Seymour Duncan Factory Visit

Santa Barbara, California


I was lucky enough to visit the guys at Seymour Duncan's headquarters in Santa Barbara on the way up the coast between Los Angeles and San Fransisco - something I've always thought would be great to do when I had the chance, since meeting Seymour and his right hand man, Evan Skopp, at a presentation all the way across the seas in my holy homeland of Fitzroy, Melbourne, circa 2007.

I'd seen video tours of the factory online, and followed on with interest as the intricate processes of coil winding, wax dipping, and installation were detailed, but it was extra awesome to get a full on-the-floor tour from Scott, who took pleasure in pointing out all the juicy details to me and my cohort, Heather, and also to meet Seymour once again in person. He's really a totally swell guy!

Scott in the testing room:


The other great joy was having one of my old Hofner guitar pickups rewound - brought back from the dead, so to speak, by "MJ" - Seymour's partner in the Custom Shop. MJ is reputed to be one of the best pickup technicians in the world(!) and I was chuffed that she had my beloved old pickup totally re-jigged and ready for me to take with me at the end of my tour!

Here's MJ with my Hofner pickup, ready to roll once again!


Here is my post on the interesting old homemade guitar that this Hofner pickup comes from. Looking forward to trying it out with the custom rewind when I get back home.

Thanks MJ, Scott, Seymour and co!



More factory tour photo's from the Duncan website

My custom homemade guitars

"Three-Piece Custom"

This is one of my first experiments, which began when I was about 16 and my friend, Richard Sleep, burn his old "Ranger" Strat, in an ode to his hero Jimi Hendrix, and even proceeded to cut it up with an axe! I used the lower bout, with the control cavity routing, and some other parts, to start piecing together my own custom. Over the course of many years, it got a nice new neck (and final assembly) from Stewart Male, in Lilydale.
He helped come up with the "three-piece" name, and suggested it's like a divided-up pizza with many different flavours all on the one base!


Really, it's like a Strat, with the final three-way pickup selection being:
Neck: Duncan P90, Middle: misc RW/RP, Bridge: Duncan "Broadcaster" Lead.



"Jazzboard/Cheeseboard"

I started this guitar right around the same time as the Three-Piece Custom, above, but I started with a solid piece of maple, which my dad helped me with, from the local wood mill. It was initially twice as think, with chunkier horns and body shape, but I trimmed it back over time to allow better access to the upper frets, and decrease the weight.


Pickups I ended up with here are a vintage "Wide-Range" Seth Lover Tele humbucker from the 70's, which gives a nice brash and mid range tone, and a "Velvet Hammer" split true single coil humbucker at neck, which gives awesome rich, clean tones in parallel or series settings.