We’re fortunate to be able to say we’ve built quite a few pickups since moving into our first 12x15ft. warehouse in Santa Barbara in the 1970s.

It’s our pleasure to help generations of guitar heroes achieve their sound in rock, blues, jazz, punk, prog, psychedelic and country music, plus all the subgenres—math rock, metalcore, fusion, bluegrass—the list goes on and on.

The sound of the electric guitar continues to evolve as new sounds emerge with innovations in playing technique and guitar technology. But one thing remains consistent—the greatest artists of all time get their sound with Seymour Duncan pickups in their instruments. Artists count on us to deliver great tone for electric, acoustic and bass guitars when it matters the most, whether that’s at home, in the studio, filming a TikTok, or playing live to a packed house on the world’s biggest stages. And here are the pickups you’ve selected more than any other.

Read on to get the scoop on Seymour Duncan’s best-selling pickups over the last five years.

JB Model Humbucker

More than any other pickup, players turn to our JB Model humbucker to push their tone over the edge. The JB Model generates the perfect balance of clarity and crunch with just enough output to make your amplifier sing. For nearly four decades and running, the JB Model has powered some of the most electrifying guitarists in country, fusion, punk, hard rock, thrash metal, grunge and the blues with its upper midrange presence and articulate high end.

With modest-to-high gain, the JB Model lends single notes an expressive vocal quality. Even with distortion, complex chords ring true with a powerful low end and crunchy midrange—perfect for chunky rhythm playing. With a winding that lands in most amplifiers’ sweet spot between dirty and clean, the JB Model cleans up beautifully for jazz chord melodies or, with the twist of a volume knob, pushes preamp tubes into overdrive.

In a warm-sounding guitar, installing the JB Model with a 500k pot can refine your instrument’s voice with the clarity, punch and harmonic edge it needs to sound its best. With a 250k pot, the treble frequencies are subdued to better pair with brighter guitars, particularly those with maple fretboards or 25.5” scale lengths.

No matter where you install it, the JB Model’s Alnico 5 magnet and 4-conductor lead wire make it easy to dial in a versatile set of sounds with optional series, parallel or split coil wiring. There’s a reason the JB Model is the ultimate hot-rodded humbucker—no matter the sound or style, it just works.

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Woody Acoustic Guitar Soundhole Pickup

No mic? No problem. Our Woody Acoustic Guitar Soundhole Pickups—available in both single-coil and hum-canceling configurations—turn your acoustic guitar into an acoustic/electric without performing any modifications to your treasured instrument whatsoever. And don’t worry about the instrument cable—it’s included. Woody pickups come with a 14-foot studio-quality cable so you can connect to an amplifier, direct box, powered PA mixer, audio interface or console for recording and live performance.

Being passive pickups, the Woodys are good to go right out of the box without needing an external preamp, power supply or batteries. Just attach it to your acoustic guitar’s soundhole, plug and play. The Woody is a magnetic pickup, though, so it does not work with nylon-string guitars, just FYI.

The single-coil Woody brightens darker sounding instruments with a brilliant, chiming tone that’s perfect for high-energy strumming, but without boxiness in the midrange or a boomy, overpowering low end. And on brighter guitars, it lends a sparkling, crystalline quality to delicate fingerstyle passages and other intricate playing techniques.

If you like the sound of your guitar just fine, the hum-canceling Woody preserves your tone in all its richness and warmth with a slightly hotter and more compressed output than the single-coil version—all the volume and clarity you need to sound your best for solo or ensemble playing in any genre.

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Quarter Pound P-Bass Pickup

P-Basses are beloved for their round low-end thump, but have you ever tried to make one growl? Not so easy. Our best selling bass pickup, the Quarter Pound P-Bass 4-String pushes passive bass sounds into the future with its fat, full and punchy flavor. It starts with quarter-inch pole pieces to expand the pickup’s magnetic field and extend your instrument’s frequency response with an aggressive midrange ideal for heavy rock styles and hard-hitting pick-driven playing.

From there, the hefty bass response enhances fundamental frequencies for massive subharmonic lows—ideal for downtuning—and the clear top end preserves upper harmonic information that’s a must-have for playing distorted modern rock basslines with the proper amount of attitude. It also helps cut through a mix with heavy double-tracked guitars.

And you don’t have to hack up your instrument to have a cutting-edge sound—the Quarter Pound is a drop-in replacement for any American Standard Precision Bass that introduces new tonal possibilities while retaining that classic P-Bass vibe.

While heavy rock is its bread and butter, the Quarter Pound’s full output is versatile enough for nearly any style of music. Try rolling back your instrument’s tone control to dial in classic rock, soul and r&b sounds with plenty of character. Bassists who rock a low B can get down on the Quarter Pound, too, as it also comes in a 5-string configuration.

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Jazz Model Humbucker

An all-time neck position favorite, the Jazz Model humbucker soars above the rest with articulate, glassy highs to highlight the details of your playing—every note of each sweep arpeggio, two-handed tapping run and hybrid picking lick, even under searing high gain, will sing clearly with shimmering treble, tight bass and scooped midrange.

But there’s more to this versatile pickup than only high-gain shredding. In either the bridge or neck position, clean rhythm playing sits perfectly in a full band mix with a bright, clear tone that doesn’t conflict with vocalists, keyboardists, horns or other stringed instruments. In dark sounding guitars, like those built of mahogany and rosewood sometimes are, the Jazz Model can pull a flabby low end into focus and reduce muddy midrange frequencies.

So, it’s no surprise that the Jazz Model is one of our most popular neck pickups to pair with a more mid-forward bridge pickup, like the JB Model, for a crunchy hard rock rhythm sound in the bridge and liquid smooth lead tones in the neck position. And when you blend the two, the tonal possibilities are nearly limitless.

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Custom Staggered Strat

If you need a bold sound that’s all Strat and more, these pickups are staggeringly well-suited for big, ringing chords and single notes that whine, cry, wail, scream and ring clear as a bell—without sacrificing the slinky sound and feel that makes a Strat a Strat.

Seymour Duncan wound the first Custom Staggered Strat pickup for David Gilmour’s iconic Black Stratocaster. Gilmour wanted a bigger, fatter sound in the bridge position to better cut through the mix for an upcoming tour.

On February 7, 1980 the Custom Staggered Strat pickup made its live debut alongside Pink Floyd’s ambitious rock opera, The Wall, in a run of shows that drew over 125,000 progressive rock fans to the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, eager to experience the new album in the flesh.

But you don’t have to be a guitar legend to achieve legendary tone. With their medium-output winding, Custom Staggered Strat pickups strike a balance between classic and contemporary, with enough gain to make your amplifier take notice without strangling the Strattiness from your sound. And if you’re on the run for classic single-coil sounds without 60-cycle hum, the Custom Staggered Strat pickups come in an RWRP option for noise-free playing in positions 2 and 4 on your Stratocaster’s 5-way switch.

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Hot Rails Strat

Hang ten on the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (plus every metal genre that’s come crashing down since)—and crank the volume up to 11—with a Hot Rails pickup in the bridge position of your Stratocaster. With its hi-output ceramic magnets, the Hot Rails slams the hammer with crunchy midrange harmonics that inject your riffs with searing heavy metal thunder. And the dual-blade design guarantees even output across the fretboard—a must have when bending sustained notes in the upper register.

Plugged into an overdriven rig, the overwound coils pummel the front end of your amplifier with big, saturated rock and/or metal tone so every gallop, chug, palm mute, pinch harmonic and breakdown comes through with clarity and punch. But there’s also an epic number of clean sounds to discover. Being high-output humbuckers, the Hot Rails Strat pickups provide a more compressed tone than standard single-coil pickups. This makes them ideal for fingerstyle playing, two-handed tapping, hybrid picking and other techniques where a punchy clean tone with string-to-string balance really matters.

So, when you’re sick and tired of the same old Strat, consider hot rodding it with our Hot Rails Strat pickups.

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Vintage Staggered Strat

Install Vintage Staggered Strat pickups in your reissue, partscaster or any guitar routed for single coils and you’ll swear it’s 1950 again. Or sounds like it, anyway.

Down to the specially wound heavy Formvar mag wire, Vintage Staggered Strat pickups are faithful to the original 1950s specs—so you can dial in an authentic, bell-like, chiming tone equal to the very best vintage Strat pickups. And we build every set just like Fender did in their Golden Age: by hand.

The flatwork, filing and assembly is done by an experienced pickup builder who’s also checking for the right color and thickness of Forbon flatwork and period correct magnet stagger to recreate the springly, sparkling sounds of r&b and the dawn of rock and roll. Single notes sing sweetly with overdrive and chords are lush, with crystalline note-to-note separation.

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Let’s Talk Tone

Remember to sign up for Seymour Duncan’s free Pickup Installation 101 online course for more in-depth information, tips, and tricks.

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Any other product questions, comments or feedback? Let us know!