Seymour Duncan Pickup’s Scott Miller at Jim’s Music

This was a great afternoon of hanging out at Jim’s Music Center in Tustin to talk about guitars, tone and in particular, how to get the tone you want with an upgrade to Seymour Duncan Pickups.

They came rapid-fire, one guitar after the other, and SD guitar tech and re-wire wizard Scott Miller was up for the challenge. One customer even brought in a completely disassembled Fender Telecaster. He purchased his used Mexican Tele with the idea of doing a rebuild and had the good fortune of hearing about the Seymour Duncan “you buy it today and we install it free” event at Jim’s Music. After conferring with Scott, and Andy of Jim’s, pickups, saddle, strings and other components were pulled together and smoothly installed into the empty guitar body. We were all blown away by how great and twangy the Tele sounded with the SD Hot Rails. It was a vast improvement over the stock ceramics.

Scott was calling it quits for the day when Erik arrived with his vintage Leo Fender designed sea foam green G&L S-500. He wanted to upgrade the bridge pickup with something with more output to compete with the middle and neck pickups. After a brief tone talk a pickup was chosen, installed, tested and Erik was off for his gig in Fullerton with the Trip band.

If you ever get the chance—be sure to go to one of these events. Hangin’ with a pro installer like Scott at a great guitar store like Jim’s and talking tone and guitars with fellow musicians was a gas. I learned a lot about Duncan’s wide range of “boutique-like” pickups that are available on the shelf at your local music store at a non-boutique price. And SD has a great return policy — “If for any reason you’re not satisfied with the pickup’s sound or construction, return it and your receipt to your dealer, or direct to the factory within 21 days for exchange with another pickups of equal or lesser value.”

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