As those who’ve read my blogs know, I’m a HUGE fan of and have written about the benefits of direct-mounting pickups in your guitar. There’s a noticeable increase in resonance once the pickup is embedded in the guitar sensing more vibration from the body as well as the strings. It makes a good pickup sound great, so no reason it wouldn’t make an already great pickup like the Seymour Duncan JB sound absolutely amazing. Especially in a one-piece Koa body of my Warmoth Strat build AKA “Excalibur”!

Continue reading “Direct-Mounting Pickups Part II: The JB meets the PMS (Pickup Mounting System)”

Simply, do you like bands that play everything exactly like the CD or do you like when bands (and their guitarists) take chances and deviate from the recorded version? With songs you might right and record, is there a conscious effort to replicate everything note-for-note live? Or is the recorded (or written) version simply a springboard for flexing your creative muscle ‘in the moment’ on a live stage? This is an interesting Cage Match for me, as I can easily find an argument for both sides. While I touched on some of these ideas in this article, will explore this interesting dilemma further here.

Live! In Concert!

Continue reading “Cage Match: Playing It Just Like the CD or…Not”

Sometimes there’s a need for a hammer, other times there’s a need for a scalpel. A scalpel can cut cleanly with precision. Sure it’s doesn’t smash through things like a hammer does, but when used correctly a scalpel can be just as devastating. The Full Shred would be Seymour Duncan’s scalpel in its tonal bag of tools. It doesn’t have the highest output, but its precision lets it hit a lot higher and harder than its weight category. Continue reading “Shredding It Full Shred Bridge Style”

The true test of covering someone elses’ song is making it your own. That’s no easy feat, and while there’s a tonne of cover versions of classic and contemporary tunes, only a few stand the test of time. Even more rare are the ones that eclipse the original. Recently we asked Seymour Duncan readers what their favorite “better than the original” cover songs were. A couple of mega-bands ended up on the list twice. The top choice, however pretty much epitomizes what “making a cover your own” should sound like: Continue reading “Reader’s Choice: Cover Tunes That Are Better Than The Originals”

The Hofner Violin Bass is an icon in and of itself, due to one particular musician that happened to do pretty well in the 60s. It’s also an interesting instrument, because while it is classified as a short scale (30″) instrument, it actually requires a set of strings that would be classified as medium scale (34″). So when my suggestion to release a medium scale version of the GHS Precision Flats was approved, I naturally ran to grab one of this iconic basses to use as the test instrument. Yeah, that’s the reason I got it… It arrived in the office, the flats were strung up, I plugged it in and played as many of Sir Paul’s basslines as I could remember. And while the sound was “good” and definitely in that “A Hofner will always sound like a Hofner” category, I knew it could be better so I ran to the Seymour Duncan website to see what was available. Continue reading “SD Mini-Humbuckers and the Hofner Beatle Bass”

Acoustic guitars have always presented a problem when playing at higher volumes. Back in the day (as the kids say), if you wanted a louder acoustic guitar, you bought a bigger acoustic guitar. Bigger bodies = more volume, as there is more wood to vibrate and project the sound towards the listener. But what if you have to play a big club or theater with hundreds or thousands of people? Huh? HUH? You could get a guitar the size of the stage itself, but I bet you wouldn’t like how it sounded! This article will explain some of the difficulties that acoustic guitarists face when wanting just to be heard. Continue reading “The Difficulties In Amplifying An Acoustic Guitar”

The NYC Bass pickups are the same thing that we’ve been making for some of the world’s finest handcrafted basses. They each use a dual coil J-type pickup design with a double row of Alnico Pole pieces. The resulting pickups provide a more organic tone and they are very versatile without sacrificing output level and power. They give a very even balanced response up and down the fretboard all without any unwanted noise. They come standard with 4-conductor cable so you can wire them up in multiple configurations:

Continue reading “Hello, NYC Bass Pickups”

There aren’t many players who can say they’ve spearheaded an entire genre, but Yngwie J Malmsteen is among this esteemed few. Yngwie synthesised the worlds of classical melodicism and heavy rock energy in ways that had only been hinted at before, and in doing so he ignited a guitar revolution. We caught up with Yngwie recently to have a chat about pickups, tone and the blues.
Continue reading “Talking Tone With Yngwie Malmsteen”

Seth Lover’s hum90. p-bucker… How should we call this thing? Let’s jus stick to ‘humbucker prototype in p90 format’!

Since its inception in 1946 until 1955, when Seth Lover’s humbucker was introduced, the P90 was the standard pickup for Gibson. You could find it on guitars from their mid-priced level up to the most revered and expensive instruments. Those P90s were some of the hottest pickups around at the time, and even after the introduction of the humbucker they’ve still been used for some great hard rock tones. The humbucker was initially in the shape of a P90 but the fact that it was quite a bit hotter and quieter helped the rise of many new different genres, as players were able to play louder without noise (and it helped in the development of rock guitar tones by allowing players to get bit more overdrive from their non-master volume amps). Continue reading “How Do Humbuckers & P90s Differ?”

The world of guitardom has all sorts of cool descriptive words to characterise tone: The Brown Sound. Djent. Crunch. Chunk. Quack. Spank. Wah Wah. It’s all part of the unique vocabulary we share amongst ourselves. The Woman Tone isn’t quite as self-descriptive as the others though. Personified by Eric Clapton’s tone on various Cream Tracks such as “Sunshine Of Your Love,” it’s a harmonically rich, slightly muffled, honking, squonking tone. I guess perhaps it got its name because the tone is rather like the voice of a female vocalist (and personally it makes me think of Kate Bush’s voice). So what’s it sound like? Well here’s a little video of the Woman Tone (plus a few other pickup settings for comparison):

Continue reading “What Is The ‘Woman Tone’?”