It’s fairy common to read about sustain in guitar reviews. Some guitars have lots of it, some have less. We sometimes perceive that a guitar is better if it has lots of sustain compared to if it doesn’t. Let’s pull on a thread to unravel the tapestry of what ‘sustain’ means in a technical and musical sense. Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Sustain”

Seymour Duncan and Queensryche have had a long and fruitful partnership over the years: our pickups have been a part of the Queensrÿche sound for decades, and the band met vocalist Todd La Torre at our NAMM party a few years back. Continue reading “Talking Tone With Queensryche’s Michael Wilton”

Sometimes we have to break free, right? While we (hopefully) include a healthy dose of guitar-based music in our listening habits, sometimes it can be refreshing to understand how other instruments approach music. Continue reading “Don’t Listen to Guitar!”

Seymour Duncan takes all the guesswork and stress out of finding the best pickup for your acoustic guitar.  Let’s face it, chances are if you own an acoustic guitar, are it’s special to you. It feels like a part of you. When you decide to amplify it, you want to capture its tone as best you possibly can. Continue reading “How To Choose An Acoustic Pickup”

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. The guitar above has not been left out in the sun and is not melting. What you are seeing is the ergonomic design of Greg Opatik and the flagship instrument of his new company Sinuous Guitars from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

While focusing on the inherent shortfalls of traditional designs, Greg’s background in industrial design combined with his love of guitars in his first model he is calling the SD-22.

Continue reading “Friends of SD: Sinuous Guitars”

Virtually every guitarist alive has a go-to sound that they enjoy jamming with on a daily basis. While there are no limits to the sounds we guitarists can come up with, there are some basic guidelines to keep in mind when we cross the line from jamming to recording. Before we go any further, this article isn’t suggesting that your favorite jam tone isn’t usable for recording purposes. It may very well be, but these are just some things to keep in mind. Without further ado… Continue reading “The Jam-To-Record Transition: 5 Tips to Recording Electric Guitar”

To guitar players who have been playing a few months or more, there is nothing quite as irritating as listening to an out-of-tune guitar. While tuning is somewhat difficult to understand in the first few weeks of guitar playing (less so now with automatic tuners), guitarists in this modern age have many ways we can tune our guitars. While this article focuses on standard tuning (more on that in a minute), it can be applied to many of the tunings the kids are using these days. This a beginning primer featuring a little history, some physics, and has a roundup of the many options we have for keeping our guitar in tune with the rest of our musical world. Continue reading “How To Tune A Guitar”

Seymour Duncan Dirty Deed Distortion

If you already have a pedalboard (most of us probably do), have you ever ran it into another amp on the fly without changing anything? What did it sound like? You probably had to make some tweaks to both the amp and the board but were you able to dial in a decent sound fairly quickly? In a pinch, this can be a very frustrating experience especially since most of us are very picky about our tone. Is this a bad thing? No! But, most guitarists who have played out or toured know that you don’t always have control over where your signal goes after your pedalboard. Let’s face it: we guitarists want our tone and we want to sound the best that we can. Unfortunately, there are scenarios that can hinder that tone if we aren’t prepared to counter them. There are a few things that you can do to set yourself up for success in 99.9% of the situations you may encounter in both the standard gigging circuit and touring circuit. Here are some quick tips that have worked for me: Continue reading “Preparing For The Worst To Sound The Best”

These new demos compare five versatile neck pickup options in rock, blues, metal and clean demonstrations. The Marshall is used for clean tones, Cornford for blues, Orange for rock and Peavey 5150 for metal.

The Jazz Model neck humbucker uses an alnico 5 bar magnet and a special coil wind for an articulate, glassy treble response that balances very well with its full, but tight low end.

Continue reading “5 Neck Humbuckers Compared”

In our first segment of “Easy-To-Play” Songs I presented seven songs across several genres to get you on the fast track to campfire and family gathering greatness. You may have even been able to learn a few new tricks to use at your first open mic night, or followed some of the video links to an even longer list of songs to learn. Without further adieu, here is the “Part 2” of our feature. Continue reading “8 "Easy-To-Play" Songs To Add To Your Guitar Repertoire”