Seymour Duncan continues its 50th anniversary celebrations with another limited edition electric guitar pickup drop that presents us with a Custom Shop replica of a humbucker that helped launch the sound of high-gain electric guitar, the Duncan Custom.

This ceramic humbucker has been meticulously reverse engineered, gently aged, and arrives in a set that pairs with it a hand-wound ’59. It’s one of the classic aftermarket pickup pairings; it’ll sound great in your Les Paul, in your Jackson, in any dual-humbucker guitar in need of a pick-me-up.

In today’s money, the Duncan Custom would be considered a medium-output pickup. But with a DCR rating of 14.1k, it is no slouch, and upon its launch it was one of those humbuckers that players sought out to give the front end of their guitar amp something to think about.

“Its small ceramic magnet and custom-wound coils deliver tight, focused lows, a pronounced upper-mid presence, and top end that cuts with clarity under gain while remaining articulate in clean settings,” says Seymour Duncan.

For all its extra juice, more harmonic detail, it still retains that sense of being a vintage pickup (and by all rights it is).

The set is limited to 500 units worldwide, and each pickup’s base plate is signed by Seymour W Duncan and the legend of pickup winding and head of the Custom Shop, Maricela “MJ” Juarez. It comes in a commemorative box, with original replica “Seymourized” stickers – and you can get the set with black or zebra bobbins.

The Duncan Custom is one of the originals, dating back to the ‘70s. It has evolved over the years – notably, it is bobbin design has made it more suited to wax potting. But this reproduction returns it to factory settings, using butyrate bobbins, long-leg base plates and maple spacers.

It should look like it was made in the ‘70s and kept in the box. It will still sound every bit as compelling as it did when they first started making them.

As will the the ‘59 Model at the neck. This has a slightly more scooped EQ profile, a DCR reading of 7.60k, and is hand-wound in the Custom Shop around an Alnico V magnet. This was Seymour Duncan’s “ideal” PAF-style humbucker – open, airy, three-dimensional, and over the years has been used by the likes of Trey Anastasio, Ben Harper and Paul Stanley.

The Duncan Custom Limited Edition set is available now, priced $375. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

NAMM 2026: Seymour Duncan has unveiled a multi-voiced electric guitar pickup set that gives players the tones inspired by two of its most-loved humbuckers, a “clear, articulate single-coil” voicing – and delivers an all-new voicing that promises totally brutal electric guitar tone for those occasions when you need to take your tone nuclear.

At first blush, the MortalCoil Multiple-Voiced Active humbuckers are a serious upgrade for any metal guitar. And they sure throw down the gauntlet to Fishman, whose Fluence humbucker series has established itself as the industry standard for multi-voiced pickups.

The MortalCoil’s primary tone is this all-new MC1 voicing. This is an all-new sound for a Seymour Duncan pickup, and it’s for sonic extremists. No matter how far you push the gain dial, it promises “uncompromising tightness, note separation, and cutting presence for modern metal applications, maintaining clarity and balance without fizz or nasal midrange”.

We could get down with that. It will be interesting to see how many electric guitar manufacturers agree and have these installed in their new high-performance models, the likes of ESP/LTD, Jackson et al.

The MortalCoil set is an easy, drop-in mod for those with multi-voice pickups installed. But if you’ve got a guitar with active pickups already installed this should be an achievable upgrade for those proficient in gear DIY, or your local store’s tech could help.

Versatility is one of the set’s obvious advantages. You have the MC1 voice, then you have the Seymour Duncan Jazz humbucker alternate voicing at the neck, and the JB humbucker at the bridge, both of which need little introduction. The Jazz/JB is one of the all-time great pickup pairings for rock and metal. And then you’ve got that single-coil voicing.

What many metal players will tell you, however, is that what matters is the attack. They want zero latency from their guitar amp or amp modeller, and from their pickup.

The MortalCoil pickups are designed around a a low-resistance, high-density copper coil to enhance your guitar’s attack.

And then you have the preamp. For this project, Seymour Duncan had to start from the beginning.

“Our all-new preamp utilises advanced audio op-amps that contribute gain, rich harmonic detail, and dynamic feel with extremely low distortion, while the efficient circuit design supports superior battery life for reliable performance on stage and in the studio,” says the Californian brand. “The result is crushing attack and surgical control under modern metal gain.”

The MortalCoil set is available for six or seven-string guitars, and is available now. You can hear ‘em in action at the top of the page, and see more over at Seymour Duncan.

NAMM 2026: Slash and Seymour Duncan have unveiled the latest signature electric guitar pickups in their long-standing collaboration, with the 3.0 humbuckers offering a slighter hotter take than the Guns N’ Roses guitarist’s previous pickups.

But while they’re hotter, don’t expect then to send smoke billowing from your amp. They’re tastefully hotter, raunchier without an X-rating, and they come almost three years since the 2.0 APH-2 pickup set.

“There are a little bit more output than PAFs, but they’re clear,” explains Slash. “They don’t have a lot of gain to them, and they’re very honest and true sounding to the guitar.”

Designed around an Alnico V magnet, wax-potted, available with single or four-conductor wire, and with the choice of chrome or gold coverings, or with black, white or zebra-style black and white bobbins, the 3.0 humbuckers could be the pick-me-up your Gibson Les Paul has been waiting for – or maybe you have an Epiphone guitar that you have earmarked for a US-made pickup (Seymour Duncan hand-winds its pickups in Santa Barbara, CA).

They are offered in standard widths and trembucker sizings, the latter particularly useful if you have an HSS Strat-style guitar in need of hot PAF mojo (Slash has installed them in his BC Rich Mockinbird).

“[The] 3.0 has an Alnico V magnet in it, so it’s just got a little bit more oomph to it,” he says. “You still have that same clarity and cleanliness in the actual tone, and the honesty of the sound of the guitar, but you just have a little bit more output. The 3.0 is obviously a little bit raunchier than the 2.0 regular Alnico slash pickup. It gives you that extra boost that I need in certain guitars.”

That’s exactly what Slash needed for Guns N’ Roses’ set at Back To The Beginning, the mammoth all-star farewell show for Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne.

“Sometimes I’ll need a pickup that has a little bit more output but without changing the overall character of the pickup sound,” says Slash. “So what we did was we did 2.0, which is an Alnico II pickup, which has a tiny bit more output, and the three is basically just one more step up from that. The SG that I had at the Ozzy gig, that guitar needed a louder pickup, but I still wanted to have that sort of true-to-life guitar sound that I like in my guitars, and so that’s where the 3.0 idea came from.”

Where the design came from was Seymour Duncan’s ace in the hole, Maricela “MJ” Juarez, manager of the Custom Shop, trusted pickup guru to the stars.

Ask Joe Bonamassa, Billy Gibbons, Peter Frampton, and of course Slash, who might be good friends with Seymour Duncan, having used his pickups since 1987 and the recording of GNR’s incendiary debut LP, Appetite For Destruction, but he just calls MJ direct when a project like this comes up.

“She’s an unparalleled talent when it comes to pickup wiring,” says Slash.

The Slash 3.0 humbuckers are available now, individually or as a set, and are priced from $129. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

Long before the Fender Custom Shop had turned the relic’d electric guitar into an art form, way before Tom Murphy had cracked the formula for his aged nitro finishes from the Gibson Custom Shop, there was electric guitar pickup specialist Seymour Duncan, prog trailblazer Adrian Belew, and one Stratocaster that was about to become a piece of history.

This CBS-era Strat was to customised in the most barbaric form possible, and Belew has just shared some as yet unseen pictures to his Instagram of that fateful day, when he and Duncan turned a box-fresh instrument into one of the most notorious instruments in prog.

“Seymour Duncan just sent these cool photos from the day he and I (mainly he) battered and burnt the $285 Strat I had just bought,” writes Belew. “It had to have been one of the earliest examples of ‘relic-ing’ a guitar.”

It remains one of the most brutal examples of the relic job. Indeed, as the professionals will say, a relic is more than just guitar torture, distressing the finish in quick time to mimic a lifetime’s of hard play; it's an artisanal process. Speaking to Guitarist, Max Gutnik, chief product officer at Fender, insisted that it was no game for amateurs.

“You know, relicing is hard to do. It’s ironic because people think you can just drop it a few times and drag it down the street,” he said. “But it’s actually a really intensive process that adds a lot of hours to the guitar.”

Well, not that day in 1978 when Belew had called up Duncan complaining about how this Strat he bought from a Nashville guitar store had an ugly finish and he had a tour fast approaching with Frank Zappa.

Yes, Duncan was a technically a professional but this was outside of his realm of expertise. As Belew explains, Duncan was, however, a natural at this.

“He laid it in the grass, doused it with lighter fluid, and phoof! The relic-ing ritual began,” continues Belew. “When we were finished gouging it with screwdrivers, spraying blops of paint on it, dragging it around the yard, and banging it on the driveway, we hung it up in a tree.”

You will have seen this guitar in action. At the top of the page you can see Belew playing it on tour with David Bowie in April 1978 – not the metal slide on the index finger of his picking hand. The guitar is just months old but looks like it has endured decades of abuse.

Zappa was famously unimpressed. “If you wanted to ruin your guitar, Adrian why didn’t you loan it to a friend?” was his reaction.

But just look at those pics. They’ve taken on a meta quality, the prints aged by the passing decades, and that Strat hanging on the tree. What would the neighbours have thought?

Fast-forward 47 years and relic’d guitars are well and truly here to stay. It’s a finish that divides players and always will, but it is also a reflection of just how young electric guitar culture is.

The instruments that are old enough to be heavily distressed the old fashioned way – by players playing them, buckle rash, accidental dings and mishaps – are too expensive for most players.

A relic’d Strat straight from the factory, even from the Custom Shop, is at least more affordable, and whether you consider it cheating or not, it gives players a head start. After all, what are you going to do? Torch your guitar and hang it from a tree in the garden? Leave that to the professionals.

The Seymour Duncan JB humbucker is one of the all-time great electric guitar pickups – especially for rock and metal.

The JB is hot. It’s juicy. It’s rich in harmonics and designed to hit the front-end of your guitar amp hard, but not too hard – it’s versatile, excelling at gently pushed blues guitar tones. And it is now available for your Fender Telecaster’s bridge position.

Slimmed down in a single-coil footprint, with all the same output, the JB Jr For Tele will take some beating as far as Telecaster mods go. It has the same four-conductor wiring setup, putting series, parallel, and split-coil wiring options on the menu. And it takes the Seymour Duncan story back to the beginning.

As Kevin Beller, Seymour Duncan’s VP of engineering and new products, notes, the original JB humbucker was one of the pickups that put Seymour Duncan on the map.

“The JB was one of our original seven humbuckers,” says Beller. “People were still working with pretty much vintage Fenders, vintage Marshalls, and the JB offered considerably more output compared to a PAF, so it enabled players to be able to hit the front end of those amplifiers a lot harder to create more sustain. The JB was instrumental in bringing people some new tonalities.”

But those people were not Telecaster players – at least they were not those Tele players who voiced concern at the idea of rerouting the body for a humbucker.

Understandably so, that’s major surgery. And you could imagine the opprobrium these days if anyone had such sacrilegious intentions with a vintage Telecaster. So yes, the JB humbucker, hitherto been out of bounds for the Telecaster’s bridge position.

Enter, the JB Jr For Tele.

“With any replacement pickup, you’re constrained by the shape of the pickup that you’re trying to replace,” says Beller. “If you’re trying to replace a Tele [pickup], you can’t really deviate from a Tele shape very far. Basically, what we’re doing is we’re trying to fit two coils into the space where one big single coil used to occupy.”

Making the pickup to fit was one part of the equation. The other was making sure it had the same output as the regular full-sized humbucker. This required a change of the JB recipe. Where the original dual-coil JB was designed around an Alnico V magnet, Seymour Duncan is using ceramic magnets on these JB Jr models.

The DCR figures compare similarly at 16.28k for the JB Jr, 16.6k for the JB. Both have been vacuum wax-potted to cut down on the squeal… Helpful given the high-gain, high-volume environments these will be deployed.

Is this a new era for Telecaster tone? It’s certainly one of the coolest aftermarket pickup options we’ve seen for some time. Priced $129, the JB Jr For Tele is available now. See Seymour Duncan for more.

• Guitar modding: how to change pickups on a Telecaster
• “You can turn an Epiphone into the Tommy Bolin Burst!”: Seymour Duncan unveils Joe Bonamassa 1960 ‘Bolin Burst’ Les Paul Standard humbucker set

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.

Seymour Duncan has wound a custom shop electric guitar pickup to celebrate the release of the much-anticipated Spinal Tap sequel, and this one-of-one design might just be the most powerful active humbucker ever made.

The release of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is a momentous moment for rock history. We’re some days yet off its theatrical release on Friday 12 September, but the movie has already unveiled some awesome custom electric guitar – awesome in its original meaning, too.

How else could you describe lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel’s custom Marshall amp, a head that goes not to 11 – that’s oh so 1984 – but to infinity?

To work an amp like that, you need something to hit the front end hard, and this unique Seymour Duncan Spinal Tap humbucker is just the thing, with a “eye-watering, earth-shattering” 111k DCR reading. For reference, Seymour Duncan’s dynamic SH-8 Invader, a thoroughly weaponised take on the passive ‘bucker, clocks in at 16.6k for the bridge pickup. What will this one sound like?

Seymour Duncan is coy if we’ll ever see one in production. But it would be kind of weird the Goleta, California pickup company would go to all this bother and not plug it in, fire up a tube amp, and document the evidence for posterity.

“Our Custom Shop wound this humbucker to deliver an eye-watering, earth-shattering 111k DCR – because of course, it had to go to (one hundred and) eleven!” reads Seymour Duncan’s post on Instagram. “And yes, that means it's louder. In fact, it has one of the highest outputs of any passive humbucker, ever! This was such a fun project for our Custom Shop team, and while it’s not currently headed for production, we’d like to have a little fun with it. [Eyes emoji] So stay tuned!”

Maybe, just maybe, it is in the film. Who can say? Though judging by the picture, the sheer size of those coils would certainly suit an IMAX presentation.

If you take yourself to the cinema this weekend, you’ll find Spinal Tap engineering a comeback gig, with director Marty Di Bergi capturing all the drama in his fly-on-the-wall rockumentary style, and there will be a lot of guitars, with Tufnel playing a St Vincent’s Goldie signature guitar refinished in a Union Jack, and guitarist/vocalist David St Hubbins playing a matching James Valentine HH.

What we want to hear is this new Marshall that Tufnel has added to his backline – the JCM Infinity?

“Marshall has made for me an amplifier, the head, and if you look at the dials, it now goes to Infinity,” said Tufnel, speaking to Guitar World. “Just think about that for a moment. Think about infinity – oh, my God, that’s literally infinity.”

Tufnel has always been the maverick. But he has been living the quiet life of late, running a cheese and guitars shop in the north of England, playing the pub circuit. Maybe this reunion will sharpen his appetite for high-volume, high-gain adventure.

Certainly, you won’t find him rocking up at a Tap gig with a Line 6 or Neural DSP amp modeller. He assures Guitar World still a real guitar amp man.

“No, no. People use it in studios to make records, but I like my amplifiers,” said Tufnel. “Occasionally I’ve gone direct when I record at home. There’s something about pushing air, as they call it. I’'ve got this great Marshall at home, a Studio Marshall, and it’s hard to beat.”

Seymour Duncan has just dropped a super-hot modding option for one of the most modded electric guitars of all time, with the electric guitar pickup specialist’s Jazzmaster Silencer offering players with one of the offset those classic tones without the hum.

The Jazzmaster Silencer is available as a Vintage pairing, which presents you which a period-correct range of tones, surf rock, indie, the whole nine yards. But if you want to hit the front-end of your guitar amp a little harder, there is the Hot Jazzmaster Silence, which packs a bit more punch.

Both are “drop-in” options that will fit any standard Jazzmaster, and they are available individually or as a set, with parchment covers as standard but Seymour Duncan also offering a range of Jazzmaster covers for $5.99 each (choose from Black, Cream and White) if you wanted to switch things up.

The Jazzmaster Silencer pickups were designed by Kevin Beller, vice president of engineering, Seymour Duncan, and while they give you that big single-coil voicing of a Jazzmaster pickup they are technically a triple-coil design, in which one inner coil handles the tone, while another two get to work in nixing hum.

Both sets have an Alnico V magnet design. You can see the pole pieces poking through the plastic housing just like a regular Jazzmaster pickup – there is a good chance that no one will be aware that you have modded your guitar, but they might be wondering where all that 60-cycle hum has gone.

Jazzmasters, like any single-coil guitar, are vulnerable to unwanted noise and hum, especially when played through a well-stocked pedalboard, at high volume, and with a fuzz pedal or some drive in the mix.

All that noise adds up and gets in the way. And let’s face it, that’s pretty much the Jazzmaster’s target audience – the offset guitar crowd are pedal stackers, the indie-rock soundscaper. It’s not hard to see the appeal here. Can they do for the Jazzmaster what the P-90 Silencer did for the Les Paul Junior?

The Vintage Jazzmaster Silencers are described as “perfect for surf-inspired riffs, shimmering indie textures, modern pedal-driven explorations” with their hotter siblings doing much the same with a bit more oomph for “gritty surf riffs, glimmering melodies, grungy fuzzed-out rock, reverb-drenched shoegaze, and beyond”.

You’ll find a DCR reading of 11.39k at the neck, 9.30k at the bridge on the Hot Jazzmaster Silencer set, while Seymour Duncan lists the Vintage set at 9.19k for the neck pickup, 10k for the bridge.

The Jazzmaster Silencer is available now, priced $278. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

Joe Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan have unveiled the latest signature electric guitar pickup set for the blues superstar, and it is a Custom Shop replica of the ‘gray bottom’ single-coils from his “Greenburst” Stratocaster.

The competition is steep, but even so, the Greenburst is surely one of the coolest electric guitars in Bonamassa’s huge collection, even if it violates the established rules of vintage guitars – don’t have them refinished.

Well, all that stuff is for the vintage nerds, cork-sniffers and price watchers to argue over. Frankly, whoever had the idea to refinish this three-colour sunburst Strat from 1964 in Greenburst is a genius. It is beyond cool.

Bonamassa says he watched Michael Lemmo demo the Strat for Norman’s Rare Guitars and called the shop immediately. He was coming down. And it was love at first sight.

But it’s not just the finish that makes it special. This Strat was equipped with the hallowed ‘gray bottom’ pickups, and that made it a bona fide tone machine.

“The ‘gray bottoms’ have a little more high output – they have a punchier sound to them,” says Bonamassa. “[They] are indicative of the transitional logo ’64, ‘65s, and even into ’66, early ’67 Strats right before the Hendrix era.”

These Seymour Duncan replicas are wound to the exact same spec and, ceteris paribus, will sound exactly the same as Bonamassa’s Greenburst. They have period-correct wiring, staggered Alnico V magnets. There are of course some signature details.

The grey bottoms of these signature pickups are pad printed with Joe Bonamassa’s John Hancock. If you are among the first 500 to grab a set, you’ll find them in limited edition packaging, inside which will be a certificate of authenticity signed by Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan. And you might just have the hottest Strat mod of the year.

If you’ve got a Strat – or a Strat-style guitar – whose tone could use a gloss-up. The Seymour Duncan Greenburst set could be it. It’s priced $375 and available now. Bonamassa says you will hear the difference.

“When you play, you feel there’s a weight and a sustain underneath the strings, which doesn’t always happen, especially if you’re pretty clean,” he says. “Sometimes if they overwind a Strat pickup if they they lose the clarity, but you get the power. The ’64, ’65, ’66, those tend to have a nice combination [of clarity and power].”

For more details, head over to the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop.

Whoever planted the copy of Barbara Hess’ Abstract Expressionism (Taschen, 2016) in the Schecter paint room deserves a raise, because it just paid off with the launch of the Ink Bomb C-1.

This is a C-1, an electric guitar we are all familiar with. It has that S-style double cutaway body (solid mahogany in this instance), the 3x3 headstock, locking tuners because it is a serious bit of kit.

But then this is a C-1 like we have never seen before, finished in solid white with this Ink Bomb finish, a sort of Jackson Pollock-inspired finish (or 101 Dalmatians, you decide) that is unique to each guitar.

That’s right, because of how the finish is applied, each of these Ink Bomb C-1s will look different to the next. There must be something in the air, what with Red Witch this week offering a one-of-one range with its Pax Harmonia dual mode Uni-Vibe pedal. But it’s still a rare thing indeed to get a production model guitar that no one else has.

"With its eye-catching Ink Bomb finish and exceptional craftsmanship, this guitar is perfect for players looking to stand out both visually and sonically," says Schecter. "Each C-1 Ink Bomb is uniquely hand-splattered, making every guitar a one-of-a-kind masterpiece."

As for the spec, this one is geared up for modern metal, or alt-metal if you like, with a pair of Seymour Duncan Alt Metal Blackout humbuckers at the bridge and neck – you know the ones that Ryan “Fluff” Bruce demoed upon their launch.

Basically, they are a set of active electric guitar pickups voiced for players who tune down, like, to C standard and below, giving you all the clarity and punch even as you’re expanding operations into the bass guitar’s territory. It is a straightforward guitar. You have a three-way pickup selector, volume and tone controls. No messing around.

This is probably a finish that will divide opinion. Frankly, it makes a nice change from the blood splatter finishes we see in a lot of metal guitars. That Dexter look is a little passé, right? One thing that is super cool is that Schecter commits to it; it’s on the body, it’s on the headstock. Only the neck has been left untouched. It is plain white.

Low tunings or not, this C-1 is built to shred, with a glued-in three-piece maple neck carved into a Thin C profile. It has a 14” radius ebony fingerboard, offset dot inlays, 24 jumbo frets, a 25.5” scale length. At the nut you’ve got a black Graph Tech Tusq XL. The bridge is a Tonepros Locking Tune-O-Matic.

The Ink Bomb C-1 is available now, priced $999 (guitar case sold separately, but you might be able to charm your local retailer into throwing in a case to sweeten the deal).

For more details, head over to Schecter.

Seymour Duncan and Joe Bonamassa’s collaboration has expanded with the launch of his signature Broadcaster pickups, a pair of single-coils to take the Telecaster in your life back to the 1950 and the birth of the mass-produced electric.

The Joe Bonamassa 1950 Broadcaster Collection is modelled on the original pickups from the blues guitar superstar’s vintage original, presenting players – and their guitars – with a time machine tone boost.

Having already developed the Bonnie Stratocaster pickup set, “The Blonde Dot” 1960 PAF humbucker set, the Amos humbucker, Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan has taken it back to the start, to 1950, and a huge evolutionary leap for the guitar.

“The Broadcaster will be turning 75 years old next year and it is just an incredible invention of electric guitar,” he says. “We’re still using it. It’s the same as it’s been for 75 years.”

When he says “we” he really means we. The Broadcaster might have had a name change after clashing with a Gretsch drum set, rebranding as the Telecaster and soon establishing itself as guitar’s most indefatigable workhorse, but the design is still largely unchanged. It’s an archetype, a design that’s sired a million copycats and yet has never been bettered on its own terms.

This copyright row meant that real Broadcasters are thin on the ground.

Fender only managed to ship some 250 of them off the production line before they had to pivot. Initially they improvised, snipping the “Broadcaster” decal off the headstock and selling the guitars anyway, the so-called Nocasters – of which Bonamassa is a huge fan of, even if, or especially because his Nocaster fights back. He has gone as far as to say his '51 Nocaster his is favourite guitar, and that is saying something because has a lot of them.

But finding a real, vintage Broadcaster in the wild? There’s no chance. Souping up your Tele with these might be the next best thing

And as a measure of Bonamassa’s confidence in these 21st-century replica pickups, he demos them in a budget-friendly Squier Telecaster, proving that you can make a cheap electric guitar sound like a great guitar with a relatively cost-effective upgrade (and, let’s be honest, a healthy degree of talent).

Seymour Duncan has used an Alnico II magnet for the neck pickup and Alnico IV at the bridge. In keeping with the spirit of the original Broadcaster’s abandoned release, the first 250 of these will have their steel baseplates signed by Seymour Duncan and Bonamassa, with said baseplates aged to match the look of the originals. They will also be numbered.

Once they are sold out, the Joe Bonamassa 1950 Broadcaster Collection will be built to order by the custom shop and are priced $160 a piece or $310 for a set. For more details, head over to Seymour Duncan.

Seymour Duncan and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons have cooked up something super-hot to give your Fender Telecaster or Les Paul an all-new lease of life, with a pair of signature electric guitar pickups wound to give you a little more juice and sizzle.

You’ve all heard of Pearly Gates, Gibbons’ legendary 1959 Les Paul Standard, and the namesake pickups that give you its sweeter-than-thou PAF tone, well, take that core tone and imagine it a little hotter. Maybe something from the wrong side of the tracks. 

That’s where the Hades Gates Pickup Set Comes in, a humbucker pairing that uses an Alnico II magnet at the heart of its design, offering more output so sparks fly on your Texan blues guitar lines. 

Seymour Duncan is offering them with a variety of covering options, including the traditional uncovered with black bobbins (very Seymour), black covers, nickel covers, gold covers, and a radiator pickup option that has raw nickel with gold mesh inserts. That last one is very cool, very steampunk Billy Gibbons. 

Other options include all-white bobbins, zebra coils, or reverse zebra. In short, you are sure to find a finish that complements your guitar.

The bridge bucker has a DCR reading of 8.90k, while the neck reads 8.06k, offering “a fiery take on the mid-forward, punchy sound Billy is known for”. 

The Red Devil is a single-coil-sized humbucker designed to be dropped into your Telecaster’s bridge position, and it is wound to give you Gibbons’ trademark tones. “Whether you’re looking for cutting leads, tight pinch harmonics, or thick rhythm tones, it’s all at your fingertips,” says Seymour Duncan.

This little firecracker is designed around an Alnico V magnet, and like the Model T Ford it is only available in black. It’ll fit right in with your Telecaster. Seymour Duncan lists the DCR reading as “16.70k” but that looks like a typo; judging by the accompanying graphic, we would confidently say this should be 6.7k.

If you want your Tele to sound beefier, “this’ll do it,” promises Gibbons. 

“By putting this into the bridge, it fattens up the bottom end,” he says. “You eliminate hum,  you get a little more output. You get that extra stuff that makes these guitars sound so good.

The Red Devil is priced $129, while the Hades Gates is priced from $258 a set. Both pickups are handmade in Santa Barbara, California, and are available now. Head on over to Seymour Duncan for more details.

Jackson has launched the Virtuoso HT, updating its US-made high-performance bolt-on electric guitar with a Hipshot hardtail bridge.

The Virtuoso HT is the latest in the Californian brand’s American Series, which debuted in September 2022 with the Soloist SL3. This was Jackson’s homecoming, with production returning to the brand’s birthplace on the West Cost of the USA. And it was a test of Fender’s Corona facility, too, which building its first ever neck-through guitars at the plant.

A year on, the Soloist was followed by a the bolt-on American Series Virtuoso. Offered in four finishes, it is equipped with a Floyd Rose 1500 Series double-locking vibrato unit and a pair of Seymour Duncan humbuckers, with a JB in the bridge and '59 in the neck, and five-way pickup switching that caters to but expands its appeal beyond the metal guitar demographic that the brand has served since it was founded at the dawn of the ‘80s.

For all intents and purposes, swap out the Floyd Rose for a tidily engineered Hipshot hardtail bridge, add a Graph Tech Tusq XL nut, and with four fresh finish options, and the Virtuoso HT is the same guitar as the above. And it is a real doozy for players who prefer the response – and the lower price – of a bolt-on electric, and who can’t be doing with all that tweaking that comes with having a Floyd Rose-equipped guitar. 

Sure, you can’t hit a harmonic and ride the whammy bar but just think of all the time saved when changing the tuning on your guitar.

Jackson is offering these in a slightly more utilitarian finishes. There’s Mystic Blue, Red Crystal, Satin Black and our favourite Snow White. Once more, that Jackson six-in-line headstock looks the bee’s knees, with a little binding to tie it all together.

If you are familiar with the spec on the Virtuoso, it will be old news to learn that its hardtail-equipped sibling has a solid alder body, with a five-piece neck of caramelised maple and maple to make the instrument even more stable in temperature fluctuations.

We should have few concerns here; there is also a graphite rod reinforcing the neck, which should make this one tough cookie (that Pete Townshend admitted that he has been getting into Jackson guitars of late could present the brand with an obvious marketing opportunity should it want to demonstrate just how hard these guitars are to destroy).

Once more, we’ve got that streaked ebony fingerboard with subtle offset MOP dot inlays. Luminlay side dot markers glow in the dark and aid navigation.

That neck, by the way, is super quick, and with the 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard and 24 jumbo frets makes for an eminently playable instrument.

You’ve got a set of Gotoh MG-T locking tuners keeping things stable at the headstock. If you need to make setup tweaks to the neck, the truss rod adjustment wheel is conveniently positioned at the top of the fretboard. 

The Virtuoso HT is priced £1,899 / $1,949 and is available now. It ships in a Jackson Foam Core guitar case. You can read MusicRadar’s review of the American Series Virtuoso here. You can hear the Virtuoso HT in action above. And you can find more details at Jackson.

Now might be just the time to give the electric guitar in your life a well-deserved mod because Seymour Duncan has just unveiled a humdinger, with its new humbucker-sized the Phat Cat Silencer.

Tonally, we are looking at a similar deal to the original Phat Cats, with all the over-sized single-coil mojo you would expect from a P-90 pickup, but, of course, without the hum. Not that a little hiss and noise was ever a dealbreaker for us when it came to P-90s. 

They are more than worth it, especially for rock ’n’ roll and punk. But having that noise housetrained just makes these all the more user-friendly, and more versatile too. You don’t have to worry about lighting sources, who’s running what along side you. Just plug in and crank up your guitar amp.

That plug-in and play vibe is a big part of the appeal of the Phat Cat profile. The humbucker-sized footprint makes them an easy mod for any guitar routed for a humbucker. Pretty much anything from the Gibson catalogue would wear one of these well.

Sold individually or as a set of two, Seymour Duncan is offering the Phat Cat Silencer bridge pickup with Vintage voicings or Hot, and with the choice of nickel covers or gold.

“They deliver a true P90 tone without the buzz, perfect for those looking to explore the feel and response of a P90 without routing out a guitar,” Seymour Duncan says. “The Phat Cat Silencer is the easiest way to achieve that thick and edgy single-coil sound that only P90s can deliver!”

These are based around a ceramic magnet design. The EQ profiles of both the neck and bridge pickups are quite similar, with a an ever-so-slightly scooped midrange and pronounced treble. Just add a fuzz pedal and a cranked tube amp and you are off to the races. 

The gold covered Phat Cat Silencer is priced $149 per pickup, and $298 for a set. The nickel version will set you back $139 per pickup, $278 for a set. Check out the demo video for an idea of how they sound, and head over to Seymour Duncan for more details.

Seymour Duncan has had a busy 2024, with high-profile releases including an Eric Gales signature single-coil set, and the alt.metal Blackout humbuckers, which “enhance the low-end tightness, along with adding top-end bite without harshness” for six and seven-string guitars tuned down so low that only the dog can hear you chug.

Seymour Duncan has served up an ambrosial tone treat for any country player whose choice of weapon includes a Telecaster or a Strat, with the new Hot Chicken electric guitar pickup sets designed to give players an edge in high-gain environments with a sound that skews vintage-modern.

That is to say that sometimes vintage spec pickups have the tone profile you are looking for but lack the output to make themselves heard in a busy mix. And, let’s be honest, they can get a little noisy under the lights. 

The Hot Chicken Stack pickups are wound to give you that vintage tone but with more oomph and dual-coil design to ensure no 60-cycle hum – or, as Seymour Duncan describes it, “searing hotness that will cut through any mix, while retaining old school character, clarity, and definition.” 

That is not to be sniffed at. The pickups themselves will fit any Stratocaster or Tele, or electric guitars built in that style. The Strat set comprises a trio of Stack single coil sized pickups with the choice of black, off-white or white pickup coverings, and they are available individually or as a set.

They are wound around an Alnico V magnet, and feature a stacked coil design of Seymour Duncan’s that dates back to the ‘80s. 

“We patented a special bottom coil design that actually injects negative hum into the pickup circuit, and, at the end of the production process, we fine tune each pickup for maximum hum cancellation,” says Seymour Duncan. “You get all the great qualities of a Strat pickup, and none of the hum.”

The Tele pickups are made in a similar fashion and similarly can be bought individually or as a set – though Seymour Duncan does advise choosing the set. These have been wound to complement one another, with a build that centres on an Alnico V rod magnet core. 

Again, it’s about putting classic Tele tones on the table with some modern refinements, and “capturing old-school twang and muscle without sacrificing output or dealing with noise.”

As the name suggests, chicken pickin’ styles are welcome. You’ll find Strat spank, Tele twang, and bite where you need it. Stick these in your guitar and you’ve got everything for a hot country sound. Bring your own Deluxe Reverb and compressor pedal of your choice.

The Hot Chicken Tele set is priced $238. The Hot Chicken Strat set is priced $357. And you can find out more at Seymour Duncan, and check out the demo video above for an idea of how they sound.

Seymour Duncan has just expanded its electric guitar pickup lineup with the alt.metal Blackout, a variation on its Blackout humbucker that trains its sights on your low-end frequencies with a pickup that is designed for super-heavy tones.

We often talk about living in the golden age of the pedalboard, in which there are stompbox options to suit all tastes but, similarly, there has never been a better time to mod your electric guitar. And if your modus operandi is metal guitar and you are looking for a fresh humbucker option, well, you are spoiled for choice. 

There are aftermarket electric guitar pickups to cater for all tastes, but Seymour Duncan promises that the alt.metal Blackout humbucker might just give you a comparative advantage over everyone else when it comes to low-end riffing. 

In short, these are for those who string up with tow-rope string gauges and tune down, way down – as Ryan “Fluff” Bruce suggests in the demo video, to a Tony Iommi-approved C# and below. 

What sets the alt.metal Blackouts apart from the regular Blackouts, is that low-frequency response, which Seymour Duncan says will “enhance the low-end tightness, along with adding top-end bite without harshness” – in other words it will be rock solid on those powerhouse chords and retain the sort of clarity you need in high-gain scenarios where muddiness can often be an issue.

“The alt.metal bridge retains the energy and output of the original Blackout but emphasises the percussive quality of palm-muted notes,” says the Californian pickup brand. “The alt.metal neck ensures perfect clean tones, while transforming with aggressive mids and increased sustain under higher gain settings.”

The alt.metal Blackouts are available individually or as a set, and come in six or seven-string options – those looking to fit these onto a seven-string guitar can choose between passive and active mounts. They are only available in black, but then you wouldn’t expect a canary yellow option on a pickup named “alt.metal Blackout.”

These arrive just weeks after Seymour Duncan debuted another option that performs a similar job, with the new Corey Beaulieu Damocles Blackout set a nuclear option that’s not just for Trivium’s superfans. 

Beaulieu had been playing Blackouts since 2016, and is clearly a fan. But the Damocles adds a little certain something for his style of contemporary metal, promising more presence, more balance, more clarity. Beaulieu says the balanced EQ means they sound great for clean tones too. 

The alt.metal Blackouts are available now, priced from $129 for a single six-string pickup, to $278 for the seven-string set. Seymour Duncan recommends buying as a set. For more details, head over to Seymour Duncan  – and check out Ryan “Fluff” Bruce’s demo above for an idea of how these puppies sound in action.

Eric Gales, the virtuoso whom Joe Bonamassa – and many others – consider the best blues-rock guitarist in the world, has teamed up with electric guitar pickup specialist Seymour Duncan for a signature set of single-coils that could give your Stratocaster or S-style in your life a new lease of life.

Gales joins the likes of Bonamassa, Slash, Cory Wong, Jared James Nichols and Lari Basilio on the Seymour Duncan artist roster – and not before time. 

By the sounds of it, Seymour Duncan’s custom shop pickup guru Maricela “MJ” Jaurez, who oversaw the development of Gales' set, has been wanting to wind him a signature pickup for a while now.

Juarez has worked with Eddie Van Halen, Billy Gibbons, Steve Miller, David Gilmour, Peter Frampton, Slash, Angus Young and more in her time at Seymour Duncan, so it’s fair to see she knows a good guitar player when she sees one – and what sorts of sounds they are after in their guitars.

Gales of course does not play a Fender Strat, using his Magneto signature guitar range exclusively, but his tone profile comes from the lineage of the Strat’s greatest blues-rock players, players such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Johnson and Robin Trower.

“The three single-coil Strat configuration came to be what I felt comfortability with,” he says. “For one, a lot of the influences I was listening to, that’s what they were playing, your Stevie Rays, your Robin Trowers, and I was wanting to do everything that I saw them do.”

And some of them are wanting to do everything that Gales is doing, too. When Gales met with SRV and played Riviera Paradise together, back when Gales was first putting together demos for his first record, the appreciation was mutual. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2022, Gales said it was mind-blowing that Vaughan knew who he was. After all, he was just a teenager.

“I told him my name was Eric Gales and he said, ‘I’m very aware of who you are because the industry has been buzzing about you!’ So we sat down and played, and he said to me, ‘Dude, you are an awesome player!’ I was 15 years old at the time. Again, it was really intense, man. There were two acoustic guitars and we just had fun playing Riviera Paradise together.

“It all came full circle that day. It wasn’t about asking a whole lot of questions. I was just in awe of one of my heroes as we played together and he was nice enough to say ‘Yo, you got it!’ when we finished.”

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Gales new Seymour Duncans should be of interest to any Strat-wrangler with similar ambitions. They have Alnico IV magnets and have been slightly overwound, and offer “a perfect balance of vintage warmth and modern clarity”. 

Players can buy these aftermarket pickups individually for $125 or $375 for a set. There are some finish options, too. Choose from White, Black, Cream and Parchment colours, with or without the Seymour Duncan logo, with or without Eric Gales signature graphic.

Each pickup has been hooked up with cloth push-back wire. DCR readings are as follows: Bridge 7.8k, Middle 7.5k, Neck 7.3k. For more details check out the demo video above or head on over to Seymour Duncan.

Seymour Duncan and Brandon Ellis of The Black Dahlia Murder have joined forces for a signature electric guitar pickup that proves that there is plenty of innovation to be had yet with passive pickup design, and that great metal guitar tone needn’t mean active pickups all of the time.

Available with nickel or gold slotted pole pieces from the Seymour Duncan custom shop, the Duncan Brandon Ellis Dyad Parallel Axis humbucker is a real hybrid design, taking elements from two Parallel Axis pickups and presenting them in one pickup.

The Dyad is comprised of the north coil of the Crazy 8 and the “hotter” south coil of a Parallel Axis Trembucker Distortion, both paired with the Alnico II magnet from Seymour Duncan’s Warren DeMartini signature ‘bucker, the RTM. 

This greatest hits remix of Seymour Duncan’s passive pickup line was just what Ellis is looking for, with the Parallel Axis’ slotted pole piece design removing unwanted distortion from the string’s vibration to enhance clarity even at – or especially in high-gain situations. The pickup’s design creates a decentralised magnetic field that also boosts sustain.

“I always want metal to have that nice old-school aggressive, sharp kind of sound in the guitars and that’s something that the Dyad does very well,” he said.

As Ellis admits in the demo video, he is an inveterate tinkerer when it comes to pickups. Having joined The Black Dahlia Murder in 2016, by the time the sessions for 2020’s Verminous came around, and Ellis was holed up at his Shred Light District studios in Morristown, New Jersey, he had assumed role of producer and engineer, and had taken to taking his pickups apart.

“I was definitely concerned with learning how pickups work,” he said. “I’ve definitely opened them up and seen how they work inside, then I started swapping magnets to see which magnets I liked best, and how I could manipulate them with the limited amount of tools at my disposal.”

Ellis’ new Dyad humbucker will go straight onto his Jackson Kelly signature guitar, but it was Jackson’s sister brand Charvel and his JB/‘59-equipped USA made San Dimas that introduced him to Seymour Duncan.

“That was the turning point for me because that nice organic round sound of that JB really turned me onto the passive pickups of Seymour Duncan’s line,” he said.

The Dyad is described as “a high output Humbucker with a sizzly bite and a super articulate pick attack”, and is especially well-suited to players who are play at standard tunings, who might need a bit more oomph across the frequency ranges to sound a little heavier.

It is available now from the Seymour Duncan custom shop, in standard humbucker or trembucker configurations, with the brand hinting that they might offer it for 7-string guitars in the future.

Priced $180, it is available now. See the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop for more details.

Jackson has revealed the second guitar in its American-made series will be the Virtuoso. This alder-body spiritual successor to the Dinky comes nearly a year after the acclaimed Soloist SL3 model and its bolt-on neck construction means it will be offered at a comparatively lower price.

At $1,949 / £1,999 it's still a serious investment, but one that offers a premium guitar experience that's versatility should not be overlooked.

The Virtuoso features a 24-fret five-piece multi-laminated caramelised maple/maple neck with graphite-reinforcement rods that provide rock-solid stability all the way up to the 24th fret. The Speed Neck has a 12-16” compound radius with a streaked ebony fingerboard and rolled edges for comfort. 

The pickups are a classic combination of Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge and '59 in the neck, with a five-way switch to enable split tones from a pairing that is capable of going far beyond heavy metal expectations. 

Players waiting for a hardtail American Series guitar will have to hold on (though it's inevitable they are coming); this features a Floyd Rose 1500 Series double-locking tremolo bridge system alongside Gotoh MG-T locking tuners and Dunlop dual-locking strap buttons.

The Jackson American Series Virtuoso is offered in Satin Shell Pink, Specific Ocean, Mystic Blue and Satin Black. 

Find out more at Jackson Guitars

Epiphone and Adam Jones have lifted the curtain on the latest in the Les Paul Custom Art Collection, with the latest signature model for the Tool guitarist featuring the artwork of Korin Fraught on the back of the guitar.

Fraught’s painting, Sensation, which gives this model its name, is about “the loneliness and isolation of illness”. Fraught, who is married to Jones, first exhibited Sensation in October 2016 at the Lost Days exhibition at the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles. 

She draws her inspirations from the likes of John Singer Sargent, pre-Eaphaelite painters such as John William Waterhouse), and impressionist painters such as Mary Cassatt.

“‘Sensation’ is a word to replace a fear based word,” said Fraught. “A word she learned while preparing for childbirth. A word she could retreat into when lying in bed with only herself and her thoughts. Gentle meditative properties and calmness resonate through her body as she lives within the moment.”

Besides the artwork on the back, the guitar itself has an identical spec to the others in the series. That means Fraught’s design is on the back of the headstock, and also that Epiphone has pushed the envelope with what it can do at this price point, bringing it into line with the signature guitars it has produced for the likes of Alice In Chains Jerry Cantrell and Dave Mustaine. 

Limited to 800 instruments worldwide, these are also Epiphone entering the collector’s market. The Adam Jones Les Paul Custom has a solid mahogany body, maple top, a three-piece maple neck with volute, and most notably a signature Jones profile. 

This being a Les Paul Custom, you will find seven-ply binding on the top, five-ply on the back and headstock, and single-ply on the fingerboard. The fingerboard is ebony. No Indian laurel here. It has a 12” radius and is inlaid with pearloid blocks. 

At the neck position there is a reverse-mounted Epiphone ProBucker Custom humbucker, with a Seymour Duncan Distortion at the bridge. These are hooked up to a three-way pickup selector switch, that like Jones’ original Gibson Silverburst Custom is missing its plastic tip, with CTS pots and orange drop capacitors in a wiring loom that offers the usual dual volume, dual tone controls, with black ‘Speed knobs’ as per the style on a Les Paul Custom.

There is a LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop-bar tailpiece and vintage-style chrome 16:1 ratio tuners. All this makes for an impressive build for the price, and a guitar that is already a talking point before you show anyone the artwork on the back of the instrument. The Antique Silverburst finish is a work of art in its own right.

This Les Paul Custom ships in a Protector Series hard-shell guitar case, and is priced £1,399 / $1,299 street. For more details, head over to Epiphone.

NAMM 2023: There has rarely been a better time to be a Guns N’ Roses fan with an Epiphone Les Paul looking for an aftermarket mod to soup it up, because Slash and Seymour Duncan have just put their heads together on a new version of his signature electric guitar pickups, and they’ve just gotten hotter.

The Seymour Duncan Slash 2.0 signature set comprises two humbuckers based off the top-hatted rock icon’s original signature APH-2 pickups. 

Those Alnico II ‘buckers were configured to the exact same specs as the original pickups in Slash’s legendary Derrig Les Paul, the electric guitar behind Appetite For Destruction’s gnarly and wiry sound, and, ironically given the Derrig is a copycat build, the tone that rekindled a generation of guitar players’ love for the Gibson Les Paul.

A decade or so later, it was time to update the APH-2. You will find the same tone profile with the 2.0 version. These neck ‘bucker is slightly scooped but skewed towards treble. Its counterpart at the bridge is similarly slightly scooped but with more equilibrium between bass and treble. 

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The clarity is still there, so all that note definition and old-school dynamics are preserved – one of the reasons Slash found himself using Seymour Duncan pickups, after a long period of trial and error, was because “they weren’t trying to do more than they needed to do”. 

But this time out Seymour Duncan has given them a hotter wind, so that when you dig into a powerchord you’ll give your guitar amp a bit more to think about. Given how hard Slash hits those strings, that could make all the difference.

“They’re just a little bit louder,” says Slash. “They are higher output but they don’t add any distortion. There’s no gain. There’s just a little bit of a higher level. For some reason, certain guitars that I have are quieter than other guitars, and I started finding that I needed a little bit louder pickup in those guitars.

Enter, Seymour Duncan. The Slash 2.0 pickups are hand-wound in California. Once more they are based around a rough cast Alnico II magnet, and have a DCR reading of 8.8k at the neck, and 9.38k at the bridge.

They are available in a variety of finish options. You can have them open-coiled with black bobbins, zebra, reverse zebra, or with black-nickel, nickel, raw nickel or gold coverings. The latter might be just the thing in a Les Paul Custom. But who doesn’t like the look of a zebra-coil set on an Iced Tea Les Paul Standard? 

For the player who has got one of the superlative Epiphone Slash Les Pauls, however, this might just be the tone upgrade they’ve been waiting for. 

The Slash 2.0 humbuckers are priced from $119 per pickup, $238 a set (there’s a premium for the metal coverings), and they are available now. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

NAMM 2023: As a leading manufacturer of electric guitar pickups Seymour Duncan has already got a lot of the aftermarket modding market sewn up. What more worlds are there to conquer? 

We might be forgiven for thinking product development would follow a similar pattern to that of the 20th century – all magnets, wires, windings. But then Seymour Duncan just go ahead and release a Bluetooth enabled pickup selector switch that lets you program different pickup configurations on your electric guitar.

That’s right, the HyperSwitch, a world’s first according to the company, connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth and allows players to play around with their pickup configuration without having to plug a soldering iron in at the wall. No mess, no fuss… No way, right? Surely this is an April Fools.

But it’s not. The date reads 11 April on the release and the HyperSwitch is very much a thing you can buy to turn your regular old guitar with passive pickups into something you can mod in real time, on your phone, storing presets for easy recall of your favourite sounds.

This is basically rewiring your guitar via your phone. Now, there is a downside for anyone who is looking to reduce their screen time, but then that time is no doubt offset by the quick and easy mods you can make to your guitar.

Say, if you wanted to wire your bridge and neck pickups together out of phase, well, as the saying goes, there’s an app for that, and it’ll connect with your HyperSwitch and do the necessary.

The HyperSwitch is powered by a 9V battery, is compatible with most passive pickups, and aesthetically speaking it will suit any model that will suit a blade-style selector switch. Indeed, it doesn’t look so different from a regular passive switch, and yet it offers potentially 100s of different wiring options.

Out of phase, split-coils, parallel wiring, all are achievable and more. And your signal path remains 100 per cent analogue – the digital bit lies in how your smartphone communicates this information to the guitar. 

Right now, this all looks like an act of voodoo, but those videos are mighty convincing, and while many of us enjoy nothing more than whiling away a weekend swapping pickups in and out, the opportunity to switch out wiring options on the fly is nonetheless tantalising

Time will tell whether the HyperSwitch will revolutionise how we mod our guitars and think about things such as pickup selection, or whether it will go the way of the notorious Gibson Robot Guitar, but it where the latter failed because it was the solution to a problem that never really existed, the HyperSwitch is offering something altogether new. And it’s available now, priced £209 / $149. 

For more details, pop on over to Seymour Duncan.

Seymour Duncan has launched three sets of humbucking electric guitar pickups that are voiced to replicate the iconic tones of Eddie Van Halen, Angus Young and Peter Green.

The pickups are available individually for neck and bridge positions, or as pairing, and are mainline versions of models that were only previously available through the Custom Shop. 

The ‘78 Model is for the Eddie Van Halen super-fan, and offer a modded PAF humbucker sound that is a little hotter and with an enhanced harmonic response, and could be just the thing to soup-up the hot-rodded electric guitar in your life. They feature an Alnico II magnet and have a slightly scooped EQ profile, with the bridge ‘bucker having a DCR rating of 8.82k, the neck 7.85k.

The High Voltage humbuckers also have an Alnico II construction, and are vintage humbuckers with a bit of added aggression and bite. The bridge pickup is rated at 8.79k, the neck at 7.68k.

Finally, the Green Magic humbuckers are similarly be inspired by vintage stock, offering golden era guitar tone for blues-rock with a balanced tone profile from a 8.75k bridge pickup and 7.73k at the neck. 

But of all three models, this is the one where you will want to pick up the set for the full effect, because with the neck pickup’s reversed magnet you’ll be able to dial in those much sought-after Peter Green tones when both pickups are selected.

Seymour Duncan offers these for six-string guitars with nickel covers at $149 apiece, $298 for a set, or with open-coils in black or zebra finishes for $129 per pickup, $258 for a pair. A Trembucker option is available for guitars that’d benefit from the wider bobbin and pole-to-pole spread, such as vibrato-equipped Fender guitars or any with a Floyd Rose.

Head over to Seymour Duncan for more details.

Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail Deluxe: What is it?

The Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail was an impressive analogue delay pedal that was first released in 2014, offering 600ms of BBD delay with modulation, but is all but unrecognisable from its successor, the Vapor Trail Deluxe. 

It has been upscaled into a dual-footswitch enclosure, with features such as tap tempo, an expression pedal input, and programmable presets to help it standout in an era of intense competition for your pedalboard real estate. The brushed metal and painted logo aesthetic of the original has is gone, with a neat piece of typography printed on dark blue-green, with high-contrast cream plastic dials with silver-faced inserts.

There are controls for Mix, Repeats, Time, Depth/Multi, Rate and Mode. With all this going on it won’t surprise anyone that this is an analogue delay pedal with a digital brain keeping its schedule, laying its clothes out for it in the morning, and making the most of its quartet of BBD chips. Altogether it makes for a much more functional pedal. If you need an analogue pedal to do more, then this is a contender.

The maximum delay time has also been upgraded, with the Deluxe offering up to 1,200ms of delay. Repeats can be set anywhere from one to infinite – i.e. into self-oscillating sounds for your Ed O’Brien-esque ambient freakouts – and you can set the delay time via the tap tempo footswitch. Furthermore, you can set the tap tempo feature to four different subdivisions – quarter note, a dotted eighth, an eighth note or an eighth-note triplet – each selectable via the eight-way Mode rotary switch. 

The other four stations on the Mode knob offer micro delay, pitch sequence, runaway and pitch bender delay modes. Like the original, you can add modulation, this time via full-size rate and depth knobs. Once you have found a sound you like, you can save it down to one of three onboard presets.

And the features keep coming. If you have an expression pedal to hand, hook it up and take control of any from the Mix, Repeats, Time, Depth/Multi and Rate parameters. On the top of the unit, there is a Wet/Insert jack with a TRS input with tip-send/ring-return to allow for adding ancillary effects pedals to your wet signal via a Y cable. Why not add a fuzz pedal to those repeats? Why not, indeed… Make a night of it and hook it up to a ring mod. The option is there.

Alternatively, you could simply hook up the Vapor Trail Deluxe to drive a stereo rig. Finally, you can select whether you want trails off or on, allowing those repeats to carry on after you’ve disengaged the effect. It’s a nice option to have, and a blue LED light will flash to let you know if trails are active.

Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail Deluxe: Performance and verdict

For all of the new features the electric guitar pickups giant has bestowed upon its new-and-expanded delay, the Deluxe is easy enough to get to grips with. Storing and recalling presets is a simple process, with four LEDs letting you know whether you are in preset 1, 2, 3 or Manual mode. 

Access the presets mode by holding down on the Bypass footswitch, then cycle through with the Tap Tempo footswitch. If you are in a preset and have adjusted a parameter, the corresponding LED will flash slowly. It won’t take you long to get the hang of it.

As with the original Vapor Trail, applying the modulation to the analogue repeats can yield some lovely old-school tape echo loosey-goosey warble, and there’s scope for chorused repeats and more extreme and queasy vibrato sounds. 

Players who find digital delay too sterile, the Deluxe might be more to their tastes. When used as an undiluted delay, with no modulation, the repeats are clear but have that three-dimensional quality as they fade.

The tap tempo works as advertised, and with the subdivisions on offer and the doubled maximum delay time, the Deluxe positions itself as a delay for all seasons. But it’s extra modes really do add more options. Micro Delay is ideal for setting short slapback delay times, and for being precise with delays under 300ms – in Micro Delay, that’s the Time knob’s maximum delay time.

The other three modes are more suited to augment your performance. In Runaway, you can hold down the tap tempo footswitch for steady and ever-rising feedback – hello, oscillation – and once you take your foot off the pedal it reverts to wherever the Repeats control is set. It’s a nice tool to have at hand; better still, we’d turn this sort of control over to our expression pedal.

Specifications

Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail Deluxe: The web says

“The repeats sound great, possessing a clarity that’s not too far removed from the dry sound but with that analog quality of melting away into the distance, so they sit well with your sound... If you like the sound of analog delay, this pedal is an extremely practical iteration with a full set of features for traditionalists, plus extras for those who might like to add something a little more ‘out there’ to their performance.”
Guitarist Magazine

Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail Deluxe: Hands-on demos

Seymour Duncan

Rabea Massaad

Sweetwater

Jay Leonard J

Lari Basilio

Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail Deluxe: Specifications

• ORIGIN: USA 
• TYPE: Analogue delay pedal 
• FEATURES: True hard-wire bypass with selectable active-bypass trailing repeats mode, 3 presets, 1200ms max. delay time,
• CONTROLS: Mix, Repeats, Time, Depth/Multi, Rate, Mode, Bypass footswitch, Tap/Hold footswitch 
• CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output, Wet/Insert (TRS), expression pedal POWER: 9V-18V adaptor, 150mA minimum (Not supplied) 
• DIMENSIONS: 90 (w) x 128 (d) x 55mm (h) 
• CONTACT: Seymour Duncan

Country guitar phenomenon Brad Paisley has teamed up once again with Seymour Duncan for a signature electric guitar pickup that is designed to be heard but not seen.

The Brad Paisley Signature Custom Shop “Secret Agent” Esquire Neck Pickup is exactly that. Hidden from view as it is mounted directly under the pickguard, it is a custom wound single-coil for Paisley's much-loved Fender Esquire, giving it what Paisley describes as his "favourite Tele neck pickup."

The pickup has a medium-output ceramic bar magnet. The positioning under the pickguard acts as a de facto tone chaperone, the greater distance between string and pickup taming some of the highs and making for a tone that is quintessentially Tele in character, but with a warmth and fuller bloom to the notes. 

For Esquire owners with a single-pickup setup, the Secret Agent looks like a pretty cool, unobtrusive mod that will brighten up that third pseudo-neck pickup position, which offers less volume and is can be a little dark for some players' liking – Paisley included.

Of course, it is a matter of taste. Either way, it's a neat contrast with the unfiltered treble of that bridge position, it sure sounds good in Brad Paisley's hands, and you wouldn't even notice it's there.

The The Brad Paisley Signature Custom Shop “Secret Agent” Esquire Neck Pickup is part of the Custom Shop series and retails for $130.

See Seymour Duncan for more details.