Category Archives: Reviews

Jason Becker is one of those players that has inspired countless guitar players. His command of the guitar blew people’s minds, and when ALS so tragically took his ability to do almost everything, he, with the help of his father still found a way to keep on communicating with people, and create new music, continuing…

The SH/TB-4 JB is – no joke – THE most popular replacement pickup ever. No, no just the most popular in the populous Seymour Duncan humbucker lineup, but the most popular aftermarket pickup available. Has been for 30 years. Seriously, that top shouldn’t be open for debate, really. A certain British guitarist with the same initials was known to have used one of the originals in the 70s, and since then it’s been a staple of rock music. Other pickups can only get in the neighborhood of the iconic nature of the JB. It’s everywhere, whether you know it or not, and for good reason. It’s all over more classic and current recordings than you can begin to imagine, so cool is this pickup. It is, in fact, the SOUND of ROCK.

The Custom Custom (or CC) is my favorite bridge pickup. There, I said it. It’s beefier than a standard PAF style, yet not so huge in output that it tends to compress everything. This article will discuss the use and sound of the CC, as well as providing some soundclips solo and within a mix…

The SH-55 Seth Lover model is Seymour Duncan’s tribute to the father of the humbucking pickup. Any guitar today that uses two coils in the same housing wired to get rid of the hum associated with single coil pickups owes a bit of thanks to the original pioneer of pickup design, Seth Lover.

A while back I started getting tired of asking to borrow friend’s basses to record demos with. I’m sure they got tired of me asking, too. It made sense, given the fact that I was recording more, that a bass would be a good investment to have around the house. I originally set out to…

In the continuing saga of testing pickups in my 80s vintage Kramer rebuild, we’ve been through how the ’59, Pearly Gates, and Alternative 8 sound in the bridge position, and matched with the ‘59N in the neck. Since the Voyager’s Alder body has proven to be an interesting test bed for all the pickups so…

The Alt 8 is one of Seymour’s more-recent offerings and the first of their production humbucker line to be designed around the A8 magnet. The A8 has a unique flavor, one that seems to span the gap between Alnico and ceramic magnets in that it has Alnico sweetness in the highs and ample mids, but also has a tight low end similar to a ceramic.

When last we left off, I’d installed the ’59 set in my resurrected-mutant 80s Kramer Voyager. It sounded great, but the idea was to see how different combinations worked in the guitar, so we’ll be moving on to the next bridge pickup combo (the ‘59 neck remains). While the ’59s sound great, and fully nail…

When I was a kid first starting out on guitar, there was no widespread “DIY” market to speak of. That was just beginning. You basically took what you could get at your local music store, and liked it. Unless you were daring enough to try the also embryonic mail-order market and run with something you…

Imagine the best PAF sound you could think of, juiced up and in the midst of a meltdown (and I mean this in the best possible sense of the term): more powerful and aggressive, with an added vibe of wild unpredictability – it might go nuts on you, but you’re pretty sure you’d like it -and you have the mighty Seymour Duncan Custom.