Joe Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan have unveiled a new signature humbucker set based on the very same electric guitar pickups that are in the blues guitar superstar’s 1960 Gibson ‘Bolin Burst’ Les Paul Standard.
The Bolin Burst is one of Bonamassa’s most legendary electric guitars in his collection, named for Tommy Bolin, famous for its Stars and Stripes pickguard, and kind of weird in the sense that Bolin never actually owned the instrument, and yet it was his go-to electric when playing in Zephyr, Deep Purple, James Gang, and so on.
It was Bolin’s tech, David Brown, who owned the guitar, lending it to Bolin, even going as far as to – and look away vintage purists – modify it, retrofitting a Bigbsy because, all things considered, Bolin liked vibratos on account of him favouring a Stratocaster.
What complicates this story even further is that Bolin only started borrowing this vintage doozy because his own Gold Top got stolen.
“One of the most distinctive things about this guitar is the pickguard, which was hand-painted by David in an American flag design,” explained Bonamassa in his Guitar World column. “There’s a little part of the paint that’s scratched off; when Tommy performed with Zephyr on the TV show American Bandstand, one of the producers went to Dick Clark and said, ‘Hey, that long-haired hippy guitarist has the word, Fuck on his guitar!’ So they made him scratch it off!”
Bolin passed away in 1976 following a drug overdose. The guitar returned to Moab, Utah, with Brown. It’s quite the tale; like Bonamassa says, he does not collect guitars, he collects stories.
He also takes good care of them, even if they’re on regular rotation in his stage show. When you see him playing the Bolin Burst on stage, he’s using a replica pickguard to preserve the original.
Anyway, that’s pretty cool, and because few of us can afford to enter the market for vintage electric guitars, nor do we have the connections that would help us sniff out a unicorn find such as this 1960 LP (it took Bonamassa the best part of a decade to find this one), Seymour Duncan’s Bolin Burst humbucker pairing is a good a workaround as you’ll find – and it might just be this year’s essential Les Paul mod.
As per the original Les Paul, these are modelled on Seth Lover’s PAF pickups. As per Seymour Duncan’s other PAF replicas – Billy Gibbons’ Pearly Gates pickup set springs to mind – we have Alnico II magnets for both the neck and bridge pickups. The pickups are left unpotted, using “long-leg” vintage-correct construction.
“The bridge pickup provides a dynamic and barky sound, while the neck pickup sings with warmth and clarity – especially through your favorite overdriven amp,” says Seymour Duncan.
“To be able to recreate pickups that can go into a replica that’s $500, that sound equally as good, if not somewhat better than a guitar that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can turn an Epiphone into the Tommy Bolin Burst!” says Bonamassa.
Sweet. Now, these are a custom shop deal. Bonamassa and Mr Seymour Duncan himself will sign the baseplates of the first 500 sets. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Tommy Bolin Endowment and Tommy Bolin Memorial Fund.
The Bolin Burst set is the latest in a long-standing collaboration between Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan. A non-exhaustive list of their signature pickup sets includes the Joe Bonamassa 1950 Broadcaster pickups, the “Greenburst” Stratocaster set, the Cradle Rock ’63 Strat set, the Bonnie Strat set, and the Blonde Dot 1960 PAF set, which is definitely a last but not least kind of deal because they might just be our favourites.
That right there is a lot of options for modders to soup-up the electric in their life, with these Bolin Burst humbuckers potentially giving the Epiphone guitar in your life a US Custom Shop power-up.
Priced $375, the Bolin Burst Humbucker Set is available now. See Seymour Duncan for more details.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.