Early Seymour Duncan pickups

[Jim Shine]

I have been tinkering with pickups for almost 20 years now. Mostly repairs and mostly single coils. Sometimes pickups would come in and something about them stood out and made me want to keep them. I always enjoy getting early Duncans because you can see an evolution in the way the pickups were made as production ramped up.

Here is a set of Strat pickups that I bought from the original owner, whom bought them in 1978. Look at all the handwork that went into these pickups, gone in a few years. Look at the shape of the coil! They are all different.







I have more older Duncans and some other pickups I will share if you guys like this sort of thing. I can provide readings and such as well.

[frankfalbo]

...you can see an evolution in the way the pickups were made as production ramped up...Look at all the handwork that went into these pickups, gone in a few years.

Can you give specific examples? Aside from a more uniform coil shape on the iPhone those pics look like any SSL-1 I see on any given day. Hand ground magnets, filed forbon, lacquered bobbin, cloth pushback wire. The sticker is different.

[Jim Shine]

The modern SSl-1's have no where near as much filing on the magnets or fiber. I may have some loose, but definitely have some 80's and recent ones in guitars..no where near as much handwork put into them.

[fieldwrangler]

I'll confess that my main benchmark pickup is an early Duncan "'59 B" bridgebucker. I can stick it in pretty much any guitar and it just sounds great and is really fun to play music with.

If one of my designs doesn't meet or exceed that pickup (in terms of high/low/optimum output/stringpull, hum/buzz/squeal, string balance and that factor that has you playing for 40 minutes when you were just gonna play for 5) it doesn't get out of the shop.