The Pickup Seymour Wound For Van halen

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nitro

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Well it looks like the pickup that Seymour Duncan wound for Van halen(early days) was the Duncan JB.Type in(search) "Ride the Seymour Duncan Special" and read the article.So all those other so called Van halen pickups like the 78,custom custom,evenly voiced harmonics,custom are basicly just money makers or what ever you want to call them.
 
Yeah well I have used the JB for most of my life and the tones on VH1 do not sound like them at all. Way more PAF'ish.
 
Somewhere the old original Duncan adds are posted. The Van Halen pickup disappeared when Ed asked him to quit using his name and replaced in that spot with the custom. The JB was an additional offering in both adds. Custom is kinda similar spec wise to the SD and one of the mighty mites he had been using.
What was actually in that guitar at any given time ???
Personally think he went thru pickups left and right in his guitars.
Seymour probably wound all kinds of pickups for him.
 
H Golf, I know the article/advertisement your talking about it was in guitar player magazine 1979,which said the "Duncan Custom-Van halen sound" but that was in 1979.Edward recorded Van halen 1 in 1977 and released in 1978.The first interview with Guitar Player Magazine with Edward was in November of 1978 with Roy Clark on the cover Edward was talking about rewinding pickups and a guy in Santa Barbara which was Seymour Duncan that was doing the rewinds for him(Edward).Edwards pickups were rewind PAFs which had alnico magnets not ceramic magnets like the Duncan Custom has.Jeff Beck was also having rewinds done by Seymour which were old Gibson PAFs.The Duncan JB in a alnico magnet pickup.
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Like I said ???. It's all speculation at this point. I'm sure he's had JB's, custom's, custom customs, hot pat winds and all kinds of things in there.
Seems like more evidence it may be a custom rather than a JB considering the add, similarity to other pups he was using etc...
Guess I'll go peek at that article now.
 
If you wanna go down the EVH rabbit hole, head over to the Metro amp forums.


Solid speculation on VH I tones are PAF and A8 in the chopped up Ibanez.


Ultimately in the fingers and what works for you.
 
Ultimately in the fingers and what works for you.[/quote]
This... :thumbsup:
 
I'm sure Ed did like the JB and probably the Custom as well, but when he had Seymour rewind his paf, I think it was more to the Custom Shop '78 specs, for me personally the JB is the least VH sounding of everything mentioned so far..Btw those Mighty Mite Distortion pickups sound very similar to the Duncan Custom
 
Al, do you happen to remember what pickup you had in that silver sparkle Suhr you used for the SL68 demo?

someone suggested to me it may have been a duncan '59?
 
Noooo I don't need to go to metro amp for any van halen knowledge.
 
journeyman73":5859m1se said:
Al, do you happen to remember what pickup you had in that silver sparkle Suhr you used for the SL68 demo?

someone suggested to me it may have been a duncan '59?
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At that time they were a set of Dimarzio 36th Anniv Series Paf's, I thought they sounded a little thin and lacked bass on that particular guitar, they've been replaced with a Dimarzio Tone Zone in the bridge and a old Ibanez Super 70 in the neck, sounds much better now!
 
So some are suggesting the Dimarzio Super Distortion or the Duncan Custom
 
Had to go read some threads, but appears people think VH1 was ceramic Mighty Mite and then the A8 Super 70?

Then VH II up to the Peavey guitars are A2 magnet PAF type.


So guess the Custom could work?
 
nitro":3r8q2a7i said:
H Golf, I know the article/advertisement your talking about it was in guitar player magazine 1979,which said the "Duncan Custom-Van halen sound" but that was in 1979.Edward recorded Van halen 1 in 1977 and released in 1978.The first interview with Guitar Player Magazine with Edward was in November of 1978 with Roy Clark on the cover Edward was talking about rewinding pickups and a guy in Santa Barbara which was Seymour Duncan that was doing the rewinds for him(Edward).Edwards pickups were rewind PAFs which had alnico magnets not ceramic magnets like the Duncan Custom has.Jeff Beck was also having rewinds done by Seymour which were old Gibson PAFs.The Duncan JB in a alnico magnet pickup.
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http://www.independent.com/news/2011/ju ... n-special/

The year means nothing.

Seymour didn't start selling his own brand of pickups until the late 1970s and before then it was rewinds and repairs and working for Mighty Mite and others.

Seymour might not remember properly and/or he probably doesn't want to bring up that the Custom was the EVH pickup due to the legal tussle he went through with EVH.

The first Duncan EVH pickup was the CUSTOM.

YES THE CUSTOM.

YES IT REALLY WAS THE CUSTOM.

CUSTOM, CUSTOM, CUSTOM, CUSTOM, CUSTOM, CUSTOM, CUSTOM :rawk:

 

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The EVH78 has no connection to what Seymour was doing in the late 1970s.

The EVH pickup in the late 1970s was the Custom.

The EVH78 is who knows what and suddenly appeared in the 1990s or whatever and maybe Seymour thought he might be able to sell a few of them to all of the EVH PAF believers out there.
 
Another thing is that EVH seems to have changed the pickup when the Floyd went onto the Franky because of the Floyds impact on the tone, so we get the 14k A2 pickup with the A2 compensating somewhat for the Floyd's effect.
 
At the same time that Seymour was offering the ceramic Custom EVH pickup, EVH had a ceramic Mighty Mite (Super Distortion clone) in his Destroyer and that is used on VHII, go figure.

VH1 and VH2 were recorded in different studios at Sunset and VH1 had the reverb room.

The Warner Brothers demos were recorded by Ted and Donn in a basic way around mid 1977 and they sound different again.

Different studios and setups = different outcomes.

Variacing down a plexi mainly results in less wattage and volume and not that much else in terms of overdriving an amp.

The plexi still needs a certain signal voltage level to overdrive it.

EVH could go from 100 watts down to 50 watts or 30 watts just by using the variac on a plexi and he could keep all of the circuit pots at 10 (resulting in max circuit signal overdrive) no matter what the variac voltage was set for and he went down as far as 60 volts for Gazzari's (small club) and higher variac voltages at larger venues and seemed to like around 90 volts for recording.

No master volume or cascades needed, and the level of overdrive would depend on the type of pickup to a large degree.

The Echoplex is designed for unity gain, or no gain at all, so the Echoplex doesn't help much for overdriving amps but it's essential for EVH's early sound as it's all over those early songs.

The Phase and Flanger, well the Phase changes the tone a bit and makes it a bit swirly and shifting and he used it for solos but it doesn't do much for gain either and the Flanger doesn't do much for gain either.
 
Rocksoff":ke89tk6c said:
The EVH78 has no connection to what Seymour was doing in the late 1970s.

The EVH pickup in the late 1970s was the Custom.

The EVH78 is who knows what and suddenly appeared in the 1990s or whatever and maybe Seymour thought he might be able to sell a few of them to all of the EVH PAF believers out there.
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Actually the "duncan EVH 78" never showed up until january 1st ,2001 !!!
making it even less credible to be "THE PICKUP" ;)
http://www.legendarytones.com/edward-van-halen-pickup/
I can believe the custom was used on the early stuff.
 
Get your self a marshall plexi replica,an echoplex and vintage greenbacks and compare those pickups to the old album and bootleg playing through so studio monitors..to my ears the duncan 78 is clearly the pickup he was using..
 
Well, why isn't the EVH 78 the "EVH pickup" in the Seymour Duncan Ad from 1979.

Also, it looks like EVH probably wasn't using a Marshall for the VH1 recordings because of a reason that's not that obvious.

Ted Templeman knows what the amp was on VH1 btw.
 
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