string?
   If you’re using a set of strings with a plain G, you probably don’t need staggered pole pieces. If you are rocking a wound G, you may benefit from staggered pole pieces.
3. Do I tend to bend strings?
   As mentioned above, some players find that staggered pole pieces aren’t ideal for bending strings because of perceived volume changes. If you don’t bend strings, this isn’t something you need to consider.

To wrap things up, if you have a 7.25” radius, a wound G string, and aren’t a big fan of string bending, you’ll probably lean towards pickups with staggered pole pieces.

It’s All About Personal Preference

There is one big exception to this rule—your individual preference.

Ultimately, you may prefer the sound of one pickup style over the other. If you have a Telecaster with a round fretboard radius and slapped on some Elixer 12-52s with a wound G, you might still prefer pickups with flat pole pieces. After all, the earliest Telecasters had flat pole pieces, and their tone is lauded in the guitar community.

You also might find some inspiration from one of music’s most famous guitars—Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Number One” Stratocaster. By all accounts, Vaughan’s eponymous guitar is a vintage Stratocaster that would have shipped with a 7.25” radius. However, over the years, the radius was flattened to 9-10”, allegedly caused by several refrets. However, the pickups still kept the vintage stagger.

These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone recommending a dramatic vintage stagger on such a flat radius, but it’s hard to imagine anyone fussing about how SRV’s tone could’ve improved with flatter pole pieces. For what it’s worth, Fender’s own recreation of “Number One” boasts a 12” radius and is loaded with pickups that feature a modern stagger.

Player preference is why we don’t only offer pickups with flat pole pieces. Some of our pickups are even available with flat and staggered versions. For example, our high-output Quarter Pound Strat set can be purchased with flat pole pieces (which is what we usually recommend). However, you can alternatively pick up the Quarter Pound Staggered Strat set, which delivers an edgier tone with a gritty midrange. It’s all about what you’re looking for in your guitar’s tone and feel.

If you’re still not sure whether you’d prefer pickups with staggered pole pieces or flat pole pieces, we’ve got you covered. Our 21-day exchange program lets you try out our pickups in your guitar for three weeks. If you decide they’re not the right fit, send them back and exchange them for something else, no strings attached.

The P90 is not only a classic and well-loved pickup, it’s also a crucial piece of electric guitar history. This soapbar (and sometimes dog-eared) shaped pickup’s origins go back to some of the first pickups ever installed in a guitar.

Many guitarists and pickup builders still consider the P90 to be one of the most versatile pickups out there. Just ask the blues-rock dynamo and P90 disciple, Jared James Nichols. His signature Epiphone “Old Glory” Les Paul Custom, with its single, dog-eared Seymour Duncan P90 bridge pickup, packs all of the tones the bluesman ever needs—from clean rhythms to howling leads.

But along with its versatile tone, the P90 also has a reputation for a different kind of sound: the dreaded 60-cycle hum. Players often feel that attempts to fix the hum come at the expense of the quintessential P90 tone, and so the noise is accepted as a necessary evil.

That’s where the SD P90 Silencer™ comes in. It’s a new take on the noiseless P90 that kills the hum without losing an ounce of that classic sound.

Given its longevity, the P90 has inevitably gone through slight tonal changes over the years. Which style of P90 is best depends on the player and their preferences, which is why the P90  Silencer™ comes in three flavors: Vintage, Hot, and the Jared James Nichols Signature bridge pickup.

Why Do P90s Hum?

For those who don’t know, a P90 is a single coil pickup—a magnet with a metal wire wrapped thousands of times around it. But unlike single coils found in Strats or Teles, P90s have a shorter and wider bobbin (hence their characteristic soapbar look), which creates a warmer sound than the bright and jangly Fender-style single coils.

Pickups create a small electromagnetic field that converts your stings’ vibrations into electrical signals and produces sound through a speaker. Unfortunately, all electronics (like lights or amps) give off trace amounts of radiation, which create electromagnetic fields of their own that oscillate around 60 Hz or 50 Hz depending on where in the world you live. Traditional pickups like single coils are incredibly sensitive to electronic interferences, so they will often capture any nearby currents and emit the eponymous hum.

P90s are particularly notorious hummers since they tend to have higher output than other single-coils. The PAF humbucker was specifically invented to solve this issue way back in the 1950s, and while humbuckers are great, they offer a completely different tone than the P90.

How the P90  Silencer™ Works

The typical solution for a hum-free P90 is a “noiseless” stacked coil design. A stack has a reverse-wound second coil placed vertically underneath the main coil. When wired in series or parallel with the main coil, hum is canceled.

But some P90 purists are skeptical of noiseless models—they are technically humbuckers, after all. That’s why we invite those skeptics to give the new Seymour Duncan P90  Silencer™ a spin. This fresh take on the stacked P90 design accurately emulates the articulate high end, warmer bottom, and unbeatable versatility of a traditional P90.

The P90 Silencer uses a unique multicoil design that maintains the mid-range snarl, low end punch, and high end presence that has been difficult to emulate in prior noiseless P90 designs. Unlike traditional noiseless pickups, the P90 Silencer™ contains not two, but three coils under the hood: two “outrigger” coils wired in series, placed on either side of the center coil. With plenty of output and a full frequency response on both ends, the only thing that gives the P90 Silencer™ away is the inspiration for its name: Silence.

Jared James Nichols P90 Silencer™ Signature Pickup

Whether he’s backing living guitar legends or tearing up the stage himself, Jared James Nichols almost always has a guitar loaded with a bridge P90 on hand. “A P90 is like an unfiltered single coil, in a way where it’s like the perfect mesh between what you find on a Strat or Tele and then going into humbucker territory,” he told Peach Guitars. “You can get all the dynamics and clarity, but it can get really aggressive and big.”

The Seymour Duncan JJN Silencer™ P90 came out of Nichols’ love for all things P90—except for the hum. There are a lot of different noise-inducing sources out on stage and the road, and Nichols has seen them all over the years. When it came time to design his “Blues Power” signature Epiphone, Nichols wanted it to have all of the range and versatility of his favorite vintage P90s with a slightly modern bump in output and, of course, no hum.

The JJN Silencer tone profile perfectly suits Nichols’ unique playing style: always articulate, smooth when it needs to be, hot but never scorching. Or, as the man himself described it, “Delicate and strong, like a grizzly bear and a paper airplane landing.”

As you might expect, the JJN Silencer™ only comes as a bridge pickup—it’s designed to be the only pickup you’ll ever need. With some help from your volume and tone knobs, you can achieve a expanded range of tone without touching a toggle switch.

P90  Silencer™: Vintage

Given its longevity, the P90 has inevitably gone through slight tonal changes over the years. Which style of P90 is up to the player and their preferences, and that’s why the P90  Silencer™ comes in three flavors: Vintage, Hot, and the Jared James Nichols Signature bridge pickup. The Vintage P90 Silencer Neck is the only neck pickup option in the series. It was designed to work with each of the bridge Silencers as part of a balanced set.

The vintage-style P90 Silencer™ brings all the tonality and dexterity that made P90 a beloved pickup with none of the extra noise—a particularly noticeable issue with a lot of true vintage P90s. The early days of guitar pickups were infamously inconsistent, so two P90s made in the same factory on the same day could sound completely different. But the consensus “vintage” P90 sound is lower output, prominent warmth and mids, and high end that’s slightly dialed back but still easily cuts through a mix. The P90 Silencer™ Vintage offers all of that on top of the modern benefit of no hum, taming even the noisiest guitars while preserving all of the tone.

P90 Silencer™: Hot

For players looking for a little more oomph from their P90 pickups without bringing up the hum in the process, the P90 Silencer™ Hot is a must-try. With more windings than the vintage version, the hot variant brings a more present and saturated sound with additional high end and faster breakup. Whether you play punk, classic rock or high-powered blues, this pickup offers all of the tone and none of the noise.

Enjoy P90 Tone Without the Hum

The P90 is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean the hum has to stick around too. No matter which of our three versions you drop into your guitar, the P90 Silencer™ is another notable entry in the P90’s long and winding history.

Ready to try out the P90 Silencer™ for yourself? Find the one that’s right for you here, and check out the rest of our blog for more pickup tips and guides.

Maricela “MJ” Juarez never applied for a job at Seymour Duncan. One day in 1983, six years after the company was founded, a neighbor asked MJ for a ride to an interview at the still-young Seymour Duncan company. She obliged and put her name down as a personal reference.

Later that night, she was surprised to take a call from the hiring manager, who offered her a job. “I didn’t apply,” she said. “Okay, well, do you want a job?” the hiring manager replied.

After talking it over with her mother—who was thrilled to babysit MJ’s newborn during the day—MJ decided to give Seymour Duncan a shot. And we’re so glad she did.

Like most non-guitarists, MJ didn’t know what pickups were when she started. “I would have thought a pickup truck,” she told Premier Guitar in a recent interview. But that didn’t stop her from grabbing the attention of Seymour himself, who was impressed with her detailed notes. She was a quick learner and skilled worker, driven in no small part by her desire to someday meet her favorite rock star, Peter Frampton, after Seymour confirmed that he knew Frampton personally.

40 years later, MJ’s pickups are some of the most sought-after in the world. She’s designed and built pickups for legendary guitarists including Pete Anderson, Steve Miller and yes, Peter Frampton.

To celebrate her 40th anniversary Seymour Duncan, MJ had an incredible idea: to release three sets of signature pickups via the custom shop for three outstanding artists. It only made sense that the queen of the custom shop should choose a few of her favorites. She settled on a Stratocaster set for Steve Miller, a Telecaster set for Pete Anderson and two Humbuckers for, of course, Peter Frampton.

Pete Anderson’s “Working Class” Tele® Set

Having performed with Dwight Yoakam, Roy Orbison, Jackson Browne, Buck Owens, k.d. Lang and more, it’s safe to say that Pete Anderson is an expert in country guitar. And, as everyone knows, country guitar is all about Telecasters.

A recreation of the pickups found in his beloved ‘59 Telecaster, Pete Anderson’s “Working Class” Tele® set achieves that pitch-perfect Tele tone via Alnico 5 magnets and a vintage output wind. Of course, you don’t want your vintage-style pickups to look brand new, so we aged the Working Class Tele set to ensure they look as good as they sound.

And they sound amazing—Pete was “very, very happy” with the Working Class Tele set the first time he heard them. Like he’s done with countless other sets wound for him by MJ, he expressed his gratitude by gifting her a nice bottle of wine.

Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive Humbucker” Set

While Peter Frampton isn’t the only reason MJ agreed to work at Seymour Duncan, he’s one of the reasons why she wanted to be the best of the best. She was appointed manager of the Custom Shop by Seymour himself in 1992, and soon after, she wound her first set of humbuckers for Peter Frampton.

“Peter inspired me back in the day,” MJ told us. “I used to listen to Frampton Comes Alive and I fell in love with him and his tone—it was mainly his tone—and it inspired me to give him the best when I recreated [his original] pickups.”

Featuring Alnico 2 magnets and a vintage output, Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive” Humbucker set is closely based on that first set of pickups, which have been heavily featured by Frampton over the years. He even had them installed on a series of new guitars after a builder insisted on using their own brand’s pickups instead of MJ’s. He told her, “MJ, just make them and send them to me. When I get the guitars, I’ll just change them.” For Frampton, MJ’s pickups were essential to his tone.

So, what was it like when MJ finally got to meet Peter Frampton for the first time? “It was like ‘Ohhhh!’” she exclaimed. “He was very welcoming, very nice. It was something that I’d been wanting to do for years. There was lots of love and respect from my side to him and he did the same thing. It was really great.”

A portion of the proceeds from the Frampton Comes Alive Humbucker set will benefit the Peter Frampton Myositis Research Fund, which was established to support Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM) and related myositis research in order to improve the lives of patients living with myositis and to ultimately find a cure.

Steve Miller’s The Joker Strat® Set

Apparently, the word was getting around that MJ was working on a special 40th-anniversary project. “Steve Miller asked me, ‘Why Peter? I’m celebrating 50 years of The Joker and I’m jealous.’” She told him, “Don’t worry Steve, we’ll make you a set of Strats,” and he had the idea to name them “The Joker.”

The heart of Steve Miller’s “The Joker” Strat® set is a custom wind that MJ has been doing for Miller for years. All three single coils feature Alnico 2 magnets and a lower-output vintage wind that fans have heard live and in recordings for decades.

Fans might even recognize these pickups in some of Miller’s more unique guitars. At one point, she found out that a set she made for him wasn’t going to be installed in a standard Stratocaster. “He installed them on a very, very light wood guitar that was recommended to him by Billy Gibbons. We didn’t know if they were going to work on this particular wood because it was kind of an experiment.” Miller had told MJ that if the pickups didn’t work, they could do something else for this particular wood.

So, did she have to make any adjustments to those pickups? “None, whatsoever,” she replied. “He says, ‘MJ, you nailed it. Nailed it like always. They work great with this wood.”

Notes for Notes

In addition to a portion of the proceeds from the Frampton Comes Alive Humbucker set benefiting the Peter Frampton Myositis Research Fund, a portion of the proceeds from each of MJ’s anniversary sets benefits Notes for Notes.

Notes for Notes works to provide youth with free access to musical instruments, instruction, and recording studio environments with the goal of music becoming a profoundly positive influence in their lives. It’s a cause that’s close to MJ’s heart, and ours.

Steve Miller has also worked with MJ and Seymour Duncan to support Notes for Notes. We asked MJ if she had a favorite Steve MIller story, and she told us a story about putting on a concert for Notes for Notes, “I’m telling Steve about it and within three seconds—not even finishing my sentence—he says, ‘Yes, MJ, I will gladly do it.’”

You can find Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive” Humbucker set, Pete Anderson’s “Working Class” Tele® set and Steve Miller’s “The Joker” Strat® set at the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop. Each set of pickups is signed by MJ and their respective artist.

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.

Longtime Seymour Duncan users or rock music fans—or, let’s be honest, fans of music in general—are likely well familiar with the six-string living legend himself, Slash. The Guns N’ Roses guitarist is the textbook image of the cool, stoic rockstar who lets the music do the talking, which is why he’s the go-to when anyone from Iggy Pop to Rihanna needs a blistering solo on a song. Not to mention his incredible work with Velvet Revolver and Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators.

But perhaps the only thing more immediately recognizable than Slash’s top hat is his tone: distorted but lucid, soaring yet heavy. Not only was his guitar playing a key part of what made Guns N’ Roses the legends they are today, but it also defined the sound of 1980s hard rock by way of the Sunset Strip.

Aside from his virtuosic abilities, a key component of Slash’s signature sound is his trusty ‘59 Les Paul copy, loaded with Seymour Duncan humbuckers. These are the pickups that inspired the beloved Seymour Duncan Slash Signature Set, and now the Slash 2.0 Signature Pickups are the latest addition to his tonal dynasty.

When Seymour Met Slash

The story of Seymour Duncan and Slash’s friendship and working relationship begins in the late 80s, when the guitar riffs were wild and the hair styles were wilder. The pair met when GNR was tearing up the LA rock scene but had yet to record a full LP. Slash’s Derrig guitar happened to have the Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro pickups in it, which were an updated take on the classic early-60’s PAF humbucker design. Slash loved the pickups so much that he brought them into the studio to record Guns N’ Roses’ debut record.

The rest, as they say, is rock n’ roll. 1987’s Appetite for Destruction launched GNR to stratospheric levels of fame, went Platinum several times over—selling over 30 million copies worldwide—and is still considered one of the greatest hard rock albums ever made.

Today, the album’s tracklist reads like a greatest hits compilation—“Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Paradise City” and so on. And the throughline across every riff, power chord and solo? Slash’s show-stopping playing on his Seymour Duncan-loaded Les Paul, which he used to record nearly all of his parts on the album.

The APH-2 Slash Pickups: Recapturing the Destruction

Countless guitarists have searched for Slash’s elusive Appetite tone in the years following the record’s release. But capturing that sound wasn’t as easy as slapping an Alnico II Pro set into a Gibson Les Paul. In fact, Slash’s Appetite Les Paul wasn’t even a Gibson, but a faithful recreation by the late, great luthier Kris Derrig. To this day, Slash still considers his Derrig to be his number-one guitar thanks to its “unique tone and personality”—but unfortunately for fans, that uniqueness makes emulating Slash’s tone deceivingly difficult.

Slash and the Seymour Duncan engineering team both realized this around 2010, when Gibson launched the Slash Les Paul Standard, a model heavily based on his Derrig (down to its distinct bright lemon burst). The Seymour Duncan team sent over Alnico II Pros for Slash to put in his new arsenal of signatures for live shows, but to everyone’s surprise, the guitar sounded noticeably different than the Derrig despite having similar specs and identical pickups.

And so the task became to design a new pickup that allowed any guitar to get as close to the Appetite-era tone as possible. The result was the Seymour Duncan Slash Signature pickups, which used a different magnetic wire and winding spec than the Alnico II Pro to achieve the balance of bite, sustain and crunch that makes Slash’s tone so special. Not only are the pickups one of Seymour Duncan’s most popular models, but Slash himself still has them installed whenever he adds a new Les Paul to the collection.

The Seymour Duncan Slash 2.0 Signature Pickup Set

Lately, fans can catch Slash either touring the world with Guns N’ Roses or with Miles Kennedy and The Conspirators in support of his latest album 4. To bring even more raw, full-power rock to audiences every night, Slash wanted a slightly hotter pickup that still maintained his signature’s clarity and tone.

The Seymour Duncan team delivered on that request with the Slash 2.0 Signature Pickup, a familiar but louder take on the beloved Appetite sound. Although the 2.0 has many of the same features as the original—including Alnico II bar magnets, single conductor braided lead wire and wax potting—the key difference comes from the extra coil winding that combines the first Slash pickups’ familiar mix of growl, gain and headroom with an extra hit of volume that pushes your amp further, faster.

“The Slash 2.0 is basically the same as the Alnico II Pro: Same tonality, same great clarity, but with a hotter wind,” Slash explained. “I’ve found on occasion that I needed a louder pickup for certain live applications, since I don’t want to mess with tone or distortion levels onstage. I asked Seymour if he could make a version of my pickups that were a bit louder, and he did just that. Same tone; just louder.”

Red Hot, Ready to Rock

The Slash 2.0 is a modern update on a classic sound loved by countless guitarists, now with more power and versatility than ever. Naturally, these pickups will give you seething hard rock tones in no time, but they’re also equipped for a wide range of genres, whether it be thumbing metal, blistering punk, intricate prog rock, or even jazz and blues.

Ready to discover Slash’s newest signature pickups yourself? Learn more about the Slash 2.0 Signature Pickups and check out the rest of the blog for more tips on how to unlock your dream tones.

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In 2017, the YouTube channel Music is Win posted a video featuring “Some of the best guitarists on YouTube (and Earth)” taking turns on a nearly eight-minute long jam. With some of the most prolific guitarists in the online music scene on deck, the sheer amount of collective talent—and the total amount of notes played—was off the charts. But based on the video’s comments, one guitarist’s solo turned the most heads without much competition.

Since then, the Brazilian guitarist’s virtuosic playing and sonic explorations have earned her even more praise. In just a handful of years as a solo artist—after graduating law school, no less—Basilio gained fans like Joe Satriani (who is also featured on one of her songs), headlined Satriani’s 2019 G4 Experience alongside Neal Schon and Rick Nielsen, among others, and even recorded her 2019 LP Far More at the legendary Capitol Studios in Hollywood. Basilio’s musical breadth is more evident than ever on her latest album Your Love, a sprawling record packed with elements of seemingly every guitar-prominent genre in the book.

Enter the LB-1

Versatility has been the through-line across Basilio’s discography, and that’s especially true on Your Love. Now more than ever, Basilio needed the right instrument—and pickups— to support her eclectic playing style and help bring her music to life. In 2021, Basilio worked with Ibanez to create the LB1, a robust T-style guitar made to Basilio’s exact specifications—including the on-brand violet finish.

Featuring a bird’s eye maple neck with a 228-305mm compound radius fretboard, Gotoh Magnum Lock tuners, and a dyna-MIX9 Alter Switch for a whopping nine unique pickup configurations, the LB1 is perfect for Basilio and any guitarist looking for a reliable axe that does a lot, and does it all well. In fact, the LB1 is already one of Ibanez’s best selling signatures, on par with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai’s respective models. This trend is not only reflective of the recent demand for more signature models by female and non-binary guitarists, but it also speaks to the universal appeal of an instrument capable of a wide range of tones.

Of course, a guitar’s sound and adaptability starts at the pickups—the part of the instrument that transforms vibrating metal into a creative extension of the player’s voice. For Basilio, finding well-rounded pickups that could jump between clean, crunchy and distorted on a whim was crucial for her creative process.

“As guitar players, we are always seeking new sounds, new tones, and trying to put out the sounds that we have in our heads. And for me it’s no different,” Basilio told us. “The whole idea for these pickups was for it to be very versatile. And not only the set—the pickups individually, they sound amazing, and I think the set will serve so many musicians in so many different styles.”

The Seymour Duncan Lari Basilio Signature Pickups

A longtime Seymour Duncan artist since 2018—she told us that her first electric guitar had our Hot Rails in the bridge—Basilio turned to the Seymour Duncan engineering team to help her turn the LB1 into a powerful all-rounder. After months of discussion, prototyping and testing, the Seymour Duncan Lari Basilio Signature SSH Pickups were born. Just like its namesake, this set is right at home in any musical situation, including jangly rhythms, edge-of-breakup leads, heavy-gain drop chords and more.

Make no mistake, this is not your typical SSH set. Each pickup is a meticulous and unique mix of classic components and modern design that perfectly support Basilio’s (and any player’s) technical and melodic skills.

THE NECK: Turbo-Powered Twang

The Lari Basilio neck pickup is a Tele-style design loaded with half Alnico 5 magnets for the low strings and half Alnico 4s for the trebles.

This mix of magnets—one of many combinations Basilio and the Seymour Duncan team tried out—balances classic Tele-neck bite with extra body and presence that suits modern players’ preferences. The result is a tone in the vein of the iconic “souped-up Tele” sound of a vintage PAF that still retains single-coil sparkle and definition.

“I simply love the tone and feel of a Tele-style neck pickup,” says Basilio. “I wanted my signature pickup to have a lot of body with a vintage tone and a tight attack without losing the dynamics that I think are very important to my sound.”

Basilio used the LB1 all over Your Love (it’s even on the album cover), and the album’s title track is a particularly great example of the neck pickup in action. Playing a lead melody harkening back to 70s FM rock ballads, Basilio uses the neck pickup to achieve a warm and smooth tone that cuts through the mix and responds well to dynamics.

THE MIDDLE: Tonal Wild Card

Perhaps the most unique pickup of the trio, the middle sports a striking black-on-gold design and offers traditional Strat-style voicings in a Tele-sized enclosure. This pickup uses a mix of Alnico 5 and 2 magnets for an ideal balance of low-end punch, twangy mids and a tamed high end that still jangles. This pickup adds a plethora of tonal possibilities when combined with the neck or bridge, from quacky leads to souped-up neck tones, but it also offers plenty of attack and body when flying solo.

“I think it’s a very interesting combination,” Basilio says of the neck and middle pickups. “I think it’s a perfect balance for the set and it opens up so many tone possibilities.”

On Your Love’s fiery second single “Alive and Living,” Basilio deftly stands out from the rhythm section’s king-sized metal chords using the LB1’s second and fourth positions. The former gives the song’s fingerpicked main melody ample clarity even within layers of delay, while the latter brings in the bridge pickup for a glassy, pushed-amp lead tone.

THE BRIDGE: No-Fuss ‘Buck

Speaking of the bridge: complementing the single-coil chime is a classic, Alnico 5-loaded humbucker in the bridge position. This pickup will feel right at home if you’re looking for a 10% overwound ‘59 Model since it offers scooped mids between evenly balanced bass and treble for a tonal profile full of attack and clarity, even in the most high-gain scenarios. Whether used solo or combined with the neck or middle, this pickup is great for bringing out every note within complex chord voicings or sprawling lead melodies.

“A humbucker—to me—has to have attack, clarity, definition and the right amount of brightness, and my signature humbucker has it all,” says Basilio. “I love using the humbucker for the heavier stuff that I like to play, like the leads, the rhythm parts and of course lots of riffs.”

Unsurprisingly, the bridge pickup can be heard on many of Basilio’s solos on Your Love, but a great example of its abilities is actually in a song by the album’s keyboardist, Ester Na. “Free” features Basilio playing a soaring bridge-position melody over a dreamy bed of synths and piano, giving the right balance of drive and clarity to sit perfectly in the mix.

Abundant Tonal Options

These pickups’ tonal prowess doesn’t stop at just five positions, because this set was designed with a wide array of configurations and mods in mind. This point brings us back to the LB1’s aforementioned dyna-MIX9 system, which unlocks a completely new way to utilize the Lari Basilio Signature SSH Pickups—literally at the flip of a switch.

Along with your standard 5-way pickup configuration, the alter switch gives you access to an in-series neck and middle pairing for humbucker neck tones, a single-coil bridge for extra bright leads, a neck and coil-tapped bridge for a Tele-style middle position, and even a bridge plus the in-series neck and middle for a thick humbucker middle tone.

Dexterity was the guiding star behind these pickups, which means that they’re super mod-friendly. You can count on them for anything from coil taps and phase switching to mid boost and treble bleed.

Ready for Anything

Like Lari Basilio herself, these signature pickups excel with just about any playing style: clean funk shuffle, gentle fingerpicking, crunchy blues jams, screaming rock chords, intricate fretboard-crossing melodies…the list goes on.

Better yet, with the set available in both gold and chrome hardware—as well as an option for a T-style bridge humbucker—these pickups are ready to meet the needs and bring out the best of any guitarist.

Ready to perfect your creative voice? Learn more about the Lari Basilio Signature SSH Pickups here, and check out the rest of our blog for tips and tricks on finding your sound.

Experimenting with tone is part of the electric guitar experience. Splitting humbuckers for single coil tone, using a push-pull potentiometer to get that Peter Green out-of-phase tone and reversing pickup polarity are some of the most common electric guitar wiring modifications.

The downside of wiring modifications is that you have to know your way around a soldering iron and possess a fairly advanced understanding of how these modifications work. Everything would have to be rewired by hand with push-pull pots, mini toggles, or some other switching method to access the modded-out tones. Not to mention, you’d have to remember what each toggle and push-pull does.

But the worst part? You have to know exactly what you want before you start wiring. Traditionally, you’re stuck with wiring mods unless you want to use a solder sucker and try again. And what if after all that work and toil you realize that you like your original tone better?

You might also want to get more tones than a single modded guitar can provide. Do you want to carry around an arsenal of guitar cases just to cover all the bases? Or would you rather simply rewire your guitar with a few touches on a smartphone? Because now, you can actually do that with Seymour Duncan HyperSwitch.

Enter HyperSwitch

The innovative new HyperSwitch system is the merging of traditional and technological platforms that empowers guitarists of all skill levels to quickly and easily change the wiring configuration of their passive pickups. No more reading wiring diagrams, trial-and-error experimentation with the soldering iron and hoping you get it right. Instead, rewire your guitar with the touch of your finger and get instant access to a wide range of iconic tones with a flip of your pickup switch.

HyperSwitch is a five-way guitar pickup switch with an all-analog signal flow that allows you to unlock exciting new tone-mods from your existing pickups via digital control. Once installed, you can tweak each switch position with the HyperSwitch app to create unique pickup combinations and wiring options. It’s like having a personal guitar tech on your phone.

A player with three humbuckers, for example, will be able to configure their pickups in hundreds of possible ways using the app. Anything is possible—combine a single coil neck pickup with one half of a bridge humbucker, coil split any humbucker, or even swap the phase of any coil. Create up to five unique pickup combinations for each preset you save on the HyperSwitch, and save over 100 presets in the app.

HyperSwitch is compatible with most passive pickups, including single-coils, single-coil-sized humbuckers, full-sized humbuckers, stacked humbuckers, and P-Rails. Another really cool thing is that you can use your guitar’s onboard tone control, use the HyperSwitch’s tone control, or bypass the tone control altogether.

And the best part? You’re allowed to be as indecisive as you want to be about your tone without the consequences. A lot of guitarists are scared of change, because until now it’s been a headache to try out newer and more experimental pickup sounds. With the HyperSwitch, you can tweak and tweak and tweak without all the taking apart and putting back together.

Getting Started

In this HyperSwitch quick start guide, we walk you through how to get started with the HyperSwitch. The first step is to open the app on your smartphone. The app allows you to assign pickups to any of the 5 positions on your HyperSwitch. It also allows you to change which coils in your humbuckers are on or off. Finally, it allows you to change the electrical polarity.

Installing HyperSwitch is very simple – take the wires from your pickups and connect them to the terminals on the switch itself, tightening them up as you go with the included screwdriver. In our HyperSwitch installation video, we’ll walk you through how to get the HyperSwitch installed, which wires go where and more.

The HyperSwitch is controllable via Bluetooth and the HyperSwitch mobile app. This is where you can change your pickup configurations as well as the switch configurations. In this HyperSwitch app guide, we’ll walk you through all the settings of the HyperSwitch app, how to configure your guitar settings and make new settings and presets.

Unlock HyperSwitch

Ready to explore the wide world of pickup mods, no soldering required? The HyperSwitch is your ticket to ride. Learn how to add the HyperSwitch to your arsenal here, and check out our blog for more tips and tricks on finding your perfect tone.

Bring up the topic of guitar tone and one name quickly rises to the top of any discussion — Seymour W. Duncan. A living legend in the world of electric guitar, Duncan not only pioneered the customization of the electromagnetic guitar pickup, he broke open the gates of guitar repair and alteration — all in the pursuit of dialing in a particular player’s individual tone¹. Duncan’s work was foundational in creating the field of aftermarket guitar modification and his pickups and designs have been used by millions of players throughout the world for over 50 years².

The pickup is the heart of an electric guitar. Embedded in the guitar’s body beneath the strings, a pickup senses the vibrations of the strings and converts these vibrations into electrical signals, which are then fed to an amplifier³. And depending on a myriad of pickup variations, assemblies, and designs, a player’s unique and individual sound — or tone — is born. Duncan revolutionized the customization of the guitar pickup — experimenting with metals, magnets, bobbins, wires, and assembly strategies to see how each small change affected the overall sound. This constant re-engineering and reinvention eventually became the precise science behind the distinctive tones of the world’s greatest guitarists — Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Slash, and Eddie Van Halen to name just a few^{4 5}.

Early Life

Young Seymour W Duncan

Seymour Duncan was born on February 11, 1950 in Camden, New Jersey. An only child, he showed a distinct curiosity early on for discovering how electronics operated — taking apart and fixing his own radios and record players. Duncan’s father worked for DuPont, and the family lived in several southern New Jersey towns as he grew up and developed a deep appreciation of music.

He was introduced to guitar at age 12 by his uncle. Even though he didn’t know how to play, Duncan felt an immediate attraction to the instrument and began lobbying his family to get him his first electric guitar (unfortunately, that Christmas he received an accordion instead)⁶. His family did however, take him on a trip that would forever change his life and love of pickups — to see Les Paul and Mary Ford play at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. “After the show, my uncle took me backstage and introduced me to Les,” Duncan recalls. “That was the thrill of a lifetime … it was the first professional I had ever seen in person.”⁷ Paul, a renowned guitar pioneer and innovator, was impressed by the young enthusiast and he allowed him to hang around backstage at gigs, even as Duncan peppered him with questions⁸. As Duncan remembers, “I would say to Mr. Paul, ‘What is that thing under your strings?’ Les replied that it was a pickup. I asked him how it worked and he said it has a coil of insulated magnet wire wrapped many times around a magnet. He said the different gauges of wire and number of turns makes the pickup have a certain impedance.” Duncan began experimenting at home with anything he could find to make an electric guitar. Taking apart a shortwave radio provided him his first magnet and wire, while input jacks and cartridges were pilfered from old record players⁹.

Seymour W Duncan with Les Paul

The following Christmas brought him his first electric setup — a Les Paul shaped Silvertone 1423L guitar and a Sears Silvertone 1472 amp with tremolo. “I played for hours and didn’t even open my other presents,” he recalls. “I was hooked … and that was the beginning of my life’s profession. I practiced when I got up in the morning, at lunch during school hours, after school and in the evenings.” Unschooled in music, Duncan saw the classic Mel Bay guitar course on the shelves of a music store in Woodberry, NJ, but didn’t have the money to purchase it. Instead, he wrote a letter to the author telling him he was a beginning guitarist and wanted to learn all the chords he could. Two weeks later, he received a package from Mr. Bay himself containing his Guitar Chord Encyclopedia book and a handwritten note wishing him good luck. (Decades later, Duncan met Bay at a trade show event and thanked him personally for starting him on the journey. Bay replied that he was glad Duncan continued in the music business)¹⁰.

Duncan’s love of the instrument paid dividends — as did his innate perfect pitch — as he quickly learned to play by ear the music of his favorite artists — particularly The Ventures, Chet Atkins, Lonnie Mack, and Duane Eddy¹¹. Another Christmas brought him his first tape recorder, which he used to tape any TV show featuring music (particularly guitar solos) and later entire albums. He would then slow the tape down to half-speed to learn the guitar parts, and soon was able to chart the chords for any song on the radio. As Duncan became a sought after guitarist in various bands and sessions himself, he never strayed far from his love of tinkering and modification. In high school he’d sell chord charts to local bands for 25¢ a song, which he used to purchase more records as well as more reel-to-reel tape¹².

Inspiration — Roy Buchanan

He was most inspired, however, seeing Roy Buchanan play at the local club Dick Lee’s. Duncan was only 13 and too young to enter the club. But a cousin knew the owner and persuaded Mr. Lee to let him sit at the side of the stage to watch Buchanan’s magic. “When Buchanan was in the house,” Duncan recalls, “guitarists from a wide area would flock in to watch him and steal his licks.” Duncan was particularly impressed with Buchanan’s pinch harmonics, during which Buchanan would turn side-stage when performing to hide his technique from onlookers. Sitting side-stage himself, Duncan fascinatingly took it all in, and credits Buchanan with giving him his first “real lesson in tone.”¹³

Pickup Problems

Seymour with the Tele-Gib

Duncan’s playing kept improving, and by his mid-teens he was playing in a variety of bands. It was during his time as lead guitarist for his band The Sparkles that Duncan first discovered the need for pickup repair. During a gig, the bridge pickup on his Fender Telecaster stopped working¹⁴. As Duncan puts it, “It was my bread and butter. I needed to keep my guitar in working order … and I just couldn’t keep using the rhythm pickup of my Telecaster for lead work.” Duncan disassembled the pickup, and with the help of his father, set upon repairing it. Without any guide or teacher, he utilized any avenue afforded him — a microscope from biology classroom, a local motor winding shop, and engineering contacts via his uncle at Texaco. Eventually Duncan rewound the pickup by hand using a three-speed record turntable¹⁵. “I mounted a block of wood to the center guide, then placed some mounting pins to hold it while hand-winding … It taught me several lessons about winding speed, precision — and especially patience.”

Through trial and error, constant experimentation, and his innate innovation, Duncan gradually honed his skills at rewinding pickups, and realized an enormous vacuum existed for his services. “In the mid ‘60s, I started finding all kinds of broken guitars in music shops around South Jersey that had great action and playability, but the electronics didn’t work. Folks were just throwing the guitars away … I started doing all kinds of guitar work for local music stores.” And as Duncan advanced from rewinding broken pickups to fabricating his own parts and creating his own designs, he became more and more obsessed with the vast tonal possibilities he was discovering. Always seeking to learn more, Duncan wrote to the Fender Musical Instruments in California for advice and continued his communication with Les Paul. He also befriended Seth Lover at Gibson (the inventor of the humbucking pickup)¹⁶. Word quickly spread that if you wanted a particular sound, Seymour Duncan was the man to talk to.

A photo of Jimi Hendrix backstage, taken by Seymour W Duncan.

Jimi Hendrix

By 1968, Duncan’s reputation as a pickup guru was confirmed when he received a message from Jimi Hendrix’s manager that the legendary guitarist wanted to meet him. On March 28th of that year, Duncan found himself backstage at Xavier University in Cincinnati before a show by The Experience. Hendrix’s guitar tech, Roger Mayer, had communicated with Duncan about some problem they were having with Jimi’s pickups. So Duncan arrived with two sets of custom pickups he had hand wound and dipped in candle wax, which Mayer immediately installed in Hendrix’s white Fender Stratocaster¹⁷. Hendrix then asked Duncan to carry the guitar up on stage that night, an event that would set in motion Duncan’s future and legacy. Recalls Duncan, “(Hendrix) was such a hero to so many of us … he really loved guitar and he loved working on guitars and messing with them. I believe Jimi gave me inspiration to make guitar tone and to help players as he had done with me.”

Fender Sound House — London

At the suggestion of Les Paul, Duncan traveled to London In 1973. There he met up with Roy Buchanan and his manager, Jaye Reich, who were recording at Polydor Records. While recording, Duncan saw an ad that Fender Soundhouse was opening on Tottenham Court Road and needed a repairman. “My manager, Norman Vandenberg, wrote Fender Soundhouse a letter and told them about me. He told them that I was an American guy over there recording for Polydor. He told them I was an excellent guitar repairman who knew Fender better than anyone he’d ever seen. So I went over and met with Ron Roka, who was the manager of the service repair area. I went in one day and repaired 13 guitars, just like that.” Duncan’s work at the Fender Soundhouse eventually led to him doing session work on a variety of recordings as well as working with a who’s who list of major musicians including Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Gary Glitter, George Harrison, Gary Moore, Jimmy Page, Robert Palmer, Graham Parker, Suzi Quatro, Cat Stevens, Pete Townshend, Robin Trower, and Joe Walsh, as well as bands such as Bad Company, Golden Earring, Mott the Hoople, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, Slade, Supertramp, Thin Lizzy, T. Rex, and Yes¹⁸.

Seymour W Duncan and Jeff Beck

Jeff Beck & the Tele-Gib

It was also at the Fender Soundhouse that Duncan was introduced to Jeff Beck, who he had always been a fan of since hearing Beck’s tone on The Yardbirds’s “Heart Full of Soul.” Beck happened to be recording down the street at the CBS studio when Duncan created the now legendary “Tele-Gib” guitar — the first Fender Telecaster to feature humbucking pickups (which required extensive experimentation, retrofitting and re-routing by Duncan). “I had some old Humbucking pickups I brought with me from Cincinnati that were from a broken Flying V that belonged to Lonnie Mack. I decided to make the Telecaster into a two humbucking Tele … Over the course of the next several days I worked on each detail of the guitar, so that it would be something unique and worthy of Jeff’s talent. Once it was finally ready, I brought Jeff the completed guitar and he seemed impressed by it.”¹⁹ Beck was indeed taken by the Tele-Gib, calling it “a great guitar that is really the best of both worlds,” and using it on his seminal George Martin-produced album Blow by Blow — widely considered one of the greatest guitar instrumental records of all time²⁰. The guitar featured a prototype of what would eventually become Duncan’s most famous pickup design, the “JB” —  later put into production and becoming the world’s most popular guitar pickup²¹. Notable users of the JB include Billie Joe Armstrong, Jerry Cantrell, Kurt Cobain, Dave Mustaine, Brad Paisley, Joe Perry, Joe Satriani, and Paul Stanley.^{22 23 24}

Return to the States

An old photo of the first Seymour Duncan building

Returning to the states in the early ‘70s, Duncan brought with him his reputation as a hotshot pickup rewinder and guitar tech. But he wanted to make his own pickups rather than simply rewinding others’. In 1974, he sold a guitar for $800, using the funds to purchase his first coil machine, and began making his own unique pickups from the ground up. Always seeking to further hone his craft, Duncan reached out to Fender Musical Instruments (whose phone number he “borrowed” from a secretary’s Rolodex during his Polydor days) and was eventually able to reach Leo Fender himself, who like Les Paul took a liking to the young enthusiast. “I talked to him about why he did this, why he did that … he was very cool about it,” Duncan recalls.

Duncan moved to Santa Barbara in 1975 and began working in the back of the historical Jensen Music, making pickups and doing repair work²⁵. Together with his wife at the time, Cathy Carter Duncan, they formed the Seymour Duncan company in 1976, specializing in handcrafted pickups. Constantly fixing, building, and improving pickups, demand continued to increase for his work, and the company eventually grew to become the world’s leading supplier of high-end, USA-made pickups, forging relationships with the top guitar companies in the world.^{26 27 28}

A Leesona pickup winding machine that now lives at Seymour Duncan

Antiquities

In the ‘90s, Duncan began to “relic” or pre-age a special line of pickups just as two things were happening: the vintage guitar market was booming, and guitarists were beginning to relic their own instruments²⁹. As guitars are one of the few items that get better (and thus more valuable) with age and use³⁰, specimens from the golden age of ‘50s-’60s rock and roll became increasingly hard to acquire and began fetching astronomical prices. Players seeking the specific identifiable tones of their guitar heroes were left wanting. So Duncan sought out a way to re-create these vintage pickups — using the same factory that built the original molds for parts, working directly with Seth Lover, even procuring some of the original winding machines from the early Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan — developing a unique process that simulated both the tone and look of a broken-in pickup³¹. This line of pickups, dubbed “Antiquities,” were the world’s first cosmetically and sonically aged guitar pickups and helped fuel the entire relic craze.³²

Custom Shop

Seymour W Duncan in the Custom Shop

Since establishing the company, Duncan has continued to design pickups for some of the world’s foremost guitarists, who travel to Santa Barbara to consult with him. Often called the “guitar pickup king,” to guitarists around the world Duncan remains something of a legend and tone guru. Duncan prefers working individually with players to understand what tone they are seeking and translating that information into his custom manufacturing. “I don’t really deal with the business side that much,” Duncan admits. “Myself, I like making pickups. My name’s on the door, but I’m still in the shop every day, working. That’s what I like doing. I enjoy being hands-on and then playing once in a while, here and there.”³³

Brad Paisley, MJ and Seymour W Duncan

During his time at the custom shop, Duncan has worked with Lari Basilio, Jennifer Batten, George Benson, Dickey Betts, Joe Bonamassa, John Fogerty, Billy Gibbons, Neil Giraldo, Dave Grohl, Ben Harper, Scott Ian, Tony Iommi, Carol Kaye, Lemmy Kilmister, Mark Knopfler, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Yngwie Malmsteem, Steve Miller, Prince, Randy Rhoads, Keith Richards, James Taylor, Randy Travis, Joe Walsh, Nancy Wilson, and Dweezil Zappa, as well as the bands Bad Religion, Blink 182, Blondie, Bon Jovi, The Cars, EWF (Earth, Wind, & Fire), El Tri, Green Day, Grupo Firme, Hall & Oates, Heart, Incubus, Iron Maiden, Jaguares, Journey, KISS, Limp Bizkit, Los Lobos, Lonestar, Mana, Nirvana, Poison, Queens of the Stone Age, Quiet Riot, Social Distortion, Sonic Youth, Thievery Corporation, Thin Lizzy, Tool, and Wilco³⁴.

Notable recordings featuring his pickups include “All The Small Things” (Blink 182), “Have a Cigar” (Pink Floyd), “Man in the Box” (Alice in Chains), “Maniac” (Michael Sembello), “Rebel Yell” (Billy Idol), “Sweet Child O’ Mine” (Guns N’ Roses), “Whole Lotta Love” (Led Zeppelin), “Whiskey Lullaby” (Brad Paisley), and “With or Without You” (U2).

Seymour W Duncan and Cathy Carter Duncan at the Vintage Guitar Awards

Awards and Honors

Duncan was inducted into the Vintage Guitar Hall of Fame in 2011³⁵. In 2012, he was inducted into Guitar Player Magazine’s Hall of Fame and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Music & Sound Retailer Magazine³⁶. He has held two Guinness Book of World records (world’s largest guitar and world’s largest pickup),^{37 38} served as the lead guitar tech at Live Aid, and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Duquesne University. He currently sits on the board of the Stone Age Institute³⁹. A signature model Seymour Duncan Esquire guitar was created by Fender Musical Instruments⁴⁰.

Personal Life

Duncan enjoys flintknapping, engraving, photography, and Ham radio. He collects military patches and baseball gloves and is also a master locksmith.

“We all pushed ourselves on [Periphery V: Djent is Not a Genre] much harder than we ever have before,” explains Mark Holcomb.

As one of three six-, seven- and eight-string axe-rippers in GRAMMY® Award-nominated Djent practitioners Periphery, guitarist Mark Holcomb brings a timeless old-school metalhead sensibility to the genre-agnostic progressive metal quintet’s spellbinding virtuosity. For Mark and Periphery, it’s not enough to only have the best guitar pickups for metal. They also need aggressive clarity for clean and mid-gain playing solo and with a saturated full-band mix.

Most of all, to make the grade with Periphery, Mark’s pickups need to have the depth and musicality necessary to push progressive metal composition, musicianship and guitar tone into the future. Enter the Mark Holcomb Scarlet & Scourge Signature pickups in collaboration with Seymour Duncan.

To perfect Periphery V’s fiery fretwork in the studio and on the road, Mark collaborated with legendary Maryland luthier Paul Reed Smith to develop the PRS Guitars SE Mark Holcomb signature model. With its wide neck, 26.5” scale length and flat 20” radius fretboard, the PRS Guitars Mark Holcomb SE deviates from tradition to enable the drop tunings and intense string-bending at the core of Periphery’s heavy tech-metal machinery.

As a versatile and reliable mainstay in Periphery’s live setup, Mark’s signature guitar needs to cover a lot of sonic ground. In addition to the tonal innovations heard on Periphery V, Mark also needs to dive deep into his Axe-Fx patches to access sounds from the band’s entire 17-year career.

From the cleanest cleans to ultra-modern high-gain crunch, Periphery’s music demands articulate and low-noise guitar pickups that pack a mean sucker punch—just like the band’s lightning-fast yet undeniably headbang-worthy polyrhythms.

“Working with PRS on my signature model, there’s this insane amount of prestige and attention to detail. What we’ve accomplished with the Seymour Duncan Scarlet & Scourge pickups is the same thing,” says Holcomb. “We’re seeing how Seymour Duncan, like PRS, has a culture of innovation and legacy built into the company.”

Scarlet & Scourge—Mark Holcomb Signature Humbuckers

Pickups exist at a crucial point in the guitar’s signal path—where sound becomes electricity. Where emotion becomes intent. The razor’s edge where what Periphery co-guitarist Misha Mansoor describes as “time, stress and suffering” become monolithic prog-metal anthems.

Enter Scarlet & Scourge.

Mark Holcomb’s new signature humbuckers excel at high-gain metal sounds, but like Periphery’s multilayered compositions, there’s much more to Scarlet & Scourge than meets the ear.

“The spirit of the Scarlet & Scourge signature pickups—and my relationship with Seymour Duncan—is openness to iteration,” says Holcomb. “It’s about constantly trying new things and being open to dialogue about improving upon previously established concepts with an already excellent track record.”

Besides delivering crushing rhythm and searing lead tones with tube amps and high-gain amp modelers alike, Scarlet & Scourge are carefully voiced for clean and mid-gain guitar sounds. On Periphery V singles “Wildfire” and “Zagreus,” Holcomb’s tone takes a hairpin turn from dense, downtuned brutality to ambient cleans, melodic mid-gain leads and back again. Chaotic blast beat riffage, chunky jazz voicings on extended-range guitars—it’s all the same to Scarlet & Scourge.

Seeing Red—Mark Holcomb Scarlet Neck Humbucker

To navigate Periphery’s dramatic tonal shifts, Mark and the Seymour Duncan engineering team calibrated Scarlet’s ceramic magnet for the note definition and string-to-string clarity required for complex chord voicings in drop tunings—both clean and with heavy distortion. Coil splitting keeps single-coil sounds close at hand for added sparkle and chime—particularly when using the in-between positions of guitars equipped with five-way switching. They also pair perfectly with three-way switch setups.

Like Mark’s other signature neck pickup, Alpha—suited for Periphery’s heaviest riffs—Scarlet contains a ceramic magnet construction but with an output voiced for enhanced clarity with mid-gain and clean tones. Paired with the Scourge bridge humbucker, Mark conjures the versatile sonic palette necessary to find his place within the mix of Periphery’s vicious three-guitar assault.

Low Tunings, High Gain—Mark Holcomb Scourge Bridge Humbucker

With tube amps or amp modelers (Mark’s preference), the Scourge bridge Humbucker is key to Periphery’s ideal overdriven amp sounds. The Alnico 8 magnet gives the Scourge bridge pickup all the percussive low-end grunt needed for the Djentiest drop-tuning riff fests. In the mid-range, Scourge’s sound is focused and surprisingly sweet with focused harmonics for a tight, modern sound.

Up top, Scourge sounds sharp but never icepick-y or harsh. Advanced techniques like hybrid picking, double thumping, sweep picking and more come through crystal clear, allowing Mark to make full use of his skills on Periphery’s cinematic prog-metal epics.

Extreme Clarity and Articulation with Effects

Fans of Periphery likely already know that the band utilizes sophisticated hybrid amp setups in the recording studio and on tour.

Combining the best of tube amps, amp modeling and effects pedals, Mark Holcomb, Jake Bowen and Misha Mansoor sculpt an intricate latticework of complimentary guitar sounds at times dripping wet with delays, pitch shifters and reverb. A pickup that isn’t up to the task of navigating a complex wet/dry signal path will turn the signal to an indistinct, muddy wash.

To keep the Scarlet & Scourge pickup set sounding crisp even with heavy signal processing, Mark and the Seymour Duncan team let the versatility and yet unexplored aural frontier of amp modeling technology inspire their design philosophy.

Mark Holcomb on Achieving Improved Articulation with Coil-Splitting Tones

“In the last seven or eight years, I’ve really leaned on splitting the coils of my pickups for mid-gain tones during the heavy sections of Periphery songs. It’s so powerful to dial down the classic (almost cliché) really gain-saturated sound and instead go for a split-coil tone—something with way more articulation.

You sacrifice some gain and instead the emphasis is on the pick attack. You can really hear that shine in some mid-gain moments on the last three or four Periphery records. You get to hear every detail of what you’re playing and how you’re picking. And to me, it’s just so satisfying.”

Periphery Infinity

The album bio for Periphery V describes the sound “of a band bravely navigating the outer margins of its sound while progressing thoughtfully beyond the expected.”

For Mark Holcomb, the Scarlet & Scourge signature humbuckers are crucial to achieving his sound—in all its infinite possibilities.

Ready to level up your guitar sound? Learn more about the Scarlet & Scourge Marc Holcomb Signature Humbuckers.

Periphery V: Djent is not a Genre is out March 10, 2023.

Find Your 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.

Widely considered one of the best players in the modern metal scene, Wes Hauch’s reputation precedes him. Whether playing with Alluvial, Devin Townsend, Thy Art Is Murder, The Faceless, or as a guest soloist on countless records, Wes’ ferociously aggressive and immaculately clean playing cuts like a knife through the mix.

In 2019, we partnered with powerhouse metal guitarist Wes Hauch to craft the Custom Shop Jupiter 7-String Rails bridge humbucker. After receiving overwhelming praise from extended-range players and countless requests, we developed this brutal pickup in a 6-string version and created a perfectly calibrated neck pickup to accompany the bridge. The Wes Hauch Jupiter Rails 7 set is also now available to order from the main Seymour Duncan site as a Production Floor model.

Jupiter Rails 6-String Humbucker Set

Built with dual stainless-steel rail poles, a ceramic magnet, and a finely tuned high-output wind.

To facilitate the articulate and aggressive tones he’s known for, Wes requested a passive rails humbucker set with searing output and maximum clarity and balance. Built with dual stainless-steel rail poles, a ceramic magnet, and a finely tuned high-output wind developed closely with Wes, the Jupiter Rails set is a passive pickup pair that delivers aggressive mid-range attack, evenly balanced string response, and focused clarity. It won’t make you play like Wes, but it will help you cop his tone.

Jupiter Rails 7-String Humbucker Set

Delivers aggressive mid-range focused attack, evenly balanced string response, and clarity.

Like all our guitar pickups, pedals, and amps, the Jupiter Rails Humbucker Set is designed and assembled in the USA at our Santa Barbara, California factory.

Hear Them in Action

Pick up a set of Wes Hauch Jupiter Rails today from SeymourDuncan.com or your favorite dealer.

We’re Proud to Play a Part

We’re happy that we’ve been finally able to bring these pickups to our many fans straight from the production floor! If you have any other questions about nailing Wes’ incredible tone, don’t hesitate to reach out. Also, don’t forget to dig into the Seymour Duncan blog. There’s a ton of in-depth information on all of our different designs, how-tos, tone demonstrations, and a whole lot more.