by Julia Crowe
My first paying gigs were in the Los Angeles area, where I migrated in the spring of 1962. I had a job at a gas station and would travel to coffeehouses to audition on open mic nights. I was pumping gas one day, and a convertible Porsche drove up with a Martin D-45 in the back seat. The guy driving the guitar wore a big cowboy hat and told me to fill it up while he walked into the garage. When he came out, he found me ogling the guitar, and he asked if I played. I told him I did and he asked me to play a song. So I did. He said, “I can get you a gig.” And he did, at a club called the Satire Club in South Gate, Los Angeles. It was my first paying gig. It turned out this man was Hoyt Axton, whom I eventually came to know very well. It was 1962, and the beginning of my career.
Seymour Duncan
Seymour Duncan is a legend among guitarists for his life’s work in engineering critical elements of guitar tone and nuances within electric guitar pickups. He has manufactured custom pickups for artists like Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Eddie Van Halen and James Burton, to name a few.
My first guitar was a Sears Silvertone Jupiter 1423L model. I was twelve years old when I spotted this guitar among the pages of a Sears catalog that came in the mail. When the Christmas catalog arrived, I had started making endless drawings and doodles of this one guitar that looked like a Les Paul, though it was a Sears Silvertone. On Christmas Day, I saw a giant box standing in the corner and asked if I could open it. My family told me I had to wait and first open gifts sent by my uncles and aunts, which had been neckties and socks and all that. Finally, I was able to open up that one big box. I was in shock. My family had bought me an accordion.
I was distressed because I had been expecting a guitar. A neighbor who knew my mom had observed that I liked to watch The Lawrence Welk Show. I used to watch this weekly program for Neil LeVang and Buddy Merrill, the two guitar players on the show. My neighbor told my mother that since I was watching so much of The Lawrence Welk Show, I must really like the accordion, which is what Lawrence Welk played.
My uncle, Bid Furness, had a little acoustic guitar, which he let me strum on from time to time. The guitar was in his attic, so every time my family would visit him, he would bring it down and let me look at it. My dad’s brother, who had an old Martin and a Dobro and played country music, he showed me my first D chord. He showed me how to alternate between the D and the A string by hitting the D note and the chord and then the A string and hitting the chord. That was actually my first experience with holding a guitar and figuring out how to place my fingers and gain calluses. The following Christmas, when I was thirteen years old, I finally received the Sears Silvertone. And I played it every day. They got me the little Silvertone model 1482 amplifier, too.
When I was thirteen, I made my own lap steel guitar out of an old dresser drawer, which was a nice piece of mahogany that I had pulled apart. The front piece was about an inch thick and this became the top part of my fingerboard. I mounted tuning keys to it and made an apparatus for the tailpiece. It had six strings and I tuned it to an E chord. I had recovered the tuning keys from an old, broken guitar that I found in the trash. I used to ride my bike around and pick up old radios and try to repair them when I was a little kid. I used to love that. Every Saturday, I’d get up at six a.m. and zip around the neighborhood before the trash men arrived. That is how I came across this broken guitar with the neck separated from the body and the body had been smashed. But I managed to salvage the keys. I made this lap steel guitar because I loved the group Santo & Johnny, who had made records called “Sleep Walk” and “Tear Drop.” I remember around Christmas of 1963, they had a single called “Twistin’ Bells.” All of it was played on slide guitar and I wanted to play it. I no longer have this slide guitar. My dad’s family might still have it back east, but I am not certain because that was a long time ago.
When I grew up, my uncle gave me two records. One was Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West. It was a little EP called Two Guitars Country Style and then the other record was by Chet Atkins. I used my allowance to buy a tape recorder so I could record the Neil LeVang and Buddy Merrill from The Lawrence Welk Show. I listened to The Ventures and Duane Eddy. Those two guys were probably the most influential on me because Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West were too far beyond what I could even play at that time. But The Ventures were playing songs with melodies in them and Duane Eddy was, too. The Ventures did “Walk, Don’t Run” and they were playing songs that you could play a melody along to. I always like music that has a strong melody and it is one of the reasons why I enjoy instrumentals so much.
I did not get a whole lot of support from home about playing the guitar because I had another uncle who was a drummer and who was always getting himself into trouble for cheating on his wife and drinking a lot. Back in the ’50s, many jazz musicians were involved heavily with drinking, women and drugs. Being part of the nightclub culture, I think musicians can develop a bad reputation. So there I was, this happy little kid, announcing that I wanted to become a guitar player and my relatives went, “Aaaaah, boy. Not again.” They were worried. My dad said to me, “Seymour, if you ever get into trouble with drugs or wild women and drinking, I’m going to take your guitar away from you.”
To me, the guitar was the most important thing that I had. I was an only child so the guitar was my role model. My dad was very understanding about how much I liked my guitar. They eventually came to see I was this straight kid who really just loved the guitar and made every effort to learn everything about it. The best thing for me was a report that I had to write for school when I was sixteen. Many of my classmates chose to write about their father’s work, if he happened to be a policeman or else they wrote if they wanted to be a fireman or a farmer. I wrote about my guitar. I did an entire report on the guitar with drawings diagramming the function of each part. I wrote instructions on how the guitar was tuned and how to play a guitar chord. I also showed the teacher how to play a guitar chord. That was the first time in my life that I ever received an “A.”
I used to write letters to the Fender guitar company all the time, and my family knew that I was getting letters back from Fender, and they said, “This little guy loves his guitar! He’s getting these letters back from guitar companies answering his questions.” I was very involved in wanting to learn more about the history of the instrument, so I would write Fender and ask them when the first Jazzmaster was made, the first Jaguar, the first Stratocaster — and they would send me back a complete list of all the years those guitars had first been made. I still have these letters. They were written to me by people like Bill Carson, who was one of the first who helped to design the Stratocaster for Leo Fender. For me, having all that history helped me in the future when I started writing guitar articles for Vintage Guitar magazine. My family came to realize and accept that I was really serious about the instrument, not only how to play it or performing, but the history of it, how it was made, what kind of wood was used and what pickups.
What I love about the guitar is how you can have your own personality when you play. Every guitar player has created their own style, and you learn to appreciate what other players are doing with their techniques, such as how they pick and how they strum and how they play their chords and what kind of strings they use. I would make note of amp settings and how the pickups were adjusted on their guitar. I always wanted to learn how to get different sounds out of the guitar.
Seymour Duncan, age seventeen. (Courtesy Seymour Duncan)
I was so fortunate to have worked with Jimi Hendrix, Duane Eddy, and The Ventures, making pickups for them. All these artists that I grew up admiring, I wound up working for, which is just so incredible to me. I have listened to the work I have done with bands — I worked for Michael Sembello, who had a song called “Maniac,” which was used in the film Flashdance and became song of the year. I worked on the Thriller album by Michael Jackson with a guy named David Williams, who was the guitar player who performed all the rhythms. I had made these new stack pickups and he was one of the first to
use them. He played on “Beat It” and “Billie Jean,” which is still one of the bestselling records of all time. I learned from playing guitar enough to know what other guitarists were describing of the sound they envisioned and hoped to conceive from their own guitars. I understand the guitar and I know how to play it and get different sounds from it. Having this ability allowed me to create different pickups for people. It’s like its own language.
There are many people today who make their own pickups. They buy the parts in kits and put them together like constructing a model airplane, but they’re not really manufacturing every component. We make every part. We create our own injection molds. We do our own stamping. We do our own designing of the pieces we use. We have thousands of pieces of slotwork that we use to make different pickups with and we designed them. And that is the difference between manufacturing and being a boutique hobbyist. I have wound so many pickups. We are making something like 30,000 pickups a year at the factory. Maricela Juarez and I in the customs shop are the ones doing all the custom fabrication. We do a lot of custom work for artists like The Eagles and Gloria Estefan and Chuck Berry and so many others.
I love playing guitar because of all the people I meet and the camaraderie we develop. The neatest thing for me about making guitar pickups is the connection I have with other guitar companies. Being able to make something for Fender or Gibson — I never thought I would be doing something that far out when I was a thirteen-year-old. So for me, I’ve been very honored and I’ve helped to write books for Fender and Gibson about all these artists.
It can be challenging at times with manufacturing because you want to be able to use the right material but sometimes we have issues with this because of all the regulations that exist. If we made something, say, in Mexico or Arizona, it would be okay. But when you’re manufacturing in California, you are not allowed to use certain lacquers or paints because of certain restrictions. You want to make a neat product and lacquers are one of the best products for a guitar because they allow the wood to breathe. But so many polyester finishes are being used today, which makes it hard for the guitar to have a good sound because this is almost like having a plastic coating on top of the wood. Fender has a fantastic facility with a new center for people to visit. I respect what they are doing and feel proud that we make pickups for them, too.
When I heard a guitar sound, like “Walk, Don’t Run” by The Ventures, for example, I was always trying to figure out what guitar they were playing. I would see photos of Bob Bogle, who was playing with The Ventures at the time, holding a Fender Jazzmaster so I figured that sound he was getting in that song came from a Fender Jazzmaster. I would put that idea together. Then I would watch Don Wilson from The Ventures, and he was always playing a Strat for the rhythm parts. So whenever I heard a rhythm guitar from The Ventures, I knew that was the sound of a Stratocaster. When I heard Duane Eddy play, I would recognize the sound of a Gretsch guitar with Gretsch pickups or HiLo’Tron pickups or DeArmond pickups, so I would put that together. When I heard James Burton playing together with Ricky Nelson, I knew that twang from James Burton’s guitar was a Telecaster. I learned early on, when I heard something, what kind of guitar it was, at first. If I heard a sound, I would write a letter to a record company and try to find out what kind of guitar the artist was using. Usually, about fifty percent of the time, the record company would respond with an answer, which was so neat. I put all this information together so that when a guy would come to me and say, “I want to sound like James Burton or Ricky Nelson,” I would say, “Okay, well then you need to play a Telecaster and this is the kind of pickup you would want for it.”
When I was sixteen, I was playing a Saturday afternoon jam session at a club and at one point, I allowed someone to borrow my guitar. Somehow, they managed to get the high E string hooked under the bridge of the pickup, which really messed up the pickup so I had to rewind it. I had to figure out what to do, so I took the pickup with me to school. I put my pickup under the microscope in biology class so I could examine the damaged part. I could see that the wire inside the pickup had broken when the guitar string got snagged under the edge of the pickup. I proceeded to remove the wire turn by turn in order to arrive at the point of the breakage. I gave the wire to my uncle, who told me that it was forty-two-gauge plain enamel, which was the kind of wire that was used back then for Fender pickups. I got a spool of this wire and made my first winding machine when I was sixteen years old and subsequently got into learning how to make pickups.
My first official performance was at a cousin’s wedding. I was fourteen years old and had a three-piece band called The Adventures. It was our clever homage to The Ventures and gave the message that we were curious and exploring new musical ideas. We maybe knew five songs — “Bulldog,” by a band called The Fireballs; “The McCoy,” by The Ventures; “Quite a Party,” also by The Fireballs and one instrumental that I made up in the key of E that might have been called “Adventure.” We played these songs over and over again for two hours and I made $3, which was a lot of money back then. I could buy ten sets of guitar strings with that.
When I turned sixteen, I bought my first Fender Stratocaster. I ordered it from a music store in Woodbury, New Jersey, and the Stratocaster at the time was a tremolo with a sunburst that cost $126. I had helped a neighbor clean out his garage and he gave me a coin, saying, “Son, here’s a coin for you that you will really like to have some day.” It was a 1793 half-cent, issued during the first year of the U.S. Mint. My uncle, who heard that I had this, offered me $100 for it. $100 for a coin had seemed like so much money to me. I couldn’t even fathom how much money that was so I said, “Oh man, I guess, yeah.” I knew I could buy a Fender Stratocaster with that kind of money. I put the $100 down on the guitar and borrowed the remaining $26 from my dad. The guitar came with a case, a strap and guitar chord manual. The first day I had this guitar, I took it to band practice. I had a band at the time called The Flintones, which was a nod to the cartoon. It is kind of a silly name but we had found it funny at the time. My bass player and I were going to show each other our instruments and trade off playing them. I handed him my guitar just as he handed me his bass, and we were not paying attention that our amplifiers inside the basement of our drummer’s house only accommodated a two-prong cable. When we touched each other’s guitars, we both were electrocuted. I dropped my guitar to the floor. He dropped his bass onto the floor. I always remember that it was like an omen to me not to let anyone borrow your instrument because it had felt as if the guitar was saying, “Don’t give me to him!” We both got zapped in this hot, humid basement that did not have much air.
I’ve had so many great experiences with guitar when growing up. I knew Les Paul and Mary Ford when I was a little kid. Les was so kind to me, showing me what the pickups were about. This is what really inspired me to get involved with making pickups. Everybody I spoke to, I was asking how their guitar was set up and what the switches did on the guitar. Everybody was so kind and helpful to me, and that is why today I enjoy helping young kids and inspiring them to learn how to play guitar and learn how to do things. I think it is important to give back what has been given to me my whole life and I really appreciate all these young kids who are out there playing and practicing all the time. If I can do anything to help them get a better sound, that is what I am here for.
A Guitar on the Make
At an early age, I viewed the guitar as suspect because I associated it primarily with war-protesting hippies of Madison, Wisconsin, where my parents had attended school in the late ’60s. Guitar as I knew it seemed to be a vehicle for protest or seduction, or a seductive protest. I did not have the insight to be able to articulate this at the time, other than to say, a piano felt grand sitting tall and proper in the corner, that a plastic whistle inside a box of Cracker Jacks was a lucky prize — but a guitar always felt like it had an ulterior motive outside the realm of music. A guitar was on the make.
My theory that people with guitars tend
to have some modus operandi was confirmed when my mother and I moved, after her divorce, to my grandmother’s Chicago rooming house when I was seven. A prospective tenant figured he could improve his odds by turning up at our front door with a pawnshop guitar. My grandmother, tough and discerning, grilled every renter who crossed our threshold. Because she had grown up on an Iowa farm during the Depression, she was steeped in austere frugality — with one exception. Her most outrageous and baffling expenditure had been a 1924 Apollo baby grand player piano, which sat in the front room, unused. She kept an enormous collection of player piano rolls stacked floor-to-ceiling in one narrow corridor of the house. She had purchased many of these rolls for a song with her sister from an estate sale in a California desert town, and they awoke the next day in an itching frenzy because the rolls had been teeming with bedbugs, which, in hindsight, probably explained the great bargain.
I used to spy on these tenant interviews by crawling beneath the piano. I had a test of my own for them, to ascertain their rent-worthiness: I would push the pins from the underside of the keyboard to make it appear as if invisible fingers were taking a stroll. If the prospective tenant jumped, they flunked. One man, an itinerant musician from Hawaii, had been the first not to jump. He was slim, olive-skinned with jet-black hair, dressed neatly in khakis and a pressed white shirt.