Seymour's new offerings 2008

[Possum]

pretty cool....

I think this is well demonstrated and is a cool concept, good for Seymour. Wonder how well it will sell, it is really for the four conductor cable crowd and guys who like alot of switches. Which means alot of guitars will have to go to the luthiers to be wired for these if they're not already set up that way, that could be a drawback to sales. Still a cool idea....

[Spence]

Good catch, Dave.

I just found Duncan's press release on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZhJXcSVnfs&feature=user

Preceded by a bit of chat, the P Rail demo starts at 0:3:45s.

My, but that fellow likes his strings set low and clanky.

Agreeable quack tone using rails only, though.

-drh

I liked it. It's a good design and people will buy them in their thousands.
I often take a strat, SG Special and Les Paul standard to gigs. I'd just rather take a Les Paul. This design is great for the gigging muso who needs three types of tone.

[David Schwab]

His tone was so bright it all sounded the same! Still a cool idea though.

[SkinnyWire]

His tone was so bright it all sounded the same! Still a cool idea though.

That's what I thought. Bright/harsh toned - just a bit louder as he progressed through the variations. A great/innovative idea that hopefully sounds better than that live. Maybe with a different rig?

[Possum]

...

He's just using one of the silverface fender amps, looks like into a cab. I didn't like his playing much, I think they are trying to cater to the SRV crowd, its just the amp choice is all....

[frankfalbo]

Thank you for all of the kind words so far. The rig is one of those little half-rack Hughes & Kettner preamp dealies from the '80's, straight into a power amp, 2x12, and condenser mic. There's nothing else going on. (no funny business) It's definitely a cutting tone. If you have a "tone" or treble knob on the computer speakers it could help. In hindsight, I could have warmed it up a little. But for reference you can skip back to the beginning when I'm playing the other guitars. It's not meant to be a demo for the "audiophile" unfortunately. The vocal mic picks up the room, and I didn't want to play any tricks where I process the guitar tone or record it like I would if I were making a track. It's just straight in from the conenser and bleed from the vocal mic.

I wanted a transparent sound, but I wanted some grit at the same time to show how the output levels match up with the "real deal" HB's, P90's, and singles. It's really like taking your LP off, then plugging in your Junior, then plugging in single coils, etc. in both tone and output levels. If I went straight-up clean, it would have been a little ambiguous because each sound would have gotten progressively louder without. But most guitarists know the relationship between output and overdrive, so a slight bit of Buddy Guy style "juice" on the Single coil sound helps to show off the variation to the P90 and HB's.

Wiring is a piece of cake. It's standard 4-conductor and the three options in the video can be achieved with one DPDT on/off/on switch, or two push/pulls. 1 p/p gets you two of the three sounds, and two toggles can get you all four sounds from both pickups.

Anyway I'm in post-NAMM mania here and I don't know how much I'll be able to check back here to this post, but I wanted to clear a few of those things up. Sorry for the long post!

[kevinT]

Frank,

When do you think this pickup will hit stores? Also what is the DCR for this pickup?

It's interesting to hear different folks' opinions about tone. I watched the video again and there is a noticeable emphasis on the high end in each example....However, I thought it sounded pretty good for the type of pickup that it is. There is some good SRV tone as dave mentioned.

Obviously it's going to sound different for each person (e.g., guitar, amp setup). I would like to have heard the examples through the Marshall.

[Scott S.]

Check out the cool 4 coils at a time winder at 1:03, and the other production shot

[salvarsan]

Frank,

Thanks for the great demo and the production details.

Any idea about the P Rail pricetag?

I'm guessing that it will be more expensive than your
usual pair of 'buckers but less expensive than the three
pickup sets it is intended to replace.

-drh

[soundmasterg]

I wonder when you hear some of these new pickups and they sound bright and clanky as one person put it, I wonder if the designer(s), in this case Seymour, are getting hearing loss due to age and compensating by making bright pickups?

greg

[Mark Hammer]

I don't think you can tell anything definitive from a soundclip. I have no idea how the guy set the amp, or tweaked the clip afterwards. I'm certainly not suggesting the clip misrepresents the concept. There ARE clear (and to my mind, pleasing) tonal differences achieved from the various combinations. Rather, how much of whatever treble you hear in a Youtube clip is coming from the sorce, from the production, or from the speakers or headphones you are listening through, is anybody's guess. It's like that with any gear.

I'm reminded of those ads you used to see on TV for a different brand of colour TV thanyou owned. How exactly could you tell the true difference in picture quality?

[SteikBacon]

The differences in output is clear in the clip. And they do seem to be bright. But to know how they are/perform we just have to try them. I like the possibilities it gives. But I would like more info about the SH-15.

[Possum]

...........

You have to consider there are two coils in there so that means they probably didn't use 42 gauge wire and if they did they would have had to wind the main coil on the lean side, so its kind of a compromise, you're really not getting a vintage type P90 I bet. Its kinda like the stacked coil strat pickups, they don't really sound like a real strat pickup because they have to use 44 gauge to get enough turns packed into two coils. So that thing probably is bright and clanky, you'd just have to deal with it on your amp end....

[Possum]

Frank Is Sam Lee Guy....

Need I say more???

[Steve A.]

What I find interesting about it is that it would have never been developed if there hadn't been the resurgence of interest in the P-90. They were all but ignored in favour of humbuckers and slender-profile SCs for the longest time in many circles, and started to make a comeback in the last decade. I guess at some point, folks were going to start thinking about ways to make them quieter or sex them up in some way. I gather this unit is intended to fit in an HB-sized cutout?

Mark:

At least in the blues community you do see a lot of P-90's these days. You might consider them to be half-way between a Fender single coil pickup and a Gibson humbucker.

The SD stacked P-90 gives you maybe 80% of the sound of a real P-90, but it is physically much deeper which will require routing in most solid body guitars and I really don't recommend it for the neck position because it can weaken the neck joint if you aren't careful.

So it's good that Seymour is working on a different design for a humcancelling P-90 pickup (although I guess it is a replacement for a full-sized humbucker not a P-90).

Steve Ahola

P.S. I'm glad to see people saying good things about Mr. Duncan here. He makes a lot of nice pickups and it's not *his* fault that most people like the crappier ones... LOL

(I think it is the popular selling pickups that allow him to develop and market the ones that we like.)