Yngwie Malmsteen is to auction a set of hand-wound Seymour Duncan pickups on eBay in order to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti.
Neo-classical electric guitar legend Yngwie Malmsteen popped
in to visit the Seymour Duncan factory recently and wound up (no pun intended)
making three pickups. Now the guitarist has announced that he will auction off
the three hand-wound single coils on eBay in order to raise money for Doctors
Without Borders, who are currently working flat-out following the Haitian
earthquake.
Malmsteen has signed both the bottom plates and the
description labels of the pickups, so the auction-winner will be getting six
signatures for their money. In terms of materials, you can view the full techie
details below, but it all looks pretty high-spec. The auction will be kicking
off some time in the next few days, so more details on that when we have them.
In other Malmsteen pickup news, Seymour Duncan announced during
the recent NAMM convention (America´s
annual music-making geek-out) that they would be producing a set of signature
pickups for Malmsteen (and the general public) named the Seymour Duncan YGM Fury.
Here's the tech specs of the pickups as we were informed by Malmsteen's management:
The pickups are based on Leo Fender's vintage pickups designs for the
Stratocaster. The magnets are sand-cast Alnico 2. The bobbins are
hand-fabricated from forbon vulcanized fiber. The magnet wire is vintage-correct
Heavy Formar. The d.c. resistance of the neck and middle pickups are 6.40K ohms
each, which makes them vintage voiced. At 9.70K ohms, the bridge pickup is
over-wound for a hotter, higher-output sound. Each pick-up comes with an aged
white cover and is ready to install into a Stratocaster or similar type electric
guitar. Yngwie signed the bottom plates of each of the pickups as well as the
description label for each (six signatures total).
Check out this video of Malmsteen plying his new-found trade
under the watchful eye of Seymour Duncan´s Maricela Juarez.
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