Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

[telepicker]

I and many pickupwinders I communicate with from around the world believe that Seymour Duncan is passing off the Stra-90 HB as their own design when in fact it appears a copy of Dualtonell by S.K.

Comments Please .

[jeremy]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

dont know, havent ever heard anything like the stra-90.
even though it might be similar im sure duncan did plenty of testing to get it right

[mrfjones]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

Who is this and where is it from?
I have never hear of that pickup or those initials.
There are lots of variations of pickups. The phat cats are duncan pickups made initially in conjunction with hamer guitars and as a custom shop model, but gibson also made the p94 which is the same thing but doesn't sound as good as the phat cat. We don't know much about this pickup, or at least i do not. I only know what i have read in the custom shop pickup thread. Maybe someone can tell you where the pickup was born or how the idea came about. The idea of using different coils for humbuckers is probably not an original idea by S.K. whoever that is.

[dani]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

sk is steven kersting. one of his humbuckers is called a dualtone ii. one of the coils is configured as a p-90 and the other a strat single coil. combined, they sound like a paf. the dualtone ii is splittable to either coil giving a strat or p-90 tone.

https://www.skguitars.com

[telepicker]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

SD is supposed to be producing them now.
This guy below

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/skgs/sk/Index2.htm

Had patents pending on them. It appears that SD jumped onto them and making out that they invented them etc etc.

[sanrafael]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

sk seems like a really good pickup maker. My only question on the dualtone II is this: when you run it with both coils, as a humbucker, how do you get it to really cancel the hum at all harmonics? The two coils are very different, and I would not expect them to have the same response to all frequencies of magnetic fields.

[dani]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

sk seems like a really good pickup maker. My only question on the dualtone II is this: when you run it with both coils, as a humbucker, how do you get it to really cancel the hum at all harmonics? The two coils are very different, and I would not expect them to have the same response to all frequencies of magnetic fields.

that my friend, you will have to ask kersting himself.

[telepicker]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

He's pretty cool and is a very clever guy. He'll answer your question

[mrfjones]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

thanks dani, i searched for his website and what i found was that the dualtone II uses one coil of his s-90 and one traditionsl strat pickup. Question is now, if you can accuse duncan of stealing designs then they all have to be accused of it too, because Kersting has a p90 pickup in a humbucker mount like the p94 and phat cat plus a strat sized p90 ala lindy fralin.

now another thing, the only thing that seems different about this dualtone II pickup is that insted of using only bar magnets on the bottom of the pickup, the one coil uses magnets like a strat. That isn't very far from any other humbucker really. what is there to patent? using alnico slugs in a humbucker?

[Scott Miller]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

Okay, a couple of important points here:


1. Until this post began, nobody at Seymour Duncan even knew who Steve Kerling was (no disrespect intended), or that he made custom pickups. In addition, we have never heard of, or seen, the Dualtone II---which certainly appears to be a similar pickup.

2. MJ tells me that the first time she built a "Stra-90" was close to ten years ago. She only recently decided to add it to the custom shop list of "things we will build".

3. Our custom shop builds whatever people ask us to build for them. We don't design pickups and then market them as "custom" offerings. If someone asks us to build something like a "Stra-90", then we will---and THEN we may end up listing it as something we can build.

4. If there is an existing patent on this design, and we are infringing upon it by building "Stra-90-s", then we will, of course, respectfully cease and desist if asked to do so. No such request has been made as of yet.

5. The suggestion that we are "passing off the Stra-90 HB as our own design when in fact it appears a copy of Dualtone ll by S.K." is inappropriate---especially considering that no one actually called MJ or Seymour to get the answer straight from them.

[Evan Skopp]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

I hope Steve Kerling doesn't have a patent pending on a pickup design which we've been making continuously for the last eight or ten years. I know how expensive utility patents are ($10-15K), and if his patent is invalid due to our near-decade of prior art, that'd be a big waste of money for a fledgling pickup builder.

But as to your question, Telepicker, no, Seymour didn't steal anyone's design. Unless you consider the SSL-1 "stealing" Leo's design and the SH-1 "stealing" Seth Lover's design. If that's the case, nothing's original.

Or, as Carl Sagan once said, "If you want to bake an apple pie truly from scratch, first you must invent the cosmos."

Telepicker, perhaps you can communicate that concept to the many pickup builders around the world with whom you correspond, next time you're discussing who's stealing whose ideas.

[Jester700]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

Some care, please. His name is Kersting, previously spelled correctly 3 times in this thread.

It wouldn't surprise me that humbucking combinations of various coil designs have been around for a long time. The question becomes a legal one, which I'm not knowledgable about - what defines "prior art"? How many have to have been made? Only 1? I mean, a pickup maker of Duncan's size could theoretically make combination pickups of hundreds of permutations. If the creation of one of each were enough to prevent later legal patenting...

I feel for Steven, because he's a sharp & honest guy trying to forward the craft. I have a dualtone, and it's a great sounding pickup - it's the bridge pickup in my main axe. Having said that, it doesn't have the perfect fit & finish of the Duncans I've had. Still, his price is better.

[korinastratkyle]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

Well, I do know a guy by the name of Jay Pawar that builds or has built guitars utilizing pickups like is being talked of, made by Seymour Duncan, since at least 1999.

I'm not taking anyone's side, I'm just stating the facts. BTW, I saw Steve's post on AMPAGE, too.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

When your talking about something as fundamentally simple as a coil of wire, with a magnet in close proximity, it isn't very hard to imagine that different people come up with the same ideas and variations without having ever seen the others work. When I first discovered aftermarket pickups, and with my own electronics background, I immediately started sketching out different ideas, including one similar to the Stra-90.

Edit: Removed my pickup ideas. (I may market them someday.)

The list goes on and on, but you get my point. I bet others have come with variations of these same ideas - without any of us "stealing" one from the other.

Artie

[korinastratkyle]

Re: Is Seymour Duncan Stealing Pickup Ideas?

Let me also mention, I've unfortunately come up with great ideas, tested them, found they worked, and then found they were patented ideas or someone had thought of it before me. Regardless of who came first, I doubt either ripped the other's design off. This design is simply an evolution of prior art, it's not totally original, so neither are truly being 100% original. Doesn't mean they aren't both making a darned good product, though.

As for the Dimebucker... I won't go there...