Duncan interview videos at the factory....

[David Schwab]

They were certainly ubiquitous. Everywhere you looked people had them in their P basses.

I even had one in my '73 Ric 4001! Right in between the other two pickups. Originally I had a real Fender pickup in that.

I had a '74 P bass and had two sets in that... one by the bridge like a Jazz bass.

(who are these stooges? )

[Sam Lee Guy]

Aahh! Best bits of Osmonds, Led Zep, Bay City Rollers, Earth Wind & Fire, all mix together.

[greenfingers]

Holy Jackie Moon! ........."let's get tropical", please tell me you all had rollerskates on when that pic was taken. that is so cool you've got that Geddy Lee thang going on back then.

[David Schwab]

Hey that was 1977! People dressed funny back then.

My son always thinks my hair is long in the photo, but it was a typical Bowie shag...

[greenfingers]

Ronnie Wood still has that shag going on his head, but the passage of time does not apply for the rolingstones does it.

[David Schwab]

Aahh! Best bits of Osmonds, Led Zep, Bay City Rollers, Earth Wind & Fire, all mix together.

Ha ha ha! Yeah, we didn't know what we wanted to be...

It was actually a prog rock band that also did like 25 Led Zep songs... guess who the big Zep fan was? We did a lot of Yes and Gentle Giant and Genesis and stuff. The drummer (the guy with the afro) was the least funky drummer in the whole world! So no EW&F for us.

It was a real popular band in the NJ/NYC club scene. We played like 5 nights a week. Finally when the 80's rolled around me and the second drummer lef to form a new wave band called the Jetsonz. We used to open for a lot of big 80's acts like Billy Idol. We did a lot of surf/punk stuff. Then we changed our name to Expresso Tango and became more of a synth goth band.

The scary part is Dreamer is still around, but it's just the second singer.

The band was originally called Dethslaker, and the original singer was named of Barry White who could do the best Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey. Later he moved to Boston and became Barrence Whitfield and the Savages, which was a rockabilly/roots band

Charlie the keyboard player went on to be on the Uncle Floyd TV show.

Can you spot me in the second photo?

OK I'm sure everyone here has some funny band picts?

[David Schwab]

Ronnie Wood still has that shag going on his head, but the passage of time does not apply for the rolingstones does it.

No, but Wood looks a hell of a lot better and Keith! Damn, he's scary!

You have to know when to change your look! I'll never be that skinny again!

Jeff Beck still looks good with his same hair style though.

[Possum]

....

Jeez you guys are young 'uns. Here is the only band I was ever in, every other attempt to be in a band in my life had a curse on it and none of them ever went public. This was our first appearance at a band contest in a shopping mart parking lot, scared to freaking death. The 95lb geek on the right is me, I got the guitar, he got the girls :-) The guitar is the highly sought after Pleasant guitar made in Japan as is world reknown for its ability to increase your grip strength and prepare you for becoming an archer with its highly crafted bowed neck and 12 gauge strings. Year 1969 19 years old :-)

[David Schwab]

That's a great picture Dave! I thought it was a Jazzmaster until I saw the big P on the head.

I wish I still had my first bass... it was a Teisco/Kawai Concert, circa 1968.
Of course I didn't know what it was until recently. I remember that the frets were really small and worn, so I pulled them out and played it fretless. That was probably 1970.

I just remembered that in the Dreamer flyer above, we played at Catholic girls school, College of St. Elizabeth. What I remember was it was the day we all heard that Keith Moon died. Sept 7th 1978. We were loading our gear in when we heard the news on the radio. It was a somber show. I can't say we were big Who fans, but who didn't like Keith Moon? He was your archetypal crazy rock star! Great drummer too.

My first bass looked just like this guitar! Then I had some kind of Gibson EB-0 copy, and then an orange burst Norma or Eko violin bass. Then I got my first good bass, a Mapleglo 1974 Rick 4001, which I still have. I got a second '74 Ric a few years after that, which I also still have.

I was collecting guitars for a while, but all I have left is a '59 Jazzmaster in dire need of restoration, a '72 Mustang, and a '60's Mosrite bass also in poor shape. I sold my other mint Mosrite, a Vox Phantom XII, and my EB-2D. I also had a nice '81 Les Paul Standard that suffered a fall and got a cracked neck. I fixed it but it was never the same, so I traded it for am Oberheim Matrix 6 synth, and some money.

That Les Paul in the band pictures above was a '57 Gold Top that someone refinished to this awful brown color, and replaced the P-90's with early patent label pickups. My guitarist had me refinish the guitar to natural, and he replaced the pickups with DiMarzio PAF's. I had the original pickups for many years.. at the time they were just old pickups, but now I know they were likely PAFs with patent decals. Oh well...

[Possum]

....

Yeah that was a weird guitar, never seen one since, the pickups were pretty awful. My next guitar was a Vox Bulldog, pretty nice Italian made axe that I stole from a music store in Tucson. I think my guardian angel must have been watching over me that day, I would have ended up in jail at age 19, the band helped me rip it off, I needed a good guitar, always felt scared to play it in public. Never did that again! Maybe thats where the curse came from. Ironically my next guitar was a pre CBS strat with a baseball neck, my tiny hands couldn't handle it and I got kicked out of the band because I lost my fire trying to manhandle that thing wish I still had that one!

[madialex]

Yeah that was a weird guitar, never seen one since, the pickups were pretty awful. My next guitar was a Vox Bulldog, pretty nice Italian made axe that I stole from a music store in Tucson. I think my guardian angel must have been watching over me that day, I would have ended up in jail at age 19, the band helped me rip it off, I needed a good guitar, always felt scared to play it in public. Never did that again! Maybe thats where the curse came from. Ironically my next guitar was a pre CBS strat with a baseball neck, my tiny hands couldn't handle it and I got kicked out of the band because I lost my fire trying to manhandle that thing wish I still had that one!

But hey, at least it had a whammy bar....

[greenfingers]

My next guitar was a Vox Bulldog, pretty nice Italian made axe that I stole from a music store in Tucson.

I have alerted the Tucson state police of your whereabouts, ........If you can't do the time, don't do the crime

Do you remember what year that strat was? if you only knew then what you know now about the value of 50's and 60's guitars. I bet you think about the one that got away from time to time. Same goes for David's 57 goldtop.

[Rosewood]

Jeez you guys are young 'uns. Here is the only band I was ever in, every other attempt to be in a band in my life had a curse on it and none of them ever went public. This was our first appearance at a band contest in a shopping mart parking lot, scared to freaking death. The 95lb geek on the right is me, I got the guitar, he got the girls :-) The guitar is the highly sought after Pleasant guitar made in Japan as is world reknown for its ability to increase your grip strength and prepare you for becoming an archer with its highly crafted bowed neck and 12 gauge strings. Year 1969 19 years old :-)

Damn Dave, I thought everyone my age was dead.

[Ghandi]

@possum

so if you've got a SD seth lover humbucker, have you tried to replace all the steel parts with your parts???

that would get you two leesona coils with the right steel parts...

but what?s keeping me wondering is,
if the alnico 2 pro, pearly gates, seth lover and antiquity?s are all wound on the leesona they all should share the same winding pattern only a few more turns less or more, right?
All with 43pe wire and all got an alnico2 mag (the ones in the antiquitys a bit degaussed),
so does seymour also use different steel parts or why doesn?t a PG with a degaussed mag sound like an antiquity, OR DOES IT?!

[David Schwab]

but what?s keeping me wondering is,
if the alnico 2 pro, pearly gates, seth lover and antiquity?s are all wound on the leesona they all should share the same winding pattern only a few more turns less or more, right?
All with 43pe wire and all got an alnico2 mag (the ones in the antiquitys a bit degaussed), so does seymour also use different steel parts or why doesn?t a PG with a degaussed mag sound like an antiquity, OR DOES IT?!

That would be 42PE...

If you look at the specs, you can see that all his PAF stype pickups are different, as far as DC resistance:

Lover: 7.2K/8.1K A2
PG: 7.3K/8.35K A2
59: 7.43K/8.13K A5
Alnico II Pro: 7.6k/7.85K
Antiquity: 7.8K/8.52K

So a PG and an Antiquity aren't the same at all.

That's probably all you need to get different enough tones.