Sometimes you feel like the whole world has gone crazy.

At least, that’s how I feel whenever I come across a person on an internet forum repeating the increasingly-prevalent diatribe about the supposed impracticality of the 100-watt tube amp. If you’ve spent much time at all discussing guitar amplification with others online, you’ve probably read these words yourself a time or ten (names made up for my amusement):

There is absolutely no need for anyone to be using 100-watt tube amps unless they’re playing at outdoor stadium venues! Continue reading “Conventional Wisdom and the 100-Watt Amplifier”

Promising to be a definitive documentary about the history and the rise of the electric guitar, “Turn it Up!” gives guitar lovers and fans alike a reminder why guitar players love the instrument so much. Starting with the history of the instrument with Charlie Christian and the Rickenbacker Frying Pan, it then interweaves interviews with famous artists such as Slash, Jerry Cantrell, B.B. King, Robby Krieger, Steve Lukather and more, exploring why the electric guitar was invented but also why it grips guitar players and has defined multiple generations of musicians. Continue reading “Turn It Up! A Documentary All About The Electric Guitar”

Zombies and Zombettes, gather ye round. It’s that ghoulish time of year when a guitarist’s thoughts turn to such devilish delights as the tritone, the minor third and – gasp! – even the dreaded flat second! The horror! These demonic musical intervals can create an unsettling feeling in the listener, scare off household pets, open a gate to the land of the undead, and maybe even make a few shirtless dudes crowdsurf. Continue reading “Halloween Horror: The Most Evil Scale Ever”

Solos

There are several schools of thought to approaching the guitar solo in rock music. Some eschew any display of technique, opting for “from the gut” or “seat of the pants” minimalist playing. Some go the opposite route and consider their solos mini-orchestral movements within the song, composing busy and gymnastic showpieces. While each approach has its merit, if there’s no emotive or melodic quality to end result, neither works. As someone once said “If I can’t hum it, it’s not music.”  Ideally even an improvised solo should be melodic, interesting, and hopefully memorable.
Continue reading “Zen and the art of soloing”

For over 40 years ZZ Top has been defining their version of Texas rock and have always done it in an unmistakable way, with a tone that is as signature as the long beards and sunglasses. Having produced 15 albums, tons of hits and circled the globe many times over rocking out concert halls, ZZ Top has earned their place in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Not only has ZZ Top managed to stay together while many rock bands from the era have broken apart, but Billy, Frank and Dusty continue to crank out great music and tour like a Texas tornado. 
Continue reading “An Interview With ZZ Top’s Reverend Billy Gibbons”

One of the trickiest things about bass tone is nailing a good distorted sound. Unfortunately it’s usually not just a matter of stomping on a distortion pedal and having a usable tone come out of the speaker. The low frequencies that a bass dwells in don’t tend to play very nicely with distortion. So let’s look at one way of getting some serious grindage along with your rumble.
Continue reading “Unlocking The Secrets Of Bass Distortion”

So you’ve found a sweet high output pickup, but it’s just a little too hot for you…

In Tinkering with Pickups 102 we looked at swapping magnets in humbuckers to change some of the tonal characteristics of a pickup. In this entry we’re going to look at what I’ll call a “vintage” modification for humbuckers. As per the warning the previous entry, the following modification also carries some risk of damage to your pickup if you’re not careful.
Continue reading “Tinkering with Pickups 103 – The “Vintage” Modification”

If you’ve read the other two articles in the series, hopefully by now you’ve got a good understanding of the different ways we can wire P-Rails pickups. Let’s take a look at some of the more common configurations (throughout the article, you can click each diagram for a larger version). Continue reading “The P-Rails Wiring Bible, Part 3”

Max with Seymour Duncan

Congratulations to Max Fricke of Germany who has won our scholarship to attend Musicians Institute to further his music education. Max wrote that “this is my passion, this is my life, this is what I wanna do, and this is what I’m gonna do! I’m a really open-minded person and I will appreciatively use any possibility that is offered to me to stay in Los Angeles and to begin a career in the industry. I’m ready to learn and to listen. My clear philosophy is that as long as I believe in my goals I am able to achieve everything.”

All of us here at Seymour Duncan are happy to support music education and the folks at MI, have a great time Max and rock on!

About Musicians Institute: Located in Hollywood, California, Musicians Institute first started as the Guitar Institute of Technology and transformed over into MI with the addition of training for bass, recording, guitar craft and much more.

In the previous part of this article, we saw that the P-Rails pickup can be thought of as two separate pickups, like this:

This does of course mean that we can completely ignore one of the pickups and wire the other in as if it was a single coil. However, it’s unlikely that anyone who owned a P-Rails would want to do this. Continue reading “The P-Rails Wiring Bible, Part 2”